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ATN Podcast 392: Consistency comes through

We’re getting ever closer to Selection Sunday, and closer to automatic bids being clinched. We’ve already discussed how few unbeaten teams there are this time of year compared to previous years, and of course, we had one more go down on Saturday when Wartburg defeated Central.

Wartburg has been really consistent at the top of the American Rivers Conference, or near the top of it. Head coach Chris Winter isn’t the only head coach who has been part of this run, but the Knights coaching staff has been really consistent over the years. We talk with Winter about how the program achieves this consistency while turning players over year after year, we hear about the key offensive guys who are healthy and the defensive starter who could be on the Owen Grover upward trajectory.

Plus, we look at the Whitewater offense, with its moments of brilliance, and try to decipher what they need. We take four mailbag questions, everything from deciphering which conferences have benefited the most from the NPI system and playoff expansion, to which play in the North Central game was most impressive, to whether there should be a cutoff for record for at-large teams, to which game — of a limited set of choices — we would choose to go see in Week 11 if we have to book travel now.

(Spoilers: The travel was already booked, and we’ll tell you where Patrick Coleman will be in Week 11.)

Plus, Patrick and Greg hand out game balls, one for one of the craziest endings to a game you could describe from Saturday’s games. We talk about how long it’s been since New England College had won a game before the Pilgrims beat Maine Maritime on Saturday — it’s longer than you think! We dive into the double SCIAC double overtime games, and the controversial ending between DePauw and Denison, and whether River Falls needs Kaleb Blaha on Saturday (it wouldn’t hurt!).

We spotlight the unusual stats of the week, Logan Hansen talks about which teams have the best chance of getting a top-eight seed and protected home field in the playoffs, 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

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Theme music: Power 2 by DJmentos.
Photo by Wartburg athletics

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ATN Podcast 388: Upon further review …

You’ve gotten the stop, pounced on a fumble, you’re celebrating a key win to open up your conference slate. Only then do the officials huddle up, and without the benefit of replay, overturn the call originally made on the field and give the team which by all rights lost the game another chance.

You’d be forgiven, perhaps, if it took you more than the customary 24 hours to get that emotion out of your system, to turn the page.

If you were Hope, which had defeat snatched from the jaws of victory on Saturday afternoon, in a turn of events so unexpected that it has garnered 211,000 views as of this writing on our X account, you could be excused. But the Flying Dutchmen will show up for the 6:30 team meeting with head coach Peter Stuursma today and be asked to turn the page.

No, the MIAA can’t overturn the result — they tried to with a basketball game back in 2001. Will the conference issue a statement about the officiating at the end of the game? They should. The answer to our question to the conference office came while we were recording, and you’ll hear our reaction as the response came in, live.

Coach Stuursma joins us to talk about the play and the aftermath on this edition of the podcast in Fast Five.

Haven’t seen the play? It’s this one below.

Not the only big game, don’t get us wrong. Patrick Coleman and Greg Thomas dive into the Christopher Newport-Susquehanna game, the interesting ways in which quarterback Josh Ehrlich and running back Rahshan La Mons were used, and the body language of the two teams down the stretch. And it seemed super likely that the Washington & Jefferson Presidents weren’t going to start the season 0-3, and we look deeply at their game with Grove City from Saturday night.

Plus, we’ll take four your mailbag questions about the Top 25. Why do teams on bye move? What do voters do with Alma and Hope?

Patrick and Greg Thomas hand out game balls, Logan Hansen talks about which conferences have a better than 70% chance of getting an at-large team into the playoffs, we go around each region for even more stories and much more in this edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast.

Mentioned link below:

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 Kai Foote – NPU media; W&J athletics file; Lynne Powe, Hope athletics

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ATN Podcast 385: Whatever you do, don’t overreact

Finally, games! A huge week of Division III football, with a couple of thrilling upsets, and more than 200 Division III teams taking the field, means there’s a lot to talk about.

So, we in the media were admonished not to overreact, huh? All we have to do is look at our social media feeds if we want to see overreactions run wild, but we’ll play Michael Wilbon’s game. We decided to take four big storylines from this week’s games and decide what the appropriate level of reaction is, and what might constitute an overreaction. So, we take on:

  • The starting debut of Mount Union quarterback Mikey Maloney
  • The plight of the freshman starting quarterback in general
  • The as-of-right-now still unresolved end of the Case-Rowan game
  • The WIAC getting off to a 7-0 start

Plus, we talk with Belhaven quarterback Brock Morris, who lost his dad over the offseason. His dad was also a college quarterback and … well, we’ll let Brock tell the rest in our Fast Five segment, a five-minute interview in our regular season podcasts because it’s hard to carve out more time than that. I mean, have you seen how long this episode is?

Patrick and Greg had content on-site from Belhaven-Millsaps, Catholic-McDaniel, Susquehanna-Union and Lake Forest-Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. They also hand out game balls, highlight the interesting stats from Week 1, and go around each region to spotlight even more games from Week 1 and start to look ahead to Week 2.

There’s this and more in the latest edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast.

Mailbag topics include: Should North Central be on upset watch next week vs. UW-Oshkosh? Are we already regretting some of our answers to the 20 Questions that we posed just a week and a half ago? And what’s the best stadium food we’ve experienced?

And there was so much bonus content this week. Links below:

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 Utica athletics; Wade Gardner, d3photography.com; Franklin athletics photo by Ian Shaw