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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

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Theme music: Power 2 by DJmentos.
Photos by Utica athletics; Wade Gardner, d3photography.com; Franklin athletics photo by Ian Shaw

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ATN Podcast 379: A dozen good eggs

That dozen is not just the number of D-III players currently known to have received an invite to an NFL training camp, for sure. How big of a breakfast does it take to feed an NFL offensive lineman? What did new-old Franklin coach Mike Leonard do when he was away from coaching the Grizzlies for the past five years? And why does Illinois College coach Ray DeFrisco keep coming back, year after year?

Those are some of the key questions getting asked and answered on this edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast.

Plus …

This edition of the podcast is sponsored by GameStrat: The Most Reliable & Fastest In-Game Video Replay System on The Market. D-III football coaches should click here to learn more.

No, seriously, that’s a lot of eggs. How did Middlebury offensive lineman Thomas Perry get to where he is today, a workout legend and an All-American who got invited to the Baltimore Ravens minicamp? He also talks about his experiences with Julian Young, a linebacker at Colby who will also be going to the Ravens, plus the workout that helped start him well down the road to where he is today.

At Franklin, Mike Leonard wasn’t expecting to get his old office back, and that space has some new decorations that we talk about. Hear what kind of camp Leonard will be attending this offseason. And at Illinois College, the days of putting up 96 points in a game might be over, with the standout quarterback and wide receiver and the offensive coordinator all moving on, but the philosophy remains. Hear about that and the new names you’ll hear this fall and more from IC coach Ray DeFrisco.

Plus we talk about the NESCAC finally getting its chance to play in the playoffs — even if it isn’t until 2026. Will that attract more talented student-athletes to NESCAC schools? That’s a question in our mailbag segment, and we also talk about the likelihood of radios in football helmets at the D-III level.

Patrick and Greg cover it all in the latest edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast.

The D3football.com podcast is a podcast that is weekly during the season and monthly in the offseason, by Patrick Coleman and Greg Thomas. The podcast was started in 2007. 

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.
Middlebury athletics photo by Will Costello; Illinois College, Franklin athletics photos

 

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ATN Podcast 366: Understanding the playoffs

Most years, we dedicate some space on the website or some time in our podcast to really give newcomers to Division III football a bit of a primer as to how the playoffs are structured, how at-large bids are determined, the whole 10 yards. But this year, let’s face it — we’re all newbies in some manner. Nobody has ever actually put together the Division III football bracket in this manner.

So, forget what you learned last year, or any of the previous 10 or more years. All that is out the window. You’ve been hearing about NPI — the NCAA Power Index? If you’ve been hearing angry things, well, hey, we don’t love the system either, but it’s what we have, so we’re going to give it to you straight. Patrick and Greg spend the top of the show detailing what we know about the 40-team playoff bracket, how it will be constructed, what it means to be a Top Eight seed and more. Then Logan Hansen will talk a little more about what goes into the NPI and how it’s calculated, and lastly we’ll take your questions in our mailbag segment, and there were a lot of questions, so we took several more than usual.

Five teams clinched automatic bids to the playoffs this week as well, and save themselves from having to worry at all about NPI. That includes Susquehanna, and we’ll talk with River Hawks coach Tom Perkovich in our Fast Five conversation. And we go through our usual run of high points from Region 1 through Region 6, Greg gets put on the spot about a swing state, Patrick does weather on the 8’s, and more.

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.
Susquehanna athletics photo by Brandon Love