D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast

We got our first look at the defending national champions this past week, and against a ranked team as well. What do the Cardinals look like? Greg Thomas has his take, and it’s bad news for the rest of Division III football. Plus, we got to see UW-Whitewater against a Top 10 team, and that was super enlightening as well! Plus, Pat and Greg hand out their game balls, including one to a specia...

If you have gone 650-some days between games, you can be expected to be happy, and you can be excused for being a little bit emotional as well. And when that long break culminates in a big win, well, all bets are off. We talk to a couple of players who had big wins of varying varieties in Week 1, plus Pat and Greg give out game balls, find the off-the-beaten-path highlights and surprising stats fr...

First of all, it’s official: We’re back. And secondly, Pat and Greg have a confession to make, perhaps some news to break about who is the No. 1 team on their preseason ballots. Meanwhile, for many programs, including most of the top five teams in the poll, their next game will be the first in 600 to 700 days. That includes for Wheaton, which has had ‘new’ coach Jesse Scott...

At the time this episode was recorded, Wesley was scheduled to play one last time this upcoming weekend. It’s not exactly a fitting end for a proud Division III football program, but in this 2020-21 season, it’s the end we have. And even then, that game against a junior college was also scrapped. The Wolverines were not always a Top 10 program. When Wesley joined the Division III ranks...

There is so much here to talk about as we are midway through March in Division III football, and one of the things that Division III football coaches are pointing to right now is how all of the old excuses given for why D-III can’t have pads in practice in the spring are being proven wrong. They said it would be impossible to find field time, that athletic training staffs would be stretched...

The first-ever February football in Division III is in the books, and Pat and Keith are here to hand out game balls and talk about the goings-on. Coaches were getting a bit of a breather in the fall, but those whose teams are playing now are making up for it. That’s what we heard from our guest, Randolph-Macon coach Pedro Arruza. It’s a great conversation about a program setting expect...

We are mere weeks away from getting games in this Division III football spring season, with nine games slated to go on Feb. 6. And one Division III prospect is getting his crack at the NFL this month as well. UW-Whitewater guard Quinn Meinerz, a D3football.com All-America pick in 2019, just found out he was getting an invite to the Senior Bowl, the same place that St. John’s guard Ben Bartch...

Four teams are playing games in October and all four were supposed to be playing within a few miles of each other last Saturday, Of course, Because Of The Pandemic, that didn’t exactly happen. Bluffton is still planning to take the field this weekend for the first time, Trine finishes the fall at 2-0, Manchester got to open its new stadium and Adrian has a chance to finish 2-1. Each of those...

This eternal offseason is destined to continue, but even into mid-August, things move so quickly that conferences, and individual schools which had been sure they were going to play football games this fall, have turned out to be headed back to the sidelines. That leaves very few teams still in a position to play ball this fall, but we’ll talk to two schools who just had their season dashed...

With the fall championship all but called off , schools that haven’t called off their fall sports already will probably be doing so soon, and those who are looking to potentially play football in the spring may be starting to make plans. We talked to all three of our interview subjects on the day that the Division III Management Council said it was recommending the 2020 fall championships in...

In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, we held off on our May podcast episode. Whatever we had planned would not stand up to what the country was going through, and as many podcasts and content creators turned to amplify Black voices, we knew we needed to do the same. This upcoming season, if there is one, 17 Black men will be head coaches of Division III football programs. One of them, C...

One school has announced already this spring that it is closing, and who knows whether there will be more? How many Division III student-athletes missed out on their NFL opportunity because of the shutdown of pro days and in-person scouting? What kind of Division III football season will we see this fall? Will we see it in the spring instead? In this edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation...

The fields will stand empty this spring, as college campuses across the country are devoid of student and athlete alike. The Division III football spring practice will be even more non-existent than usual. Dozens of new coaches won’t get to see their teams in action, even if that action had been without helmets and pads. Hundreds of quarterback hopefuls won’t get to show off their skil...

