Around the Nation Podcast 224: Prelude to a bunch of barnburners

Posted on November 16, 2018 by Pat Coleman

If the second round of the playoffs is your big turkey dinner with all the trimmings and every side you could want, then the first round is like that tray of vegetables and dip that you end up nibbling on while you wait. You can smell that turkey, the stuffings, the greens, the bread, but you have to wait.

We all have to wait. And now, not only do we have to wait, but we’re hungry.

Pat Coleman and Keith McMillan get you all lined up for Saturday’s first-round games, with the usual previews from Adam Turer and Frank Rossi. Plus, we hear one Division III quarterback remind us exactly why it’s so important to be able to run the ball in the playoffs, and we’ll talk with Mark Baltz, the Division III coordinator of officials. He tells us how officiating crews get selected and what type of evaluations they go through in the playoffs, not to mention how far they can travel. Plus, there’s a well-known former NFL player who is now a Division III football head coach, and Andrew DiDonato, the head coach at Grove City, has some advice for Earlham and all those who are trying to pick a football program up off the mat.

That and more in the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast. The D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast is a regular conversation between Pat Coleman and Keith McMillan and guests covering the wide range of Division III football.

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Link: Our full NCAA playoff coverage
Mentioned in the podcast: Around the Nation on officials: It’s a thankless job, but these folks do it

Photo: Conor Davies running with the ball, trying to escape a Union safety. (RPI athletics photo)

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Around the Nation Podcast 223: ‘It’s definitely not what we want’

Posted on November 12, 2018 by Pat Coleman

That line up top is what the national committee chair told us when talking about new restrictions on travel for the NCAA playoffs, as the NCAA clawed back one of the first-round flights the committee had previously been given to play with. What else did Jim Catanzaro say? We asked about seeding Mount Union and John Carroll to meet up in the quarterfinals, about whether St. John’s deserved a No. 1 seed, and about who were the last teams left on the board when the final at-large team was selected. You might be surprised to hear what the committee thought about Linfield’s loss to an NAIA team, and what the committee chair’s take was when the North Region rankings looked unlike the other three regions.

Plus our intrepid podcast hosts, Pat Coleman and guest host Frank Rossi, go through what the committee got right and wrong, the best matchups, toughest roads, and still have time for game balls, hidden highlights (and lowlights) and the interesting stats from Week 11.

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Link: NCAA Division III playoff criteria, from our FAQ
Link: Playoff primer podcast (No. 216, with committee chair Jim Catanzaro)
Mentioned in the podcast: Cal Lutheran wears names of those who died in shooting on helmets

Photo: John Carroll athletics photo

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Around the Nation Podcast 222: We predict at-large teams

Posted on November 9, 2018 by Pat Coleman

Often this time of year we do a projected Division III NCAA Tournament field, but this year we’re so busy making podcasts that we didn’t do one. Instead, Pat and Keith are doing both at the same time: talking through the process of selecting at-large teams right on this podcast.

This is a projected playoff field if the season ended today. All six teams that we got to choose can affect their playoff resume on the field on Saturday, and for that matter, so can all of the teams with automatic bids. Even those who are already in the field could impact their seeding with a loss or by winning while others around them lose.

And those are just the normal scenarios. We could see crazy scenarios, such as, say, last year when Carnegie Mellon committed a penalty and had a punt blocked to kill its potential upset of Case Western Reserve. What are the unlikely, but awesome scenarios that could occur? Greg Thomas threw a few out there and we discuss those as well.

Plus Kevin Bullis tells us how his UW-Whitewater team is looking entering Week 11, Keith asks Pat what could go wrong with this projection and Pat asks Keith to figure out what the Mayors Cup is. That and more in the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast. The D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast is a regular conversation between Pat Coleman and Keith McMillan and guests covering the wide range of Division III football.

Hit play, or subscribe to get this podcast on your mobile device.
Full episode: [display_podcast]

You can subscribe to the Around the Nation Podcast in iTunes. 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

Link: NCAA Division III playoff criteria, from our FAQ
Link: Playoff primer podcast (No. 216, with committee chair Jim Catanzaro)

Photo: Frostburg State back Grayson Boyce (Frostburg State athletics photo)

Theme music: DJmentos.

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