GREENVILLE, Pa. — Alright, well, 15 of the first-round games are in the books and the 16th is a formality at this point, with Occidental trailing Linfield 63-21. As good a time to start as any.

Keith McMillan and I drove up to Greenville, Pa., for the Thiel-Johns Hopkins game and certainly came away impressed with Thiel receiver Brandon Chambers, who had three long touchdown catches, each different styles, in the 28-3 win. As an exercise on the drive up here, we each predicted not only the winner of each first-round game, but the actual score. (We each wrote down scores indpendently and only compared notes afterwards.) So let’s see how we each did:

East Bracket
Delaware Valley/Curry — Pat: DVC 56-7. Keith: DVC 56-17. Actual: DVC 37-22.
Hobart/Cortland State — Pat: Cortland 21-17. Keith: Cortland 31-28. Actual: Hobart 23-22.
Rowan/Wilkes — Pat: Rowan 38-17. Keith: Rowan 13-10. Actual: Rowan 42-3.
Ithaca/Union — Pat: Union 28-27. Keith: Union 20-14 (OT). Actual: Union 55-41.

South Bracket
Trinity/Mary Hardin-Baylor — Pat: UMHB 45-21. Keith: UMHB 35-21. Actual: UMHB 35-6.
Wesley/Ferrum — Pat: Wesley 54-24. Keith: Wesley 21-6. Actual: Wesley 59-14.
Bridgewater/W&J — Pat: W&J 35-34. Keith: W&J 45-42. Actual: Bridgewater 30-21.
Thiel/Johns Hopkins — Pat: Thiel 24-7. Keith: Thiel 17-3. Actual: Thiel 28-3.

North Bracket
Wabash/Albion — Pat: Wabash 31-17. Keith: Wabash 28-10. Actual: Wabash 38-20.
North Central/Capital — Pat: Capital 28-17. Keith: North Central 35-33. Actual: Capital 21-19.
Augustana/Lakeland — Pat: Augustana 56-7. Keith: Augustana 49-9. Actual: Augustana 49-22.
Mount Union/Mt. St. Joseph — Pat: Mount Union 56-7. Keith: Mount Union 51-14. Actual: Mount Union 49-6.

West Bracket
Linfield/Occidental — Pat: Linfield 53-21. Keith: Linfield 49-24. Actual: Linfield 63-21 at this writing.
Concordia-Moorhead/Coe — Pat: C-M 21-17. Keith: C-M 28-10. Actual: C-M 27-14.
St. John’s/Monmouth — Pat: St. John’s 52-14. Keith: St. John’s 45-17. Actual: St. John’s 62-3.
UW-Whitewater/Central — Pat: UWW 45-14. Keith: UWW 49-21. Actual: UWW 34-14.

You guys score this at home. Looks pretty even.

OK, Keith checking in while Pat helps some poor fellow hook up to the internet from the Thiel Student Lounge (fine looking student center here though).

As for immediate thoughts, not too many surprises around the bracket. Some may have thought Trinity would put up a better fight against UMHB, but the Cru looks like it’s ready for another run toward Salem … Wilkes, as the 32nd team in, looks like it might as well have stayed home. I picked a low score on that one because of the Colonels defensive rep and Rowan’s banged up offense, but Pat said heck no, they’ll still hang a bunch on them. Score one for Pat. … Capital/North Central turned out to be the great game we thought it would be, while the East bracket panned out as far as the New York games were concerned. Wow outta Union, 99 points?

Pat: Another great W&J/Bridgewater game. They should play in the regular season. Just thought of another great matchup we won’t see — two of the three Division III all-men’s schools (St. John’s and Wabash) meeting in the finals, in the Stag Bowl (pun intended). Not a whole lot of surprises, other than North Central hanging in without Tyke Spencer (separated shoulder) … or Capital winning despite five turnovers (can’t do that next week, guys). Or Curry leading Delaware Valley and hanging late into the game. Neither of us surprised by the Wesley/Ferrum result, as you can see. Should be an interesting matchup for Wesley next week — Chris Warrick will have a lot less time to throw against UMHB.

