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ATN Podcast 415: Looking at a great Week 1

Kickoff comes tomorrow! That’s right, it’s Kickoff Eve and here at D3football.com we drop a new podcast to get you ready for the 2026 season openers on Thursday night, Friday night and all day Saturday.

This edition of the D3football.com Podcast is sponsored by GameStrat, the most reliable & fastest in-game video replay system on the market. Find out more at GameStrat.com.

If this is your first time following Division III football, well, welcome! We want to make sure you are as up to speed as possible when you get to your tailgating spot, and that includes us walking you through the basics of how Division III is structured, how big it is (and how hard it is to get into the Top 25!), as well as how the playoffs are put together.

We’ll also take you around all six regions on the Week 1 schedule and go through a game of the week for each region, plus two more games to keep an eye on. Who’s on the run in Region 1? Who’s in the queue in Region 2? You get the idea. Plus, Greg and Patrick take us through a Week 1 viewing schedule, one game at a time, and it’s a new season, so there’s a new bit in this podcast. A new feature. Check it out.

We have this and more in the latest edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast.

Mailbag topics include: Which Division III coach could be next to take a Division I FCS head coaching job? Is Division III really losing too much in terms of transfers? Which unlikely predictions are most likely to come true? How will D-III fare against non-Division III opponents this week? Plus, yes, we will talk about Manchester leaving D-III next season and what it means for the HCAC, perhaps the OAC and perhaps the SAA.

Notes from the show: Etchglow’s transfer portal tracker

Hit play, or subscribe to get this podcast on your mobile device.

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:

Photos: Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com; JCU athletics photo by CJ Lyon; UMHB athletics; Eastern athletics; Steve Woltmann for North Central athletics; Millsaps athletics

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ATN Podcast 394: All the Falcons, and Knights, and Panthers

Two top 10 teams square off, and one team does something it hasn’t done in a quarter century. Yep, that’s a big deal. Heck, UW-River Falls hadn’t beaten UW-Whitewater that handily since the 1980s. We have talked about Kaleb Blaha fairly often on this podcast in the last few years, and that’s because he’s darn good, and was a big-game player on Saturday.

Three of the 27 automatic bids to the playoffs have already been handed out, and we give our assessment of how Wartburg, Concordia Wisconsin and Hanover will likely fare, what type of seeding they might end up with, and the like. Plus there are several head-to-head games for conference automatic bids this weekend, and we’ll talk through those as well.

Of course, you’ll never guess whether home teams or road teams won the big games in the WIAC. OK, maybe you’ll guess.

Plus, one time drove perfectly all day in Division III, and another drove perfectly long, more than 12 minutes?! Patrick and Greg hand out game balls. We take four mailbag questions, and make good use of Logan Hansen’s D-III NPI Simulator in the process. Who should you root for or against if you need an at-large bid? There are answers out there for you.

Logan Hansen talks about which teams still have a chance of getting an at-large bid and at least one of them may surprise you! We go around each region for even more stories and much more in this edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast.

Hit play, or subscribe to get this podcast on your mobile device.

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; Hanover athletics; Photo for Concordia (Wis.) athletics by Katelyn Cardinale

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ATN Podcast 359: Definitely not a slow week

Sometimes Week 2 of the Division III football season can be a bit of a letdown.

We know — teams generally improve the most between Week 1 and Week 2, says every football coach ever. But for the fans, Week 1 is a huge rush, and Week 2, well, some conferences are on bye and with fewer games, some years it just doesn’t stack up.

For the record: 2024 was not one of those years. Instead, how about a fantastic Week 2, with some course corrections on the field, and some more in the D3football.com Top 25 as well.

We’ll whip you through the big games in Division III from this past weekend, chat with a 24-year-old and introduce you to a 26-year-old Air Force veteran who has plenty to share with his younger teammates. We’ll hear from the wide receiver who transferred from Aurora to North Central only to have his season opening game against … Aurora. And much more. To see a list of all the teams talked about in this podcast, look at the list at the bottom of the post.

Math Correspondent Logan Hansen talks about the three biggest playoff leverage games for Week 3, plus give a snapshot for how those top eight seeds are looking. There’s a surprise team, according to the numbers!

We also hand out game balls to the top performers, pick out the stats of the week, and run through region by region to get some of the other stories you might have missed, such as the team which scored 30 points in the fourth quarter to rally from behind and win. And since that didn’t seem to be enough, Greg and Patrick have to pick one more region to tell one more story about on the fly.

Plus we chat with St. John’s quarterback Aaron Syverson, right after his team finished defeating Wartburg and giving him some much needed relief from a bad afternoon in 2022. There’s that and so much more in this week’s podcast, so give it a listen!

The D3football.com podcast is a weekly in-season podcast by Patrick Coleman and Greg Thomas, which was started in 2007. New episodes are published weekly during the season.

Hit play, or subscribe to get this podcast on your mobile device.

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.
Salisbury athletics photo by FOTOJOE PHOTOGRAPHY INC./Hannah Reagle