Tag Archives: Union

Passing of a fan site

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Longtime Mount Union fan and radio play-by-play man Ric Brienza recently announced he would no longer continue to publish his Mount Union football fan site, Mtunionfootball.com.

This was how he put it in a post on our message board.

Over ten years ago I put the www.MtUnionFootball.com website online. It was born from my passion and love for Mount Union football. At the time there was a strong need for more information online about the past, present and future of the most successful college football program of our time.

Since that day my love for the Purple Raiders has grown ten-fold. But the need for this site has not been as great over the years due to the increased availability of information from the college based website at the University of Mount Union.

With the introduction of the new Mount Union athletic website on August 1st, and after much thinking and soul searching on my part, I have come to the decision that the time has come to end my site’s run.

Simply put, I have felt over the past couple of years that I have not added anything “new” for Raider fans, but rather, have just duplicated what was already out there. This is never more true than today.

So its with a bit of sadness, but great pride, that there will be no more updates on my website. Thanks for the great times and all the great comments along the way!

I will continue to be a part of Mount Union football as the radio voice of the Raiders and my love for the Purple & White will never die.

I hope you can understand my decision. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for all the support. The best thing I have gained from all this is all the great friendships I’ve developed. Thank you all!

Ric’s site was basically the godfather of all football fan sites, and even before the days when blogging software made it easy to put a site on the web, team sites started popping up. Once upon a time, there were fan sites for Union and Wittenberg, while the Bridgewater fan site is still on the Net, even though founder Matt Barnhart had to leave the site when he took a job with the University of Virginia football staff.

Other sites still exist, including sites devoted to two of the Purple Raiders’ main national rivals at various points in the past decade: Rowanfootball.com and Warhawkfootball.com. Rowan’s site is run by fan Tom Wilson, with varying amounts of resistance and little help from the university, while UW-Whitewater’s site is run by Tom Pattison, who does radio for the Warhawks and basically runs his site as an extension of the football office. Pattison recognized Brienza, saying, “Your ‘unofficial’ Mount Union Website was the inspiration for me and former Warhawk head coach Bob Berezowitz to develop Warhawkfootball.com back in 2003 (following UWW’s nonconference games with then-MUC in 2002 and 2003).”

“Websites like Ric’s filled a void,” Wilson noted. “His work encouraged me to start rowanfootball.com. Economies of scale, advancing technology, and out-of-the box software has leveled the playing field for Division III sports program websites. They have caught up for most part to their Division I counterparts. I thank Ric for his contribution to Division III football.”

“I congratulate Ric on his decade-long run at mtunionfootball.com,” said Barnhart. “His Purple Raider fan website was the example of what all other Division III fan sites were trying to build to, including my former site, bridgewaterfootball.com. I also applaud Ric for being able to walk away from something he loves so much. I made the same decision in 2008, and it was one of the toughest decisions I have ever had to make. My wife jokingly called bridgewaterfootball.com ‘the other woman’ in my life.

“I think I speak for most Division III fan site publishers when I say we do what we do because we simply love Division III football and what it stands for, and take pride in covering the sport for our particular schools.”

More recently, fan sites for Linfield and St. John’s have grown up, with Linfield’s Catdomealumni.com, run by Ryan Carlson, more of a one-man shop with a heavy focus on video. Johnniefootball.com has a wide variety of contributors, almost all of whom are identified solely by their posting handle from our message board, D3boards.com.

“Really, that site was the inspiration for many of us that started fan sites for our respected teams,” Carlson posted recently. “Ric’s site was true class and the DIII community is a little worse off for the site going dark.”

Agreed. While Ric remains a Mount Union fan and his voice will still be heard on the air, his site will be missed.

ATN Podcast: Shaking it up

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One of the things for us about traveling a long distance for a game is that it’s like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates. We get on an airplane for a highly touted matchup and sometimes it becomes a rout pretty early on.

And that’s not just in Alliance, Ohio.

But Keith McMillan’s trip to Boston got him a thriller, and a chance to see the NEFC in action for the first time, as Widener traveled to Curry. The game came down to the final play, and you can hear more about it, plus hear from the winning coach in this week’s podcast.

Pat Coleman’s much shorter trip resulted in a thrilling finish as well, as UW-Eau Claire gave up an intentional touchdown to get the ball back and nearly made St. John’s pay for it before falling 35-27. Hear St. John’s quarterback Joe Boyle’s reaction as he realized the Blugolds were letting his teammate head into the end zone without opposition.

Of course, those weren’t the only games which happened this weekend. Keith and Pat talk about scheduling with some chutzpah, a sleeper team that’s getting its offense together and how all the upsets this week affect Top 25 considerations and beyond.

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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Where we’ve been, who we’ve seen

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Keith McMillan talks at length about some of the trips he has taken since starting the Around the Nation column back in 2001. Some of those trips he and I have taken together, sometimes he’s been on his own, but the goal, at least unofficially, is to see every Division III team play someday, and see a game in every home stadium.

