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ATN Podcast 411: New-look SCAC, longtime Lion, brand-new Prairie Wolf

The Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference has made a lot of waves since last we talked, what with Millsaps and then Southwestern electing to rejoin the SCAC starting in 2027. So, at the risk of there perhaps being a third member of the Southern Athletic Association returning to the SCAC before we could get the podcast out, we sat down with Dwayne Hanberry, commissioner of the SCAC, to discuss the changes, the status of Gallaudet in the conference, and more.

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.

In addition to that breaking news, we also discuss the recent announcement that the Monon Bell game will be played at Ball State University, in Muncie, Indiana, at a price of $50 a ticket plus Ticketmaster fees. There will be words, for sure. We also talk too early about the preseason Top 25 poll, which should come out within the next week.

Our coach interviews in this edition of the podcast each represent opposite ends of the experience spectrum. That includes Tyler Hopperton, who has been the head coach at Mount St. Joseph going on a decade and has been at MSJ as either a coach or player for half the lifetime of the program. Hopperton talks about his team going to a bowl game last year after a string of three consecutive NCAA playoff trips, the high points in Cincinnati’s Division III program and the benefits of Skyline Chili.

We also have Jacob Donohoe, the new head coach at Nebraska Wesleyan, coming over after spending time as an offensive coordinator at Coe. He takes over a program which was coached by Brian Keller for the past 30 years, was a longtime member of the NAIA and in a whole different conference.  Donohoe talks about reconnecting with alumni, changing the terminology within the program, what he learned at Coe and more, including the famous Runza sandwich.

Plus we answer mailbag questions about the future of Trinity (Texas), and about the best quarterback performances we’ve seen in covering Division III.

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 during the season, twice monthly in the offseason, 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

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Photos: Nebraska Wesleyan athletics; Eduardo Moll, Southwestern Athletics; Millsaps athletics; Mount St. Joseph 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

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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