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ATN Podcast 384: Looking ahead

Games kick off two days from now, so there’s no time like the present for a Week 1 preview! Patrick and Greg take you through Division III football’s opening week, going region by region with a region Game of the Week and more games to watch in each region, Region 1 through Region 6.

Plus, we bring back J.P. Williams, the NCAA’s liaison for the Division III football championship, aka the person at the NCAA who runs point on the football season, playoffs, and the committee. This part of the conversation is about some more hot-button issues around the Division III football playoffs, such as, seriously, artificial noisemakers. That’s an issue being discussed. So is trying to stagger the start times of the quarterfinals so that they overlap a little less. Great, now how about the first three rounds? Anyone? And are wearables or radios in helmets coming to the Division III playoffs this season?

And listen, you might not be happy with the possibilities for the Stagg Bowl, the Division III football championship game. It’s hardly set in stone yet, but consider this your first warning that it might be … interesting. Listen for more.

Plus, the season is here, and if you’ve listened to our podcast over the past several years, you might remember that big occasions sometimes call for big productions. There is one of those in this podcast, as We’ve Got Our Eyes on 2025.

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

Mailbag topics include: Which games in Week 1 could most upset the apple cart and change expectations for the Division III football season? And, what three games this week need to have a rivalry trophy and a title? And check the bottom of the podcast page for the names of teams mentioned in the episode — it’s a big number!

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 D3sports.com; Aurora athletics; Grove City athletics

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ATN Podcast 383: A new year awaits

Teams are in camp, some of them with new head coaches, and few head coaches are in a more interesting situation than Cortland coach Tom Blumenauer. He is in his first training camp as the Red Dragons’ head coach, and he’s working with a team that won a national title just 20 months ago, but lost a well-loved and highly successful head coach in the offeseason. Plus, he’s an Ithaca graduate. We talk to him about what he’s seen in camp so far, what he’s hoping to instill from a culture perspective, and what it’s like returning to the Empire 8, where he played as a player.

Few teams — no team, in fact, according to our preseason All-America team — should be happier to have a returning quarterback than the folks at UW-River Falls. Kaleb Blaha was hurt in the first game of the season last year for the Falcons and never returned to form, taking the “med red” of a medical hardship season or a medical redshirt. We talk with Kaleb, plus head coach Matt Walker, plus offensive coordinator Joe Matheson, about the expectations at River Falls this season, how fast and how hard they like to push their offense, and more.

We also hear from a Division III football head coach on the topics of whether student-athletes come into camp in better shape than they used to, and we talk to a coach whose program is using technology to try to keep student-athletes from getting hurt in camp.

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.

Plus, if you’re new to Division III football, we’ll start off this podcast with a little primer about how things work and what to expect come playoff time. And we also talk about how crazy it was to try to select a preseason All-America team this year with all the turnover from having two senior classes and a lot of upward movement through the transfer portal.

Mailbag topics include: Can Johns Hopkins finish 3-0 in their crazy opening stretch of the season? And if you had to name a rock song to define the 2025 Division III football season, what would it be? Hint: One of the answers is related to what the thumbnail image for this episode looks like!

Plus, you’ll need to stay to the bitter end to find out what someone thinks the next hot tailgate item will be for this fall. You won’t want to miss it.

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; Cortland athletics; Alma athletics

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ATN Podcast 374: Two teams, one ring

We’re down to the best two teams in Division III football, both of whom are playing their best games at the right time. Mount Union is certainly firing on all cylinders now on offense after some struggles during the regular season, and you’d be hard-pressed to find more than one thing that went wrong for North Central as they absolutely demolished Susquehanna.

How did they get here? What do we do with the two weeks off? Who benefits more from that extra nine days? Soccer stadium for the Stagg Bowl — is that really OK? We talk about all the key moments of the semifinals, plus take your questions in this edition of the podcast. We talk about the depth of the North Central running backs. We discuss the two-quarterback system for Mount Union and how it worked in key spots. And more.

Plus, we can’t forget that Cortland coach Curt Fitzpatrick is leaving D-III, and we talk about that move plus another, possibly bigger move, with one of the top defensive players in Division III this season going into the portal and coming out as a scholarship player with the University of Wisconsin. You know, UW-Madison. The one in the Big 10. And what has been our favorite semifinal games to cover/attend/watch?

The D3football.com podcast is a weekly in-season podcast by Patrick Coleman and Greg Thomas, which 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.
Photos by Matt Durisko/Magnolia Media PA for D3sports.com; Doug Sasse, d3photography.com