ATN podcast: All the playoff info you need

Posted on by

Thirty-two playoff spots. Twelve are secure. How will the other 20 shake out? That’s the focus of this week’s Around the Nation podcast.

Some conferences are easy to figure, with head-to-head games lined up to decide who takes home the automatic bid. Some are a little complicated, including the potential four-way tie in the Centennial and the Northern Athletics Conference.

And then there’s the at-large bids. We identified up to 14 teams that could get consideration for Pool C bids. Problem is, there’s just six spots to go around.

Who? When? And where can you get the selection show? Yeah, that’s important. And that’s why we lead off this most important week of the Division III football season with this Around the Nation podcast.

Click the play button below to listen.

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.d3football.com/dailydose/?feed=podcast

[display_podcast]

It’s game day. Let’s clinch!

Posted on by

Playoff spots will be going out left, right and center today, as we lock up a few more of the 23 automatic bids to the Division III football playoffs.

Plenty of action going on, detailed on the front page. Our own Gordon Mann is calling the Delaware Valley-Albright game, and if I weren’t headed to St. Thomas-Bethel myself, that’s what I’d be listening to. Click here to listen.

We list other potential clinchers on the front page. Wesley doesn’t have an AQ to play for but is going to be interesting this week, as quarterback Shane McSweeney’s status is in doubt.

More? Chime in, plus follow us on Twitter.

PlayPlay

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Don’t D-III teams want to win?

Posted on by

I posted this on our D3hoops blog already, but thought I would run it past the football readers. Some misguided sports psychologist studied a soccer team and a tennis team and came to the following conclusion:

Division I athletes wanted to win, but those playing in Division III wanted to make friends.

I think all of us here know that’s not true. Thankfully, Division III has a sports psychologist of its own: St. Thomas men’s basketball assistant coach John Tauer. He wrote a response to this blog:

The majority of Division III athletes I have coached or coached against are highly motivated by many factors, not just making friends. one of those factors is competition — individuals and teams in Division III work incredibly hard. Division III athletes are not on athletic scholarships. As a result, they may actually have higher levels of intrinsic motivation than their Division I and II counterparts.

While this is certainly preaching to the choir, I still think it’s worth passing along. I think it’s important to highlight and debunk every misconception about Division III athletics, every time possible.

Dr. Reiss then posted another column attempting to explain away his mischaracterization of Division III by, in part, blaming the blog format which requires him to write a teaser.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/who-we-are/200911/intrinsic-motivation-is-multifaceted

(Never mind that the mischaracterization was also repeated in the blog post itself, which has no such format restriction.)