D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast

Most years it seems as though our first couple of weeks of the season are filled with top teams pasting teams that are clearly overmatched. And while we’ve still had some of that in 2022, this alternate reality/Bizarro world of D-III has been pretty fun. Both UW-Whitewater/Mary Hardin-Baylor and Trinity (Texas)/Wheaton (Ill.) lived up to their billing, and made for a great fan experience. No...

Yeah, this was a fun first week of the Division III football season, as we were treated to a Top Five showdown right out of the gate, another matchup of national semifinal teams and much more. We suppose it may not be so fun to be a UW-Whitewater fan or a Muhlenberg fan this week, but we’ll hear from Warhawks coach Kevin Bullis about the team’s commitment to tough scheduling, the mista...

We’re getting ready to kick it all off with the first week of Division III football games for 2022 this weekend, and this week’s podcast takes you around to the big stories and big things we’re watching across Division III this season. We take it on, region by region. What’s fun in the 1? What’s new in the 2? What do we see in the 3? What’s in store in the 4? Wh...

Teams are in camp, with the first games coming in just 10 days, on Sept. 1! And while it is definitely too early to talk about this year’s playoff bubble, we decided to visit with two of last year’s bubble teams. For Hardin-Simmons and coach  Jesse Burleson , last year’s Selection Sunday brought disappointment, as the Cowboys were left out of the playoffs. There’s no doubt...

This month’s podcast finishes our offseason series of conversations with new coaches at Division III playoff contenders, and we get to Podcast 306, where we talk to Carnegie Mellon head coach Ryan Larsen . Larsen is just 35 years old, and he replaced Rich Lackner, who had been head coach at CMU since literally before Larsen was born. Larsen came from Columbia to take this job in Division III...

Wittenberg played in the Stagg Bowl four times in the 1970s, winning two of them. One of those wins was against Ithaca, which played in four of the first eight Stagg Bowls and has played in seven overall, winning three of them. The teams even met in Stagg Bowl IV. While this is not your father’s Wittenberg or Ithaca, these programs haven’t exactly gone away, either, and are still relev...

We are under 100 days until the kickoff of the 2022 season and as the offseason continues, so does our series of conversations with new Division III coaches at nationally prominent schools. This month, we chat with Peter Jennings, who moved this spring from UW-Whitewater, where he was offensive coordinator, to become head coach at UW-Oshkosh. He talks about competing in the toughest league in Divi...

We’re continuing our offseason series diving into interviews with new coaches at Division III football powers, as we check in with Larry Harmon, the new head coach of the defending national champion, Mary Hardin-Baylor. Much like last month’s guest, new North Central coach Brad Spencer, Harmon had been an assistant coach at his school for years, including defensive coordinator for the...

The podcast is back, as we start our 16th season here at the D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast, and we’re doing it this time around by going a little more in-depth and doing a deeper dive with one coach, in one conversation. With that in mind, Pat Coleman stopped by in Naperville, Illinois, on a recent Division III basketball road trip and checked in on new North Central coach Brad Sp...

If it seems like there is always something important about Division III football being voted on at the NCAA convention, well, we think you’re probably correct. This year, there is a significant proposal that could limit using pads in practice during the fall, but add time with pads and helmets in the spring. This proposal is long and convoluted. Should it be broken up into smaller pieces and...

It was great to have a 2021 Division III football season to have a podcast about, and since the 300th podcast fell right at the end of the season, we celebrate by bringing back an old favorite — longtime co-host Keith McMillan. Keith joins Pat Coleman and Greg Thomas, along with Frank Rossi to break down the end of the season and Stagg Bowl. Our final podcast of the season is always the time...

Oh, heck yeah — we have one of those nice new Stagg Bowl venues with a nice new stadium smell. And no, we were never going to get 23,000 people to attend this game, but having it played in a big, professional stadium, next to the Pro Football Hall of Fame … that’s pretty special. The teams, North Central and Mary Hardin-Baylor, are veterans of the Stagg Bowl and are loose and rea...

