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ATN Podcast 417: Another splashy Saturday

It seems like Division III football made another big splash this past weekend, and we’re not just talking about that flood that overtook Washington & Jefferson’s field at halftime vs. Keystone. No, we’re talking about another great week of games.

How about unranked Randolph-Macon taking down then-No. 3 Johns Hopkins? No. 1 North Central and No. 9 Wartburg tight going deep into the fourth quarter? No. 6 UW-River Falls taking it to No. 21 Coe? No. 14 Hardin-Simmons winning at No. 12 UW-La Crosse?

And none of that even includes the fact that Mount Union was 16 seconds away from losing its third consecutive game.

Game balls get handed out to some of the top performances and most memorable performances in Division III from Week 2. Plus, which team held the ball for more than 25 minutes in the second half? Yes, you read that right. Who’s hitting a ton in Region 1? What’s the hullabaloo in the 2? What do you see in the 3? Who’s got questions galore in the 4? Who’s taking a long drive in the 5? Who’s getting their kicks in the 6?

Randolph-Macon coach Pedro Arruza joins us for Fast Five. Plus, when Patrick pulls over the podcast car to the side of the road, what is the big question? And didn’t Pumpkin Spice season come even earlier this year? We’ll have a Pumpkin Spice Showdown in the Final Countdown. Plus we take four mailbag questions, and much more.

Patrick Coleman and Greg Thomas deliver all of the goodness to your fall in this week’s edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast.

Hit play, or subscribe to get this podcast on your mobile device.

You can subscribe to the Around the Nation Podcast in Apple Podcasts, and many other places. You can also get this and any of our future Around the Nation podcasts automatically by subscribing to this RSS feed: http://www.d3blogs.com/d3football/?feed=podcast

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Photos: Randolph-Macon athletics; Wade Gardner, d3photography.com; Hardin-Simmons athletics

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ATN Podcast 416: Living up to the hype

The task seemed impossible: For as long as we’ve been waiting for these Week 1 games and talking about them, especially the two in the Chicago suburbs featuring four of the top five teams in the country, they couldn’t possibly live up to the hype we’d given them. Could they?

Well, perhaps they couldn’t both live up to the hype, but one sure as heck did, as No. 5 Wheaton knocked off No. 3 Mount Union when offensive guard Aiden Byrne blocked the Purple Raiders’ attempt to tie the game with an extra point kick with 22 seconds left. So it was all celebration for the Thunder, and Patrick Coleman was there and brings the sounds and the observations, as we hear from Wheaton coach Jesse Scott in Fast Five, and we’ll hear from Byrne as well.

Patrick was also at the Bethel-North Central game, three-quarters of it anyway, so he got the gist, and we’ll talk about the key new personnel for North Central as well as what was missing for Bethel, plus the things that the No. 1-ranked Cardinals and No. 2 Royals need to work on. And we’ll dive heavily into No. 11 St. John’s win vs. No. 10 UW-La Crosse also. And how many viewers did the Wheaton win get?

Logan Hansen comes back to the podcast for the regular season with his breakdown of the top learnings from the week from an analytics perspective in Analytics 301, a 3 minute and 1 second swing through the big games coming up as well as key questions: Will the WIAC have a decent shot of getting four teams in the playoffs again?

Plus, Patrick and Greg Thomas swing through all six regions of Division III. Who’s only just begun in Region 1? Who has a clue in Region 2, etc.? Plus they hand out game balls, pick out the stats of the week, and answer your mailbag questions. How did our team’s Week 1 predictions go? Yes, we hold each other accountable for that and we’ll own up to it on every weekly podcast. Plus, in the Final Countdown, three results that surprised each of us from this week. We talk about dozens of teams and dozens of games, so check it all out on the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast.

Hit play, or subscribe to get this podcast on your mobile device.

You can subscribe to the Around the Nation Podcast in Apple Podcasts, and many other places. You can also get this and any of our future Around the Nation podcasts automatically by subscribing to this RSS feed: http://www.d3blogs.com/d3football/?feed=podcast

Here’s how to find us on some of the major podcasting apps:

Photos: Michael Hudson Photography; Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com; Steve Woltmann for North Central athletics

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ATN Podcast 411: New-look SCAC, longtime Lion, brand-new Prairie Wolf

The Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference has made a lot of waves since last we talked, what with Millsaps and then Southwestern electing to rejoin the SCAC starting in 2027. So, at the risk of there perhaps being a third member of the Southern Athletic Association returning to the SCAC before we could get the podcast out, we sat down with Dwayne Hanberry, commissioner of the SCAC, to discuss the changes, the status of Gallaudet in the conference, and more.

This edition of the D3football.com Podcast is sponsored by GameStrat, the most reliable & fastest in-game video replay system on the market. Find out more at GameStrat.com.

In addition to that breaking news, we also discuss the recent announcement that the Monon Bell game will be played at Ball State University, in Muncie, Indiana, at a price of $50 a ticket plus Ticketmaster fees. There will be words, for sure. We also talk too early about the preseason Top 25 poll, which should come out within the next week.

Our coach interviews in this edition of the podcast each represent opposite ends of the experience spectrum. That includes Tyler Hopperton, who has been the head coach at Mount St. Joseph going on a decade and has been at MSJ as either a coach or player for half the lifetime of the program. Hopperton talks about his team going to a bowl game last year after a string of three consecutive NCAA playoff trips, the high points in Cincinnati’s Division III program and the benefits of Skyline Chili.

We also have Jacob Donohoe, the new head coach at Nebraska Wesleyan, coming over after spending time as an offensive coordinator at Coe. He takes over a program which was coached by Brian Keller for the past 30 years, was a longtime member of the NAIA and in a whole different conference.  Donohoe talks about reconnecting with alumni, changing the terminology within the program, what he learned at Coe and more, including the famous Runza sandwich.

Plus we answer mailbag questions about the future of Trinity (Texas), and about the best quarterback performances we’ve seen in covering Division III.

That and more in this edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast. The D3football.com Around the Nation podcast is a weekly conversation during the season, twice monthly in the offseason, about NCAA Division III football, and has been running since 2007.

Hit play, or subscribe to get this podcast on your mobile device.

You can subscribe to the Around the Nation Podcast in Apple Podcasts, and many other places. You can also get this and any of our future Around the Nation podcasts automatically by subscribing to this RSS feed: http://www.d3blogs.com/d3football/?feed=podcast

Here’s how to find us on some of the major podcasting apps:

Photos: Nebraska Wesleyan athletics; Eduardo Moll, Southwestern Athletics; Millsaps athletics; Mount St. Joseph athletics