Category Archives: Around the Nation

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

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ATN Podcast 383: A new year awaits

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Teams are in camp, some of them with new head coaches, and few head coaches are in a more interesting situation than Cortland coach Tom Blumenauer. He is in his first training camp as the Red Dragons’ head coach, and he’s working with a team that won a national title just 20 months ago, but lost a well-loved and highly successful head coach in the offeseason. Plus, he’s an Ithaca graduate. We talk to him about what he’s seen in camp so far, what he’s hoping to instill from a culture perspective, and what it’s like returning to the Empire 8, where he played as a player.

Few teams — no team, in fact, according to our preseason All-America team — should be happier to have a returning quarterback than the folks at UW-River Falls. Kaleb Blaha was hurt in the first game of the season last year for the Falcons and never returned to form, taking the “med red” of a medical hardship season or a medical redshirt. We talk with Kaleb, plus head coach Matt Walker, plus offensive coordinator Joe Matheson, about the expectations at River Falls this season, how fast and how hard they like to push their offense, and more.

We also hear from a Division III football head coach on the topics of whether student-athletes come into camp in better shape than they used to, and we talk to a coach whose program is using technology to try to keep student-athletes from getting hurt in camp.

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.

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 talk about how crazy it was to try to select a preseason All-America team this year with all the turnover from having two senior classes and a lot of upward movement through the transfer portal.

Mailbag topics include: Can Johns Hopkins finish 3-0 in their crazy opening stretch of the season? And if you had to name a rock song to define the 2025 Division III football season, what would it be? Hint: One of the answers is related to what the thumbnail image for this episode looks like!

Plus, you’ll need to stay to the bitter end to find out what someone thinks the next hot tailgate item will be for this fall. You won’t want to miss it.

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.
Photos by Wade Gardner, d3photography.com; Cortland athletics; Alma athletics

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ATN Podcast 382: Top 25, more replay, new PAC, NJAC

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How about that as the handy guide for topics for discussion in the latest edition of our podcast, namely, ATN Podcast 382?

We talk about the preseason Top 25, and the wide range in voting for lots of teams, not just for North Central. Seriously, UW-La Crosse has a far wider range of spots from our 25 pollsters, and so do a number of other schools. Plus, we bring in Kean coach Dan Garrett, who can tell you what might be on a coach’s mind when they’re filing a preseason ballot in our poll.

Patrick and Greg talk about who are the biggest outliers on their own Top 25 ballots as well — you’ll never guess who Patrick has at No. 24 on his ballot, for example.

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.

J.P. Williams, the NCAA’s liaison for the Division III football championship, aka the person at the NCAA who runs point on the football season, playoffs, and the committee, joins us to talk first off about officiating, since he is a Division I football official himself. Want to get involved? Williams tells his story. Plus, how do we get replay review at more Division III playoff games? And what did the committee learn from last year’s expanded playoffs? Williams talks through those things.

Joe Onderko, the commissioner of the Presidents’ Athletic Conference, joins us to talk about the new look of the conference, why the conference’s big rivalries tend to draw so well, how the schools get along with each other when they’re so close together, and where the PAC stands on putting conference athletic events behind a pay wall, as a number of conferences have this offseason.

And Dan Garrett not only talks about the Top 25 process, but also has a few words of encouragement for everyone who needs to be more active, and talks about who to watch both for the Cougars and in the NJAC as a whole.

Plus … Mailbag topics include: What do we think when we see teams so wide apart in various voters ballots, and what’s our take on the Empire 8’s attempts to bring redshirting back to Division III. And you’ll also learn where Patrick and Greg will be traveling the first two weeks of the season.

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. 

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.
Photos by Washington & Jefferson athletics; Kean athletics; Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com

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ATN Podcast 381: Spicing up the offseason

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It’s been a spicy past month or so and when you’re coming up on a food-related holiday like the 4th of July, we’re keeping the fire hot and the burgers, dogs, bratwurst, corn on the cob and more so that you can grill us with your questions. That’s right — we’ve got some great mailbag questions and we tackle as many of them as possible on this edition of the 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.

Plus, we have three great guests to chat with in this edition of the podcast as well, which we snuck just in under the wire for June of 2025. We start with Curry running back Montie Quinn, a second team D3football.com All-America pick who had a fantastic finish to the season. We hear from him about his pursuit of the school’s rushing record, who helped him get it, and why it was important that he just keep running. Plus, how did Quinn get from South Carolina to the Boston suburbs? And how is he preparing for the 2026 season and trying to improve on his record-setting performance?

Blaise Faggiano, the head coach of Utica, joins the podcast this time around and since he was on the national committee at the time the whole changeover to NPI took place, and the “dials” were set in such a way to almost entirely discount strength of schedule, well, we grill him on that as well. But we also talk about how his team has benefited from taking a foreign tour trip, and what the great local specialties are in central New York, and his hopes for his team for 2025.

And we visit once again with Carnegie Mellon coach Ryan Larsen — we chatted with him briefly in Podcast 380 about his team’s trip to Spain, but this conversation is about the CMU schedule for 2025, why he made it so challenging and how he thinks it will help his team improve, even if the NPI might not credit the Tartans the way we would hope. It’s a great argument for still scheduling strong even if the committee doesn’t want to reward that.

Mailbag topics include: Is the ASC done with offers to SCAC teams, who else is looking for bowl game alliances, what’s on your Fourth of July menu, what do we make of the North Central quarterback situation, why does D-III spring ball look different than the other divisions, how much will our preseason Top 12 differ from the way last season ended, and what our thoughts are on Geneva and Westminster (Pa.) not facing each other this season.

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. 

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.
Photos by Pat Coleman, Damara O’Malley, D3sports.com