ATN Podcast 421: A Bell game that deserves a name

Posted on October 12, 2026 by Pat Coleman

A No. 1 vs. No. 2 showdown under the lights produced a 2-0 halftime score, a virtual walk-off field goal, a new No. 1 team in the country and maybe the latest entry in Little Brass Bell lore. Wheaton finally got the trophy back, plus Rowan finally got past Salisbury, and Washington & Lee reminded everyone why nobody enjoys defending the option for 22-play drives.

North Central spent most of the night looking for the breakout run. Wheaton made sure it never arrived. How did Wheaton hold North Central to 0.9 yards per carry? Which defender piled up 18 tackles, 6½ tackles for loss and the game’s biggest interception? And how will this Bell game be remembered, or named?

Which championship contender survived a goal-line stand at the 5-yard line? And who needed just six possessions to pull off one of the biggest upsets of the season?

Who earned game balls after defining wins? Which conference winning streaks now sit atop Division III football after North Central and Randolph-Macon saw theirs come to an end? Who finally got on the scoreboard? And which bizarre play featured one interception, four laterals and a big long touchdown?

Plus, Jesse Scott joins us for Fast Five after the biggest win of his tenure, Logan Hansen updates a playoff race that suddenly looks more wide open than ever, and we debate whether there has ever been a season with this many legitimate national-title contenders.

Trinity continued making its case in the NESCAC, Muhlenberg won another thriller against Franklin & Marshall, Millsaps stayed in the SAA race behind a backup quarterback, and Wilmington nearly landed a statement win against Hanover.

And looking ahead: Can Merchant Marine survive a crucial NEWMAC test against Salve Regina? Will Dickinson keep rolling when it visits Franklin & Marshall for the Conestoga Wagon Trophy? Can LaGrange take control of the USA South race at Brevard? Will Linfield and Whitworth once again decide the Northwest Conference? And who is best positioned to wear the crown now that Division III has a new No. 1?

Patrick and Greg tackle all this, plus your mailbag questions, in the latest edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast.

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Photos: Michael Hudson Photography for Wheaton athletics; Keith Lucas, Sideline Media; Salisbury athletics

ATN Podcast 416: Living up to the hype

Posted on September 7, 2026 by Pat Coleman

The task seemed impossible: For as long as we’ve been waiting for these Week 1 games and talking about them, especially the two in the Chicago suburbs featuring four of the top five teams in the country, they couldn’t possibly live up to the hype we’d given them. Could they?

Well, perhaps they couldn’t both live up to the hype, but one sure as heck did, as No. 5 Wheaton knocked off No. 3 Mount Union when offensive guard Aiden Byrne blocked the Purple Raiders’ attempt to tie the game with an extra point kick with 22 seconds left. So it was all celebration for the Thunder, and Patrick Coleman was there and brings the sounds and the observations, as we hear from Wheaton coach Jesse Scott in Fast Five, and we’ll hear from Byrne as well.

Patrick was also at the Bethel-North Central game, three-quarters of it anyway, so he got the gist, and we’ll talk about the key new personnel for North Central as well as what was missing for Bethel, plus the things that the No. 1-ranked Cardinals and No. 2 Royals need to work on. And we’ll dive heavily into No. 11 St. John’s win vs. No. 10 UW-La Crosse also. And how many viewers did the Wheaton win get?

Logan Hansen comes back to the podcast for the regular season with his breakdown of the top learnings from the week from an analytics perspective in Analytics 301, a 3 minute and 1 second swing through the big games coming up as well as key questions: Will the WIAC have a decent shot of getting four teams in the playoffs again?

Plus, Patrick and Greg Thomas swing through all six regions of Division III. Who’s only just begun in Region 1? Who has a clue in Region 2, etc.? Plus they hand out game balls, pick out the stats of the week, and answer your mailbag questions. How did our team’s Week 1 predictions go? Yes, we hold each other accountable for that and we’ll own up to it on every weekly podcast. Plus, in the Final Countdown, three results that surprised each of us from this week. We talk about dozens of teams and dozens of games, so check it all out on the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast.

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Photos: Michael Hudson Photography; Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com; Steve Woltmann for North Central athletics

ATN Podcast 406: Looking ahead at Draft, Duhawks, Diplomats

Posted on April 19, 2026 by Pat Coleman

The NFL Draft is coming up this week, and Division III has had only three players drafted since 2012, all of them offensive linemen who were thought of quite highly and drafted quite highly: Ali Marpet of Hobart, Ben Bartch of St. John’s and Quinn Meinerz of UW-Whitewater. If Division III has a player drafted from any position other than O-line, it’s probably most likely to be Ty Montgomery of John Carroll, who we talked about back in Podcast 404.

Why has it been so hard for D-III guys to get drafted lately? We bring in a player agent to talk about what he’s seen in two decades of representing Division III football talent, what NFL teams are looking for and what the prerequisite is before one ever even gets to a Pro Day. John Perez, who played D-III ball at William Paterson, talks us through it.

It’s a new day at Loras, as the Duhawks have a new head coach in former St. John’s defensive coordinator Brandon Novak, are hoping to generate some buzz of their own in Dubuque, Iowa, and looking to take a step forward for a program which hasn’t won more than five games in a season since 2008. Novak has filled his key assistant coaching slots with some young guys, he inherits a non-conference schedule already laid out for him, and he has to adjust from wearing red for more than a quarter-century to purple.

We also talk with Mike Phelan, whose first year as head coach at Franklin & Marshall was incredibly successful, as the Diplomats won their rivalry game and won the Centennial Conference’s automatic bid. He talks about NFL hopeful Gary Lewis, a wide receiver for F&M last year, plus Phelan talks about who his mentors are as a coach and who he gets advice from when needed.

In addition, we take your questions on the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference managing to snag an automatic bid, and on Anna Maria College getting essentially a vote of no-confidence from the state of Massachusetts. Where might podcast co-host Patrick Coleman end up going for a game in Week 1 of this season? We discuss the story of Ithaca’s Derek Slywka and his pro football journey. And Patrick and fellow co-host Greg Thomas have some news about the immediate future of this podcast.

Our guests on this podcast: Loras coach Brandon Novak, Franklin & Marshall coach Mike Phelan, John Perez of Perez Sports Associates.

Links: A look at the old Loras Fieldhouse, from 2018 on D3hoops.com

That and more in this edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast. The D3football.com Around the Nation podcast is a weekly conversation about NCAA Division III football, and has been running since 2007.