Now, to be honest, that isn’t very realistic. The fact remains that it’s very difficult to see more than one game in a weekend, which limits the number of teams either of us can see in a season. And I recently moved away from the east coast, where I had a much better chance of knocking teams off the list. But I’ll continue to give it a try.

I’m only counting the teams I’ve seen play (must have seen at least half of a game to qualify) and stadiums I’ve been in for a D-III game. I’ve also visited a bunch of campuses and walked through, or around a bunch of stadiums: Aurora, Beloit, Concordia (Ill.), Delaware Valley, Hamline, Huntingdon, Illinois Wesleyan, LaGrange, Lake Forest, Lebanon Valley, Lewis and Clark, Millsaps, Mississippi College, North Park, Northwestern, Oberlin, St. Thomas, Susquehanna, Trinity (Conn.), Wittenberg, Wooster, WPI. But I’ve seen 108 teams play, by my count, and seen games in 61 stadiums.

This doesn’t count Swarthmore, which I saw play back in the ’90s. Unfortunately, it seems that was a one-time occurrence.

Some of the places I’ve seen games have changed quite a bit. I mean, I was at St. John Fisher in 1994 but I know the stadium isn’t a bit like that was. I saw FDU-Madis… excuse me, FDU-Florham in a different era. Soon my view on RPI will be outdated. But they all count. And maybe I’ll get back there again.

Here’s who I’ve seen play, starting in 1991: Albright, Alfred, Augsburg, Augustana, Aurora, Benedictine, Bethel, Blackburn, Bridgewater (Va.), Brockport State, Cal Lutheran, Capital, Carleton, Carnegie Mellon, Catholic, Central, Chicago, Christopher Newport, Coast Guard, Coe, Cortland State, Crown, Curry, Delaware Valley, Dickinson, East Texas Baptist, Elmhurst, Emory & Henry, FDU-Florham, Franklin & Marshall, Frostburg State, Gallaudet, Gettysburg, Greensboro, Grove City, Guilford, Gustavus Adolphus, Hampden-Sydney, Hanover, Hardin-Simmons, Hobart, Howard Payne, Huntingdon, Ithaca, John Carroll, Johns Hopkins, Kean, King’s, Linfield, Louisiana College, Lycoming, Macalester, Maranatha Baptist, Mary Hardin-Baylor, McDaniel, McMurry, Merchant Marine, Methodist, Millsaps, Mississippi College, Minnesota-Morris, Montclair State, Mount Union, Muhlenberg, North Carolina Wesleyan, New Jersey, Newport News, Nichols, North Central, Northwestern (Minn.), Pacific Lutheran, Principia, Randolph-Macon, Rockford, Rowan, RPI, Salisbury, Shenandoah, Springfield, St. John Fisher, St. Olaf, St. John’s, St. Scholastica, St. Thomas, Susquehanna, Thiel, Thomas More, Trinity (Conn.), Trinity (Texas), Union, Ursinus, UW-Eau Claire, UW-La Crosse, UW-Stout, UW-Whitewater, Washington and Jefferson, Washington and Lee, Washington U., Waynesburg, Wesley, Western Connecticut, Wheaton, Widener, Wilkes, William Paterson, Williams, Wittenberg, Worcester State.

Key gets: I went out of my way to see Cal Lutheran when they came to Muhlenberg in 2002. Saw a bunch of teams last year at the UMAC’s Dome Day. Picked off both Macalester and St. Scholastica just this past weekend. Saw both Susquehanna and Grove City play at Dickinson, in 1999 and 2000, and never since. Traveled with Catholic when I was a student to a game at the University of Chicago.

And the schools at which I’ve seen games: Albright, Augsburg, Benedictine, Bridgewater (Va.), Capital, Carnegie Mellon, Catholic, Central, Chicago, Coast Guard, Cortland State, Dickinson, Elmhurst, FDU-Florham, Franklin & Marshall, Frostburg State, Gallaudet, Gettysburg, Hampden-Sydney, Hardin-Simmons, Johns Hopkins, Kean, King’s, Linfield, Lycoming, Macalester, Mary Hardin-Baylor, McDaniel, McMurry, Merchant Marine, Montclair State, Mount Union, Muhlenberg, New Jersey, North Central, Randolph-Macon, Rowan, RPI, Salisbury, Shenandoah, Springfield, St. John Fisher, St. Olaf, St. John’s, Thiel, Trinity (Texas), Union, Ursinus, UW-Eau Claire, UW-Stout, UW-Whitewater, Washington and Jefferson, Washington U., Wesley, Western Connecticut, Wheaton, Widener, Wilkes, William Paterson, Williams, Worcester State.

New this year: East Texas Baptist, Macalester, St. Scholastica, Wartburg,

There are certainly some holes in this list. Never seen Wabash (or DePauw, take it easy, people!). I’ve never been to a SCIAC school or seen anyone from the Midwest Conference. Didn’t take nearly enough advantage of my year in Connecticut. But I’ll get the list down, slowly but surely.

Not sure if Keith will chime in with his list, but anyone else is welcome, of course.