Football fans and/or those who have read everything there is to read about D3basketball:

Keith McMillan here. Thanks for stopping by the football site still. Some of you have long anticipated this year’s installment of our Year in Review. Thank you for patiently waiting. I can finally confirm that it is up and awaiting your perusal and/or feedback.

If you want to skip right to it, go ahead. If you’re interested in the process, read on:

I turned in the year-in-review to Pat earlier this week. It took him a couple days to format and edit for publication, not to mention fill in a few items I left unfinished when I gave it to him (Hey, there were 108 categories, can you blame me?)

Perhaps you’ve already seen it, and maybe even read through half of it. It is so long Pat broke it into three parts, but we’d like to think it’s longer because we cast our net wider this year and our coverage was more comprehensive.

The year-in-review itself took no less than 25 hours to compile (a normal ATN takes about 6-10), so that’s where the delay came in. Opening up 55 of last year’s categories to fans and readers helped us cover some things we would not have thought of ourselves (like the Marietta/Baldwin-Wallace game, for instance), but it meant that I was working an hour or two a day until about Jan. 10 (we usually take a break from the Stagg Bowl and start up on this project sometime after New Year’s) simply cutting and pasting from people’s e-mails — including those solicited from d3 staff members — into different category headers. Once I got to there, I started writing … and chopping, re-organizing, etc. Pat offered to help write categories a few times, and although Gordon, Pat and Pat Cummings included their input, and several fans contributed quite a bit, I was still hardheaded enough to think I could do it all myself. Perhaps I bit off more than I could chew, as I told Pat at least three times that I was finishing up, and it went on for days and possibly weeks after that.

The first year we reviewed, 2003, Pat wrote half and I wrote the other half, which may have been why it was up by Jan. 6. Last year I believe it posted Jan. 27, and this year my goal was the 15th, which we missed by a few days.

But for good reason. Even after chopping down fan submissions and other writers’ submissions, and getting rid of a few categories that didn’t fit this year or we didn’t have anything for, it apparently reached Pat at more than 14,000 words. We tried to break it up into parts and make it as readable as possible, as half that would have been a lengthy read.

A couple things you should know about the year-end, if you cared to read this far into this post:

1. Some e-mails and quotes were edited for clarity, grammar and length.

2. I’d love to have a research assistant or two next year, either all season or just for this project. I spent hours just charting how all 231 teams did in comparison to our preseason prediction, for example. We also spent some time researching where Justin Beaver’s season fit among the great D3 rushing seasons.

3. I wrote most of the capsules, or tried to source the quoted material where I didn’t. But there are some parts written or re-written by other D3 staff, for the record. (That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have liked to write it … just means that some capsules, like No. 88, were sent to Pat with an unfinished idea, and Pat did the wording … so if you e-mail me asking why I’m dissing this guy or that guy, forgive me if I know not of what you speak 🙂

4. The beauty of the internet is that mistakes can be fixed quickly and even the print edition is not final. As a habit, we don’t like to change things after publication, but if you do spot something, you have the choice of e-mailing one of us and having us fix it quietly or blowing us up on the board and pointing while you laugh. Choose wisely.

That pretty much covers it. I think I’ve said enough. Time to open up the floor to you all. I’ll be answering questions, I guess, and considering your comments here and on the blog for the next week or two, depending on interest.

Hope you enjoyed your insight into the process.

D3football.com here hours before kickoff as usual, which leaves plenty of time to kick off a new blog.

Gordon and Pat Coleman are to my left right now, on the air announcing the all-Americans. If you aren’t listening, you should be … if you’re interested in hearing about four or five different pre-game interviews. I know Brett Elliott’s interview already aired … good stuff. Very humble, honest about his NFL future and bashing the lack of a playoff in D-I. Loving that!

Mount Union’s specialists have just taken the field.

The weather here tends to be cold and windy … Salem is the championship site because they make D3 feel big time and have gathered a great volunteer base to support the game, but we could do without the weather.

The field is a fast track, but probably not the same as the turf at Mount Union. Both teams are used to/OK with cold weather, and UW-W played in the snow last week, so this should be nothing new. There is snow around the field from Thursday night, but the field was taken care of yesterday, and even spray painted green (I believe) to make it look good for TV.

We’ll be posting from time to time today, and we’ve seen you go crazy on the predictions thread … but if you’re not here and your TV is close to your computer, pump up the sound from the webcast. We’re pretty sure the D3 die-hards will enjoy it.

We’ll be glad to hear your thoughts pre-game and during. Should be fun to look back at after the fact. Take it away…

OK,
Pat and I will check in from our respective rivalry games, and through comments, you can do the same.

It’s a beautiful day here in Greencastle, about 60 degrees and bright, with a wind blowing end zone to end zone that might affect the game.

I won’t ramble too much now, but it gets no bigger than this. Rivalry game with a 9-0 vs. a 7-1, playoff implications for both sides.

We’re about 6 minutes to kickoff. Let’s get it on!