Category Archives: Around the Nation

Our Around the Nation column takes on the world of podcasting.

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ATN Podcast 356: We lead off with training camp

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Division III schools are having some hot fun in the summertime, as training camp is in full swing, and for a number of Division III head coaches, they are running camp for the first time. This is true for schools from Vermont to New Jersey to Pennsylvania to Virginia to Mississippi to Wisconsin to Texas to Minnesota and beyond.

Sometimes it’s hard to get hold of coaches at this time of year, but we are super grateful to get two of them to take time out of their busy jobs and chat with us about how camp is going in their first head coaching jobs.

We talk with Bethel coach Mike McElroy literally during one of those hot, humid, weekday morning practices as he takes over from legendary Royals head coach Steve Johnson. And Hampden-Sydney coach Vince Luvara joins us as well, stepping in for Tigers’ all-time wins leader Marty Favret. In addition, we chat with Tate Journell, a cornerback-wide receiver at Wooster who spent his offseason … playing baseball? He tells us his story in this edition of the podcast.

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 pick a half-dozen sleeper teams — all of them teams ranked outside our Top 25 (and the extremely similar coaches Top 25 that came out this week), but whom we expect to make noise this season.

The D3football.com podcast is a weekly in-season podcast by Patrick Coleman and Greg Thomas, which was started in 2007. New episodes are published weekly during the season.

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.
Photo by Patrick Coleman, D3sports.com

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ATN Podcast 355: QBs vs. Cancer, the Breakfast Bowl and the CONEheads

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There’s a bunch of serious business being done by Division III quarterbacks this offseason, as nearly four dozen of them have joined up to raise money to fight cancer as Quarterbacks vs. Cancer. There’s also some light-hearted work being done by Division III football coaches, as two of them in the NJAC have joined up to fight food insecurity and battle out the proper name of a popular breakfast meat.

And one more thing: The Commonwealth Coast Conference has selected a new name. They’re announcing it on Aug. 1, but we found it on a website and at the 18:45 mark of this podcast we will tell you the new name.

Seriously. Kudos to the sleuthiness of Dave McHugh.

Quarterbacks vs. Cancer is an organization helmed by Alma quarterback Carter St. John, who thought he might only raise a few hundred dollars to support a local area cancer center, but that was just the beginning. He’s joined by UW-Whitewater quarterback Jason Ceniti, Concordia-Moorhead quarterback Cooper Mattern and Carthage quarterback Bryce Lowe, plus another 40 additional Division III signal-callers. St. John, Ceniti, Mattern and Lowe join us for a great conversation.

And then there’s the Breakfast Bowl — it’s the brainchild of Montclair State head coach Mike Palazzo, who was looking for a way to create a rivalry game for his team and Rowan, in the New Jersey Athletic Conference. And he hit upon a breakfast meat, and if you don’t know the Jersey rivalry over the name Taylor Ham or Pork Roll … listen to this podcast. We’ll get you caught up!

Patrick and Greg talk about their preseason Top 25 ballots, plus we take two mailbag questions, so make sure you hear them both, and talk about the latest conference shuffle. That’s not a repeat from last month’s show. We had another.

The D3football.com podcast is a weekly in-season podcast by Patrick Coleman and Greg Thomas, which was started in 2007. New episodes are published monthly in the offseason.

Links: Brandon Misener’s GoFundMe page

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.
Photo by Ryan Coleman, Doug Sasse, Larry Radloff, d3photography.com; Kayleigh Wieska, Carthage athletics

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ATN Podcast 354: What does this new math mean?

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Hey, we get it — you don’t like to think about math during the summer. If you’re taking a class during the summer, it’s probably not math-related, rather some elective. But unfortunately, the math is now going to be just as important in Division III football as it was in the BCS days in Division I.

We know. That’s not encouraging. And maybe we can’t be encouraging about it, at least not the way it’s currently set up, but we can sure as heck talk about it and try to explain about it. That’s why we’ve brought back in our math correspondent, Logan Hansen of @loghanratings, to talk about what the new NPI — the NCAA Power Index — the new math — means for the Division III football playoffs and selection format. We’ll talk about how many years the NCAA folks tested this formula on, and we’ll talk about how many they should have tested it on, and what Logan found when he went back further.

We also talk with Delaware Valley football coach Mike Isgro, a former Aggie player under Duke Greco and assistant coach under Greco who now goes on to replace him. We talk about the long conference winning streak, where the opportunities for improvement are for the Aggies and more.

And we also chat with Jessica Huntley, founding commissioner of the Atlantic East Conference. No, this isn’t another conference looking to take an automatic bid, but something even more interesting to talk about — the growth of women’s flag football and how much growth we might expect to see at the Division III level in the near future. It’s a great conversation about a way schools can look to help manage their enrollment as things get tight out there in higher education, and expand the country’s most popular sport in a new venue and new format.

Plus we take THREE mailbag questions, so make sure you stick around to hear them all, and talk about some of the latest coaching changes and conference shuffles.

The D3football.com podcast is a weekly in-season podcast by Patrick Coleman and Greg Thomas, which was started in 2007. New episodes are published monthly in the offseason.

 

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.
Photo by Tom Nettleton, d3photography.com