Dear reader:

We’ve asked a few Division III players and coaches to join our blog and give us an inside look into life in Division III football. Introducing Linfield senior center Dwight Donaldson:

Today the ‘Cats went back to work after a short break over the weekend. Most had a really low key weekend after our morning scrimmage on Saturday with a couple different guys having bbq’s. Campus has become flooded with students again after the whole place was empty over the summer. It’s great to see familiar faces again but I might be willing to trade it back for open parking spaces. There’s nothing worse than having 30 seconds to get to meetings and you can’t find a spot to park. Some guys just resort to leaving their flashers on in a yellow, but then you run the risk of draining your battery and needing a jump to move it so a semi can get through.

Getting back out on the field after the time off was a little tougher than many of us were expecting. Warming up for our morning workout we felt like we’d just played a game the day before. Guys were groaning just doing a couple of functional exercizes. I guess that’s what happens when you go for 9 or 10 days straight.

Our afternoon practice was a little sluggish but the seniors will make sure it doesn’t happen 2 days in a row. We finished up the day with evening meetings which is par for the course. The team spent about 20 minutes talking with the freshman about tips for class schedules and then studied film on Saturday’s scrimmage and today’s practice.

Tomorrow will be a true double with full practices at 8:30 and 7 and meetings in the afternoon. The evening practice is sure to be spirited. There’s just something about being under the lights that gets guys fired up. It’s also our last practice of doubles since classes start on Wednesday. Which also means I will have finished the last doubles of my career, a truly bitter-sweet event.

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Kickoff of the seventh season of Division III football coverage on D3football.com comes Friday night. In those seasons we’ve learned a few things about how to cover the sport. So, on a regular basis, here’s what you’ll see on our site this season.

On Friday afternoon we’ll start with our preview of the weekend’s games, a look at what the top games will be, a handy reminder of where to get scores during the games. We’ll link to any key Friday night games that are broadcast, etc., and there will of course be scores for those games.

Saturday is busy as all get-out. Track games in progress on the Scoreboard, where schools that choose to post scores during the game are highlighted. You can also watch those games scroll by on our news ticker at the top of the front page or any news page. As final scores come in and news happens, we’ll update the front page, perhaps as many as a dozen times during the course of the day. We almost never close up shop for the night before we’ve gotten all the day’s scores in.

On Sunday we compile and release the D3football.com Top 25 poll. Usually you can expect to see it update between 4 and 6 p.m.

Monday we greet the Division III fans returning to their office computers with the Statistical Spotlight, a look at a handful of top performances around Division III from the weekend that didn’t already get noted on the front page in the weekend coverage.

Tuesday we start posting our weekly Around the Region columns, which cover Division III on a regional basis. Those start coming in on Monday night and we post them over the next few days, as time permits. We also compile and post the Team of the Week, our weekly honor roll recognizing 22 starters and three special teamers from across Division III.

On Wednesday and Thursday we get Mark Simon’s Features column and Keith McMillan’s Around the Nation. They don’t always follow a specific schedule but this is the time of the week they usually run.

And that brings us back to Friday again. So now you know — you can’t skip a day.

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Seven days from now we’ll be waist-deep in incoming scores, press releases and commentary. But for now, it’s a final Saturday of sanity.

The first full Saturday of football kicks off a stretch of craziness in the Coleman household that lasts until the end of March. Between D3football.com and D3hoops.com, the season lasts seven months (and never mind the overlap between seasons). That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it — the only thing worse than the seven-month season is that pesky five-month offseason.

Here’s hoping for a successful, exciting and competitive 2005-06 season.

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Phew, that’s finally done. The Kickoff 2005, first conceived back in the first week of April, is posted.

If you have password issues, contact ryan@cwis.biz for help. There are also instructions available on the Kickoff login page regarding that. Hope you’re as thrilled as we are!

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The San Antonio Express-News hasn’t exactly done the Trinity (Texas) football team too many favors in recent years. Game coverage is almost non-existent. Occasionally there’s a feature. Even, on occasion, the facts are right.

I was reading a story in the paper this evening when I thought my opinion was going to change. Here was a well-written, useful story about the Tigers’ consecutive first-round exits, when there was a glaring error.

“Leading by five going into the fourth quarter, Mary Hardin-Baylor used a punishing ground game to drive 80 and 71 yards for touchdowns, outscoring the Tigers 14-0 down the stretch.

“The Crusaders went on to play in the D-III title game, losing to Findlay, Ohio.”

Thanks for playing.

Still, it’s not as irresponsible as the way the paper blew up Roy Hampton’s run-in with the law after the national semifinal win against St. John’s in 2002. That story, which, let’s face it, pales in comparison to what Division I athletes in the state have been connected with, was a major story in their newspaper for days. Eventually the school suspended Hampton for the Stagg Bowl.

An Express-News columnist after the fact wrote, “I just hope that our sensational headlines on the subject didn’t play even a small role in the decision to oust the star player.”

I’m afraid those hopes were unfounded. Trinity deserves better, and so does Division III.

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