Keith is heading out to Augustana/Mount Union and I am heading for St. John’s/UW-Whitewater … somehow. John McGraw will be at Rowan/Union. Gordon Mann will be at Delaware Valley/Hobart. We’ll try to have someone at Thiel/Bridgewater.

Throwing the floor open.

There are some intriguing matchups coming down the line as you look through the NCAA Tournament bracket. Now, granted, we won’t see them come to fruition, but it would be interesting to see anyway.

Larry’s kids: Other than Larry Kehres himself, there are three Mount Union alumni head coaches in the playoffs this season, Jim Zebrowski ’91, Erik Raeburn ’94 and Mike Sirianni ’94. North Bracket No. 7 seed Lakeland and West Bracket No. 6 Coe could meet — in the Stagg Bowl, while No. 6 South seed Washington and Jefferson could meet Coe in the semifinals. Mark your calendars.

Same time, next quarter-century: The regional final could see the long-awaited Occidental/St. John’s rematch. Until last year, the 1985 meeting, a 28-10 Occidental win, could have been considered the SCIAC’s high-water mark on the Division III football scene. And both coaches, Dale Widolff and John Gagliardi, are still at their respective schools.

Yeah, let’s forget this one: The regional final could also provide a less-awaited rematch of the 1985 playoff game between Occidental and Central, a 71-0 Central victory.

Don’t blink, you’ll miss it: The potential Stagg Bowl between Ferrum and Augustana could be a quick one. The option-based Panthers run for 379.7 yards per game and throw for 103, while the Wing-T Vikings run for 352.4 yards per game and throw for just 25. Throw in TV timeouts and we’ll still get done before we need the lights in Salem.

Depth-chart battle: Monmouth quarterback Mitch Tanney could square off against the guy that beat him out, Wabash quarterback Russ Harbaugh. Tanney transferred to Monmouth and both are in the Top 10 in Division III in passing efficiency. Another interesting Stagg Bowl-only matchup.

Bad headline writers everywhere rejoice: We can anticipate many overworked metaphors if Mary Hardin-Baylor meets Capital in the Stagg Bowl. Both teams are nicknamed the Crusaders. We’ll spare you the examples. Similarly, Wilkes and Curry are both the Colonels, but even though those teams are in the same bracket, that matchup is even less likely than a UMHB/Capital title game.

Then there’s Cardinals/Blue Jays, Dutchmen/Dutch, Britons/Scots, and all the various big cats.

I learned a couple of months ago that this year’s selection show would be different; instead of sitting in a ESPN Zone restaurant in Washington, D.C., my home area, I would be in the studio in Bristol, Conn.

Saturday’s portion of the trip went well, saw a great game between Union and RPI for the Dutchman Shoes. Good wi-fi access at the hotel so I could get work done. And Sunday started off pretty well. I got a call from Mark Simon, one of our columnists who also works in research for Baseball Tonight and college basketball at ESPN. He told me that we had gotten the last key projected team correctly, Cortland State in and Cal Lutheran out.

We spent a good hour or two going over the bracket, picking out what games to key on, bantering over what to say. Dari Nowkhah, the anchor, took it very seriously, as did producer Pete Tredwell. We’ve had a different anchor every year but Tredwell has been the guy all three years. They’ve got a good routine down and I had commentary planned out, some of which I would get to use. More on that later.

So we plan out the show, Dari is writing his script, I’m fact-checking the info the NCAA sent (two key pieces were wrong, of course), then posting info on the site, getting ready for the show. About 45 minutes before air I change into my coat and tie, then head upstairs for makeup. Scott Reiss, who anchored last year’s show, is in the chair before me. Tredwell gives me a dry run on the stage direction, which camera to look in. Wish it would be a full rehearsal, with cameras and all, but oh well.

