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ATN Podcast 384: Looking ahead

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Games kick off two days from now, so there’s no time like the present for a Week 1 preview! Patrick and Greg take you through Division III football’s opening week, going region by region with a region Game of the Week and more games to watch in each region, Region 1 through Region 6.

Plus, we bring back J.P. Williams, the NCAA’s liaison for the Division III football championship, aka the person at the NCAA who runs point on the football season, playoffs, and the committee. This part of the conversation is about some more hot-button issues around the Division III football playoffs, such as, seriously, artificial noisemakers. That’s an issue being discussed. So is trying to stagger the start times of the quarterfinals so that they overlap a little less. Great, now how about the first three rounds? Anyone? And are wearables or radios in helmets coming to the Division III playoffs this season?

And listen, you might not be happy with the possibilities for the Stagg Bowl, the Division III football championship game. It’s hardly set in stone yet, but consider this your first warning that it might be … interesting. Listen for more.

Plus, the season is here, and if you’ve listened to our podcast over the past several years, you might remember that big occasions sometimes call for big productions. There is one of those in this podcast, as We’ve Got Our Eyes on 2025.

Patrick and Greg have this and more in the latest edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast.

Mailbag topics include: Which games in Week 1 could most upset the apple cart and change expectations for the Division III football season? And, what three games this week need to have a rivalry trophy and a title? And check the bottom of the podcast page for the names of teams mentioned in the episode — it’s a big number!

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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:

Theme music: Power 2 by DJmentos.
Photos by D3sports.com; Aurora athletics; Grove City athletics

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ATN Podcast 383: A new year awaits

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Teams are in camp, some of them with new head coaches, and few head coaches are in a more interesting situation than Cortland coach Tom Blumenauer. He is in his first training camp as the Red Dragons’ head coach, and he’s working with a team that won a national title just 20 months ago, but lost a well-loved and highly successful head coach in the offeseason. Plus, he’s an Ithaca graduate. We talk to him about what he’s seen in camp so far, what he’s hoping to instill from a culture perspective, and what it’s like returning to the Empire 8, where he played as a player.

Few teams — no team, in fact, according to our preseason All-America team — should be happier to have a returning quarterback than the folks at UW-River Falls. Kaleb Blaha was hurt in the first game of the season last year for the Falcons and never returned to form, taking the “med red” of a medical hardship season or a medical redshirt. We talk with Kaleb, plus head coach Matt Walker, plus offensive coordinator Joe Matheson, about the expectations at River Falls this season, how fast and how hard they like to push their offense, and more.

We also hear from a Division III football head coach on the topics of whether student-athletes come into camp in better shape than they used to, and we talk to a coach whose program is using technology to try to keep student-athletes from getting hurt in camp.

This edition of the podcast is sponsored by GameStrat: The Most Reliable & Fastest In-Game Video Replay System on The Market. D-III football coaches should click here to learn more.

Plus, if you’re new to Division III football, we’ll start off this podcast with a little primer about how things work and what to expect come playoff time. And we also talk about how crazy it was to try to select a preseason All-America team this year with all the turnover from having two senior classes and a lot of upward movement through the transfer portal.

Mailbag topics include: Can Johns Hopkins finish 3-0 in their crazy opening stretch of the season? And if you had to name a rock song to define the 2025 Division III football season, what would it be? Hint: One of the answers is related to what the thumbnail image for this episode looks like!

Plus, you’ll need to stay to the bitter end to find out what someone thinks the next hot tailgate item will be for this fall. You won’t want to miss it.

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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:

Theme music: Power 2 by DJmentos.
Photos by Wade Gardner, d3photography.com; Cortland athletics; Alma athletics

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ATN Podcast 382: Top 25, more replay, new PAC, NJAC

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How about that as the handy guide for topics for discussion in the latest edition of our podcast, namely, ATN Podcast 382?

We talk about the preseason Top 25, and the wide range in voting for lots of teams, not just for North Central. Seriously, UW-La Crosse has a far wider range of spots from our 25 pollsters, and so do a number of other schools. Plus, we bring in Kean coach Dan Garrett, who can tell you what might be on a coach’s mind when they’re filing a preseason ballot in our poll.

Patrick and Greg talk about who are the biggest outliers on their own Top 25 ballots as well — you’ll never guess who Patrick has at No. 24 on his ballot, for example.

This edition of the podcast is sponsored by GameStrat: The Most Reliable & Fastest In-Game Video Replay System on The Market. D-III football coaches should click here to learn more.

J.P. Williams, the NCAA’s liaison for the Division III football championship, aka the person at the NCAA who runs point on the football season, playoffs, and the committee, joins us to talk first off about officiating, since he is a Division I football official himself. Want to get involved? Williams tells his story. Plus, how do we get replay review at more Division III playoff games? And what did the committee learn from last year’s expanded playoffs? Williams talks through those things.

Joe Onderko, the commissioner of the Presidents’ Athletic Conference, joins us to talk about the new look of the conference, why the conference’s big rivalries tend to draw so well, how the schools get along with each other when they’re so close together, and where the PAC stands on putting conference athletic events behind a pay wall, as a number of conferences have this offseason.

And Dan Garrett not only talks about the Top 25 process, but also has a few words of encouragement for everyone who needs to be more active, and talks about who to watch both for the Cougars and in the NJAC as a whole.

Plus … Mailbag topics include: What do we think when we see teams so wide apart in various voters ballots, and what’s our take on the Empire 8’s attempts to bring redshirting back to Division III. And you’ll also learn where Patrick and Greg will be traveling the first two weeks of the season.

Patrick and Greg cover it all in the latest edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast.

The D3football.com podcast is a podcast that is weekly during the season and monthly in the offseason, by Patrick Coleman and Greg Thomas. The podcast was started in 2007. 

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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:

Theme music: Power 2 by DJmentos.
Photos by Washington & Jefferson athletics; Kean athletics; Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com