Keith starts off this podcast by saying, “ I think we are sitting on the best offseason podcast in Around the Nation history.” And if you care about Division III players in the NFL, or headed to the NFL, or Division III teams playing in NFL stadiums, you are in the right place. We are all about the road to the NFL in this podcast. We start with an enlightening interview with Tampa Bay...

The announcements of the departure of Vince Kehres and Larry Kehres from the Mount Union football program and athletic department are easily the most impactful news stories of the young 2020 season. And depending on how the season ends, those twin departures may well be the most impactful news story of the entire year. Who might replace Vince Kehres as head coach? Pat and Keith are joined by Adam...

In other Division III sports, we often get to see schools experience the national championship event for the first time, and often get to see them come away a winner. In football, however, we haven’t had too much of that. Mount Union, UW-Whitewater and Mary Hardin-Baylor have combined to win the previous 14 Stagg Bowls. But on Friday night in Shenandoah, Texas, we got something new, somethin...

This was the scene on Thursday afternoon as they were still painting the end zones in advance of Friday night’s Stagg Bowl. Pat and Keith are here to get you ready for the game as well, and they’re joined by Frank Rossi and Greg Thomas to get you an around-the-horn style view of what to expect from North Central and UW-Whitewater. Plus, we’ll hear from Whitewater guard Quinn Mein...

There were picks early in the game in Allentown, and late in the game in Whitewater, as North Central and UW-Whitewater booked their tickets to Shenandoah by winning their national semifinals and advancing to Stagg Bowl XLVII. We’ll still have purple in the Stagg Bowl. And no, we won’t get the shootout-style matchup of the two top quarterbacks in Division III, but we got to see Max Mey...

We have two great games to be played on Saturday, with four teams who have never been to Shenandoah, with no players who have ever played in the Stagg Bowl, and with one program guaranteed to play for the Division III football title for the first time. And that fresh new Stagg Bowl feeling is still out there. On this edition of the podcast, we hear from players for all four teams: UW-Whitewater qu...

Muhlenberg shuts down Salisbury, UW-Whitewater runs past Mary Hardin-Baylor, North Central avoids a letdown against Delaware Valley and St. John’s survives a crazy ending at Wheaton. That’s the one-sentence version, but Keith saw the Muhlenberg defense up close, and spoilers, he thinks they are the most balanced team remaining in this playoff. Does Pat agree? Whitewater controlled the...

We’re on to the third round of the playoffs, and it’s a round that looks a little less purple, a little more wide-open, and has a lot less for people to complain about. Will any of the games be close? Can’t say we know that for sure, but one thing we do know is that we have No. 2 through No. 9 in our Top 25 still playing, and that makes things fun. On this edition of the podcast,...

Highlights, reaction and analysis from across all parts of the bracket are what you find in this edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast. That includes North Central coach Jeff Thorne’s reaction to the Cardinals’ epic win at Mount Union, and it also includes Jeff’s father, John Thorne, who retired from the position after the 2014 season, with his postgame reaction...

The first round of games was much more than just a preliminary, more than the appetizer to the meat and potatoes we get in round two. But that next round in our five-course meal is the second round of the NCAA playoffs, from Maryland’s Eastern Shore to Orange County, California and six other spots in between. This is the week where coaches have had to find a way to squeeze in practice, find...

That was a pretty great first round, not gonna lie. A Top 10 team nearly went down in the first round, one team came back from 18 down and another from 24, plus two games went to overtime — one of which went to three overtimes. Chapman and Linfield made the last game of the day a great capper to a thrilling day. Pat and Keith run down all 16 of the first-round games, rank the second round ga...

The games are here! We’ve got 16 games on Saturday that will get us started on the road to Shenandoah, Texas, where the Stagg Bowl will be held one more time this year before it moves to Canton, Ohio. Our crew will break down each of the four brackets in terms of first-round games, and there is plenty more preview coverage on D3football.com. We also talk with Hope coach Peter Stuursma. He wa...