We get a new, never-before-seen matchup in the Stagg Bowl, and that’s something to be excited about. In the latest edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast, Pat and Greg break down each of the semifinals, and North Central coach Jeff Thorne and Mary Hardin-Baylor coach Pete Fredenburg join us to do the same. For North Central, the key performances came all over the field: from...

This is not perceived slight. This is actual, honest-to-goodness, true, verifiable slight. Near the beginning of our podcast season we had some audio Jeff Thorne said to his players on the field after his team handled Wheaton in the Little Brass Bell game in which he talked about the program not getting the respect it deserved as defending champion. Well, the Cardinals got it after that game from...

In 2019 the second round of the Division III playoffs featured a number of blowouts, and this year, yes, there were two big wins, perhaps not coincidentally by the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in our Top 25 poll, but a bunch of other games that were one-score or two-score games. That strikes us as being fairly unusual … and also awesome. Whether that holds up in the quarterfinals remains to be seen...

If the committee doesn’t do its due diligence to make sure it is giving the teams that have the best criteria home games in the playoffs, but the teams that benefited from this mistake ended up losing, does it make a sound? Sure, UW-La Crosse should not have had to travel to Albion. We knew it. We said it out loud on the last podcast and in the Around the Nation predictions column. But coach...

Now we know who is in and who is out, and unless you are a Hardin-Simmons fan, there might not be a lot to complain about with this bracket. Yes, we thought the Cowboys would be in, and surely many people in Texas did so as well, but as it turned out. But the Region 3 committee thought otherwise — enough so that they even put Randolph-Macon in front of Hardin-Simmons, so Hardin-Simmons never...

We handed out 15 more automatic bids on Saturday, for a total of 16, and there were a number of games with big results to keep an eye on. So we break it down for you, fellas — the big game in the WIAC, the one(s) in the Liberty League and the one in the American Southwest, even though it isn’t in the ASC proper. Our game balls go to Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Our off-the-beaten-path h...

Key games in the Centennial and Liberty League didn’t finalize those conference chases. But with 27 automatic bids to a field of 32 playoff teams, we have one team which has clinched so far. That’s Cortland, which defeated Alfred on Saturday to clinch the Empire 8. Cortland coach Curt Fitzpatrick joins us to talk about his team’s amazing defensive performances, plus trying not to...

We have no idea who the leader of the PAC is right now. None. If you have four leaders, you don’t have any — at least, that would be the coach speak version of the answer. We can’t fully clear up a four-way tie between Carnegie Mellon , Grove City , Washington and Jefferson and  Westminster (Pa.) , but we’ll make a start along that road. St. John’s received some bad n...

Regional rankings are coming soon! Usually this would be a great time of year, but this time around, it’s going to be more than a little confusing. These sorts of things are handled in the same manner across all Division III team sports, so in this bonus podcast, we are talking about the upcoming changes with Dave McHugh, the host of Hoopsville, which is the podcast for Division III basketba...

We got a little clarification in some conferences. We had celebrations of some big wins. And we got separation — or at least, some key players did. Week 6 of the 2021 Division III football season promised to be exciting, and frankly, it overdelivered. To the tune of Matt Clarke rolling up 318 receiving yards for William Paterson. Or already highly decorated return man A.J. Jackson returning...

Week 5 was witness to a number of key battles, both inside and outside of the Top 25, and if you’re living life in the fast lane, your hopes for making the postseason may be already gone in the long run. One of these nights, you think, someone is going to upset the team you are chasing in the standings, or in the Top 25, and then there’s going to be a heartache tonight. That did not ha...

There were a lot of eyes on the big game of Saturday night between Mary Hardin-Baylor and Hardin-Simmons, and we talk plenty about that game, its breakout star, the aftermath and the implications. But it wasn’t the only big comeback of Week 4. Witness Salve Regina, which rallied from even further back — 25 points — to defeat Rowan. We take you through that game too, with the help...

From bell reality to poll potential, there’s a lot to talk about in this week’s podcast. First off, you can hear exactly what North Central coach Jeff Thorne had to say about a lack of respect for his team immediately after Saturday’s Little Brass Bell game win against Wheaton, and how his team reacted. Andrew Kamienski will tell you what he was feeling when he took the trophy an...