The previous crew clears the studio and we have three minutes of commercial to get set up. I thread my mic through my shirt so I can tack it onto my tie, plug in my earpiece.

Opening highlights roll, which was fun to see. Two minutes or so into the show, my first chance to talk … and I forgot what I was going to say. I see my name come up on the teleprompter, Dari nods to me regarding St. John’s and Monmouth and I blank. It seems like forever in retrospect but on viewing the tape, it was only a second. They were supposed to remain on the graphic but came to me on camera instead, which was another distraction.

All told, in my breakdown of the west bracket, I think I said “uh,” like, uh, 10 times. My dad, watching with my aunt and uncle in the Minneapolis suburbs (ESPNews is not on the Minneapolis basic package, apparently), later said he knew I was off to a bad start. Mom just told me I did a good job.

Dad also nitpicked my tie knot. Taking fashion tips from my dad is like taking competitive balance suggestions from Indianapolis, however.

Alright, on to the south bracket. We pause on Ferrum/Wesley, and I knew I had something to say there, but couldn’t remember what it was. If I hadn’t seen Wesley play like, uh, three weeks ago I would have been SOL, so I stammered something about the Wesley offense. Thankfully the Washington and Jefferson/Bridgewater game came up next and I nailed what I meant to say there. And at the end of the bracket, I’m trying hard to talk about Trinity/Mary Hardin-Baylor without expressing my outrage, especially since Tredwell and I had a talk before the show about where the line was. Plus, I was able to backtrack and say what I had planned to get in about Ferrum, at the expense of noting Thiel’s triple-overtime win — sorry, guys.

Went to commercial break and I had a chance to collect myself, look ahead at the bracket, remember what I was planning to say, etc. Worked great on the North bracket, no problems. On the East bracket, I apologize, I skipped the Union blurb on the last game and went straight to the bracket overview. I meant to say that Union has three good offensive weapons that opposing defenses will be hard-pressed to contain.

Again, sorry, guys.

And yes, I said if Mary Hardin-Baylor beats Trinity, Wesley had a good shot in its second game because I’d ‘have to think it would be a second-round home game.’ That’s wrong, as the seedings now show.

As close as I get to my real feelings about that South bracket I say later, regarding the Trinity/Mary Hardin-Baylor game: ‘that’s going to be a regional final-quality bracket in the first round’

We get to the end of the teleprompter and haven’t been told by the control room to wrap it up yet, so Dari throws me the extra question regarding the Linfield/Mount Union matchup. I was stalling to try to recall Pierre Garcon’s name, so it went a little longer than I intended.

And the show ended up 45 seconds over budget. Lessons learned: Focus on the camera. Focus on some camera, and they’ll follow you. Next year I’ll also make sure what I want to say gets noted in the teleprompter instead of in my head.

Best part was afterwards, however, stopped by the room where the Sunday NFL shows’ anchors and commentators hang out to watch the games. Now that’s a show that should be televised, though I expect some of what was said in there was not for public consuption. Chris Berman, Tom Jackson, Chris Mortenson, etc., sitting in rows of chairs, watching about eight TV screens.

Now, remember, my “day” job is at a national weekly publication that covers the NFL as well, so we have a similar setup on Sunday afternoons, with people watching a bank of TVs with as many games as possible. But Sports Weekly doesn’t hold a candle to ESPN in this regard. The reaction in the room as Nathan Vasher returns the missed field goal 108 yards for a touchdown defies description. Imagine 20 people watching the play develop, shouting out Chris Bermanesque sound effects as blocks get set downfield.

Good food, too.

Thanks to ESPN for the opportunity to promote Division III. I hope the players enjoy the opportunity to see their school on the big screen. This has been a fun gig for me for three years, too, although it’s a little disorienting when people know me by name already at games before I introduce myself.

But like, uh, that’s not so bad. 🙂