That dozen is not just the number of D-III players currently known to have received an invite to an NFL training camp, for sure. How big of a breakfast does it take to feed an NFL offensive lineman? What did new-old Franklin coach Mike Leonard do when he was away from coaching the Grizzlies for the past five years? And why does Illinois College coach Ray DeFrisco keep coming back, year after year?
Those are some of the key questions getting asked and answered on this edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast.
Plus …
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.
No, seriously, that’s a lot of eggs. How did Middlebury offensive lineman Thomas Perry get to where he is today, a workout legend and an All-American who got invited to the Baltimore Ravens minicamp? He also talks about his experiences with Julian Young, a linebacker at Colby who will also be going to the Ravens, plus the workout that helped start him well down the road to where he is today.
At Franklin, Mike Leonard wasn’t expecting to get his old office back, and that space has some new decorations that we talk about. Hear what kind of camp Leonard will be attending this offseason. And at Illinois College, the days of putting up 96 points in a game might be over, with the standout quarterback and wide receiver and the offensive coordinator all moving on, but the philosophy remains. Hear about that and the new names you’ll hear this fall and more from IC coach Ray DeFrisco.
Plus we talk about the NESCAC finally getting its chance to play in the playoffs — even if it isn’t until 2026. Will that attract more talented student-athletes to NESCAC schools? That’s a question in our mailbag segment, and we also talk about the likelihood of radios in football helmets at the D-III level.
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.
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Middlebury athletics photo by Will Costello; Illinois College, Franklin athletics photos
Two significant mentions of Gallaudet this week and we’ve transcribed those sections for that audience:
At 1:05:00 or so:
PC: We go back to the mailbag. Another good question this week, and it comes from Dingo Talk, you’re probably familiar with Dingo talk if you follow Division three football stuff on X, that’s @Dingotalk, asking how close are we to QBs having communication devices with the sidelines. And would there be a player on defense having the same communication device, the green dot, is it coming to #d3fb in the near future?
So my understanding is yes. First off, the proposal on the table includes not only a quarterback, but a linebacker or a safety, someone on defense who will take the, uh, defensive signals to be the defensive signal caller. Now, I have been told by someone who is an avid listener of this podcast that this was actually already approved. Now, I was told this about three weeks ago, I think, and it has not yet actually trickled all the way out the door. I don’t know that this is going to get approved for 2025, but I think we’re going to see it sooner rather than later.
Some of these things where there will be a need for an equipment outlay by Division III schools, sometimes those things are delayed by a year, but since this isn’t required for play, like when they delayed for a year or two have the floor painted differently for basketball, or when they keep delaying the having a basketball shot clock show tenths of a second in the final five seconds, or when, back in the day, they delayed having a visible play clock on both ends of the field.
In Division III football, this is not quite the same thing, right? It’s not required in order to play the game. unfortunately some of those things have been pushed right through the door without a whole lot of regard for the timing. And I’m talking about last year when we opened the floodgates for video replay and people had very little chance to make a decision, in practically this time of year, no chance to really allocate for it in their budget. I think there’s … that could happen again. It happened with video for playoffs last year that was sprung on schools at basically the last moment. So this could well be as well, it could still be in place for 2025. I kind of doubt it. I think we would’ve heard by now, but if I were a coach, I’d be preparing for it in 2026 and maybe doing some of that research early so that if I had a shot this fall that we could get it and hit the ground running with it.
GT: Yeah, these, these kinds of things are always. A little bit different in Division III than they are at Division I, where resources are, you know, essentially unlimited. Putting communication devices in helmets at Division III requires equipment. It requires staff to staff. The thing, you gotta train people to teach, to use the new thing.
Those are significant concerns for a lot of Division III programs and game day operation staffs. It’s some of why adoption of sideline tablet-ry is varied. Some schools are using it a lot, some schools are not, and a lot of that comes down to: How many extra people do you have on your sideline to help manage those things?
So, I think it’s coming. Yes. , but then like, how is Division III going to handle it so that it’s equitable? I think that’s a real game changer from a competitive fairness standpoint, you couldn’t have one team talking to their quarterbacks and their helmets and another team not, I wouldn’t think.
Maybe you do.
PC: I don’t know. A great question. Right. And then, let’s extend that further, of course, for the folks at Gallaudet, who then have, the situation where a radio in the helmet does essentially no good whatsoever, and you need to have the heads-up display like they were allowed to test with last year. Does that all come together at the same time? There are lots of things that will continue to be discussed and I’m sure are being discussed and maybe we’ll get dropped on our plates. I don’t know. I mean, there’s still 48 hours between when this podcast is being recorded and when it will go live for, with our luck, it’ll get announced on the day that we drop it.
Second mention, at 1:11:05 or so:
GT: We closed there with some Gallaudet reference here in the rollout. Stefan LeFors, new head coach at Gallaudet, he was the outstanding Division I quarterback at the University of Louisville. So that’s kind of a exciting hire for Gallaudet as they sort of move off into a new direction in the ODAC.
PC: Stefan very importantly comes in already being someone who is not only facile with American Sign Language, but grew up with it because he is a hearing child of deaf parents, and that gets him multiple legs up with that community. So hopefully they get off and running.
It’ll be a really interesting new year for them.