Tag Archives: Monmouth

Game Day: Fall, for sure

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I mean, in your part of the country anyway, I’m sure it’s fall. But here in Minneapolis I woke up to snow on the ground. Not enough to last the day or affect any games around here, probably, but just a reminder that Oct. 10 is … yeah, way, way too early for snow.

I’ll be watching Concordia-Moorhead (Division III team No. 120 on my list of whom I’ve seen) at No. 15 St. Thomas, basically as prep for next week’s Game of the Week broadcast of the St. Thomas-St. John’s game. Ryan Tipps is at the Emory & Henry/Hampden-Sydney game, while Gordon Mann is at FDU-Florham at Delaware Valley. The short trip is my deal with the folks at home. New rule in the Coleman house: If I take a plane one weekend, I stay home or stay in the Twin Cities the next weekend. Keeps the peace.

I still have a few Minnesota schools I haven’t seen yet and will get to those eventually. Hamline will be the only MIAC team I haven’t seen, then throw in a bunch of stadiums I’ve never seen a game at: Hamline, Carleton, Concordia, Crown … pretty much you name it.

Looking at this week’s schedule on paper has me thinking not at all about last week, where there weren’t a lot of games where we could foresee upsets. We have two games between Top 25 teams (No. 1 Mount Union at No. 21 Capital, No. 22 Redlands at No. 24 Occidental), and then UW-Whitewater, Mary Hardin-Baylor, Wheaton, Linfield, Central, Case Western Reserve, Monmouth, Otterbein, St. Thomas, Cortland State and Ithaca are each playing teams where you could conceivably pick them to lose.

Stick around, watch, listen, follow live stats. The wireless connection at St. Thomas wasn’t great the last time I was there but we’ll see. I’ll be on Twitter at least from my phone, hopefully blogging.

ATN Podcast: The poll isn’t perfect

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Sure, the D3football.com Top 25 teams went 25-0 on Saturday. We’re happy about that, don’t get me wrong. But that doesn’t mean the Top 25 is perfect, or that the right 25 teams are ranked, at least not in my mind and Keith’s mind.

We’re five weeks into the 2009 season. But are some teams still getting votes from some voters based on what they did in 2008? In a sense, that’s unavoidable — I mean, we all put Mount Union and UW-Whitewater up high on our ballot because of what they did in 2008 … and 2007 … and 2006 … well, anyway, you get the idea.

See, that’s the paradox of voting in a Top 25 ranking. Some things make sense in some cases, but no single rule works for all teams and all comparisons.

So why is Willamette ranked ahead of Concordia-Moorhead despite the Week 1 loss? Or, more extreme, why is Ohio Northern behind North Central? Keith and I will try to make some sense of it all in this week’s Around the Nation Podcast.

Oh, plus, one of the two podcasters changed his No. 1 vote this week. Who and why? You’ll have to listen.

Click the play button below to listen.

You can load the podcast page in iTunes or can also get this and any of our future Around the Nation podcasts automatically by subscribing to this RSS feed: http://www.d3football.com/dailydose/?feed=podcast

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ATN Podcast: High fives, sevens

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So our predictions weren’t great this week. But picking five road teams to win in the second round of the playoffs was more than a lot of people could have pictured. Two seventh seeds advancing? Well, we did nail that one, at least.

Keith McMillan did the home game this past week, so he watched and listened to pretty much everything, while Pat Coleman took the trip west to Willamette. And the red-eye home. Still catching up on sleep.

But while that happens, you can get their take on a great weekend of Division III playoff football.

You can load the podcast page in iTunes or can also get this and any of our future Around the Nation podcasts automatically by subscribing to this RSS feed: http://www.d3football.com/dailydose/?feed=podcast

Or you can click the play button below to listen.

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