ATN podcast: Welcome to 2010

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There’s one question that’s on pretty much everyone’s mind when it comes to the Division III football season: Can Mount Union and UW-Whitewater do it again, after meeting in the Stagg Bowl for each of the past five seasons?

The bad news? Sure, they can. But will they? That’s what we should really be asking. And in the first podcast of the 2010 season, Around the Nation columnist Keith McMillan and D3football.com executive editor Pat Coleman ask that question, and talk over the possible answers. Plus, get a preview of where you can find our gurus on the road this season and more.

Click the play button below to listen.

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You can load the podcast page in iTunes or 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

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Behind the All-American team

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We posted our 2010 preseason All-America team this morning.

This is the 11th preseason team we’ve compiled and it’s hard to say the process ever gets easier, but I thought I would describe the philosophy and the process.

Four years ago I posted a fairly detailed blog entry about the fraudulence of some preseason All-American teams, which was a specific reaction to one annual All-America team. While that team isn’t selected anymore, our concept still exists: We do not water down our All-America teams.

Every year there are a couple of All-Americans from the previous fall who don’t make the preseason team the next year. That’s because we name four teams to the All-American team and cut it back to two for the next preseason. Sometimes there are more underclassmen returning than would fit in two teams.

This past December we went to an extra step in creating our All-American teams. For the first time, we had the ability to easily and quickly contact all Division III football coaches (thanks, Scoutware!) and solicit their opinions on offensive linemen. Like all All-America selection committees, we have struggled to rate offensive linemen, since they don’t generate easily measurable statistics. And while last year, we asked for coaches’ opinions too late in the game to make the best use of them, we were able to use them for the 2010 preseason team.

And so, the countdown to kickoff continues.

DePauw’s move a good thing for NCAC

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The North Coast Athletic Conference just got better.

Officials announced today that DePauw football will be joining the NCAC beginning in 2012, while all other sports will enter the conference a year earlier, in the 2011-12 school year.

The move for DPU, a Phi Beta Kappa institution like the rest of the NCAC, ends a more than decade-long question mark that many people had. Since the late ‘90s, DePauw has been a member of the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference, playing teams from as far away as Alabama to Colorado and several places in-between. It’s no wonder that DePauw’s president, Brian Casey, cited “fewer strains on both schedules and budgets,” in today’s news release as part of the reason for the move.

Now, DePauw brings its solid academic and athletic reputation (evidenced by its five-straight SCAC President’s Trophy wins) to a conference that, by all observations, fits snuggly with the school’s philosophy.

Of prime note is that the move will reunite DPU with its more than century-long rival, Wabash, in conference play. Separated by only 30 miles, it makes sense for these institutions to be conference siblings.

The schools play annually on the last weekend of the regular season for the Monon Bell – a game that resonates intensity even without conference title hopes on the line. To emphasize the scale of the rivalry, only the slimmest of margins separate the overall series. WC’s win in 2009 gave it a one-win lead, 54-53-9.

But that’s not all. A few years back, the rivalry was also the only non-Division I matchup in the nation to be considered in an ESPN “greatest football rivalries” poll. And in each of the past three seasons, the Monon Bell game has played a critical role in determining either postseason entry or seeding for at least one of the two schools.

Think about the stakes if a conference title possibility is added to the mix.

I can envision it, because I’ve seen it before. I was a Wabash student during some of those final years that DePauw and Wabash shared a conference. Though it’s been well documented that the emotions at the Bell game, especially from the stands, showed excess in the late ‘90s, lessons have been learned from those mistakes. They won’t be made again.

The change is of course good well beyond the DePauw-Wabash gridiron rivalry. All sports between the schools will carry more weight. But, perhaps most of all in the big picture, the conference, top to bottom, will be better and more competitive. All NCAC teams will benefit from DePauw. Teams in all sports will be pushed harder and the national exposure will be greater.

Because of that, the NCAC’s student-athletes are the biggest beneficiaries. And DePauw made its change with courtesy – choosing to honor its already-planned schedules.

I did understand the reasons DePauw parted ways with any Great Lakes-area conferences back in 1998. Many people weren’t happy about it – including me to some extent – but I respected it. However, there can be no more complaints or finger-pointing. After Earlham’s departure to the HCAC, this is a good decision by DePauw and a good choice by the NCAC front office.

I hope that the new Tigers call the NCAC home for a long time to come.