Yearly Archives: 2008

Going camping

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Over the next week, thousands of Division III football players will be reporting for camp. There’s no one single reporting date for training camp in Division III football: it’s based on a formula that takes into account not only the date of the first game (Sept. 6, even for those who start on Thursday, Sept. 4) and the first day of classes.

So if your favorite team starts tomorrow and your opening week opponent starts two days later, you’re not supposed to have a leg up. Each school is supposed to have 21 practice opportunities, accounting for two-a-days when permitted before class starts.

As teams report, our reporters are doing their rounds of telephone calls to coaches in order to get the latest information for Kickoff. But I’m thinking about the freshmen coming into their first collegiate camp.

Certainly many of the hundreds of freshmen who will be putting on pads in the next week or so have some idea of what they are getting into, some knowledge that Division III football is like nothing they’ve ever experienced. Others may have been deluded into thinking that Division III is glorified intramurals, that it’s not serious football, that they can dominate just because they were good in high school.

News flash: Everyone here was good in high school. Pretty much everyone started (unless you were Terrelle Pryor’s backup), most were all-conference, many were all-city/region/district and some were all-state. And some have three years on you. So come in with high expectations, but stay grounded … or someone will ground you the moment you put on pads.

We don’t often get the freshman perspective, but there is an incoming player for Colorado College who is already blogging about “The D3 experience.” Recommend checking out Chris Jarmon’s blog to see what he has to say when he reports for camp on Friday.

Wabash always ranks

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Every year Princeton Review releases a set of rankings that colleges trumpet (“One of the Top Schools in the Country!”) or down play (“Rankings, schmankings”). Here is a quick look at which Division III schools cracked the lists related to sports. I wouldn’t take them too seriously after seeing who made the list of places where intercollegiate sports is supposedly unpopular. But they might help people pass the time through a slow offseason.

    Students pack the stadiums

1. University of Florida
14. Wabash College

    Best athletic facilities

1. University of Maryland
3. Wabash College
20. St. Lawrence University

    Intercollegiate sports unpopular or nonexistent

1. Eugene Lang College (NY)
14. University of Chicago
15. NYU
16. SUNY-Purchase
17. Harvey Mudd College (part of Claremont-Mudd-Scripps athletics)
20. Emerson College

Note: Originally I had shown St. John’s (MN) on this list. The website now says St. John’s (NM). I’m not sure if I read it wrong or the site had the letters of the state transposed and fixed it. I’ll assume its the former and apologize for my mistake. I still question the credence of this list given the inclusion of NYU.

    Jock Schools

1. Clemson University
3. Wabash College

Incidentally Wabash was also ranked #3 in best career/job placement services behind Northeastern (MA) and Claremont McKenna (CA). You can look at the all the rankings, including those not related to sports here.

Opening weekend, who’s with me?

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I keep going back and forth as to whether I can manage it but I’m tempted to try this Week 1 tripleheader, taking advantage of my new Minneapolis home base.

Friday night, it would be NAIA quarterfinalist St. Xavier at defending Division III champion UW-Whitewater, a 7 p.m. CT start. Then Saturday morning (yes, morning), East Texas Baptist is at St. John’s, 11 a.m. CT kickoff and Saturday night, Hardin-Simmons vs. UW-La Crosse (at Winona State in Minnesota, shaving some travel time) at 7 p.m. CT.

Doable? Sure. Sane? Not without a second driver. So we’ll see.

Of course, with a lot of drive time (or money) you could make it a quadrupleheader and pick up Thursday night games between Springfield and Fitchburg State or Mass Maritime and SUNY-Maritime. East Coasters could take the former, add Nichols at Westfield State or Curry at Worcester State on Friday night, Rowan at Bridgewater State at noon on Saturday and one of a handful of games that night, say, WPI at Mass-Dartmouth and never leave the state of Massachusetts.

If I were still working at NBCSports.com and living in Connecticut, I guess that would be my itinerary.