The season of regional rankings, mock brackets and things such as Pool C teams is upon us, and how better to get things started than by having a conversation with the chair of the Division III football championship committee?

We start every year with burning questions, and Northwestern (Minn.) head coach Matt Moore was kind enough to sit down and chat with Pat Coleman on campus earlier this week and give the most honest and open answers possible, considering not a single ranking has been made. But when you wonder, what does “results against regionally ranked opponents” mean, and how is it used, well, the answer wasn’t what we expected or what we had been told was reality by chairs in years and sports past.

This edition of the podcast is sponsored by d3photography.com, the licensed photography bureau contracted by D3sports.com.

If you want to hear the answer to what happens when a team plays zero non-conference games, you’ll get the best answer we can get so far this season here in this podcast. If you want to know whether the national committee would change a regional ranking if it doesn’t line up or make sense with the others, you’ll hear that answer as well.

And if you want to know how important strength of schedule is, you can get no answer more clear than Moore’s answer.

Pat Coleman and Matt Moore talk, and Pat and Greg Thomas discuss, in this edition of the podcast.

The D3football.com podcast is a weekly in-season podcast by Pat Coleman and Greg Thomas, which was started in 2007.

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Photo: Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com