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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

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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 408: NESCAC countdown, Bomber boss, mascot madness

The mailbag is pretty active in this podcast, with listeners chiming in with questions about how Concordia (Wis.) will do in transitioning from the NACC to the CCIW, whether this year’s new technology in Division III will be added more smoothly than last year, what Trinity (Texas) was leaving behind in leaving its long-time conference home, and which mascot matchup would be our favorite. We’ll also talk about the new quarterback transferring into UW-Oshkosh, and finally get Coe and UW-Oshkosh schedules finalized.

Plus, we have two guests: Trinity (Conn.) head coach Jeff Devanney and Ithaca coach Brandon Maguire. At Trinity, the day we’ve all been waiting for is arriving, where the NESCAC is finally allowed to go to the playoffs. The Bantams are all smiles. If you missed it, the conference presidents have been holding NESCAC football teams back for about 30 years while all other sports have been permitted to play on past Week 11. Devanney talks about how that changes the recruiting pitch, both for incoming student-athletes and a handful of key players who have an extra year of eligibility to be used.

At Ithaca, Maguire gets promoted from within and talks about how many of the 96 players on the roster they managed to get to stick around after the previous coach left right before Christmas. Why did they players who stayed, stay? What does Ithaca need to get back to the very top of the Liberty League standings and get to the playoffs? What are the Bomber alumni most concerned about? That and more in this conversation.

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.

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: Trinity (Conn.) athletics photo by Isabella Calagna; Ithaca athletics photo; North Central athletics photo by Mark Black; 

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

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.

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: Loras athletics; Franklin & Marshall athletics