D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast

February is 10 percent shorter than most months, so we’re getting this month’s podcast just under the wire. So while it’s a short month, we still have a full-sized podcast. We’re joined this month by new Aurora coach Don Beebe, whom you might better know as a former NFL player, one who played in six Super Bowls and provided a quite memorable highlight in one of them. He tal...

We’re all still generally in the aftermath of the 2018 Division III football season, and we talk with three people who are in that realm as well. Our offseason podcasts typically include three long-form interviews, and we start with Greg Chimera, the interim head coach at Johns Hopkins. He played and coached for Jim Margraff, who died unexpectedly earlier in January at the age of 59, and he...

The 44th D3football.com Around the Nation podcast of the calendar year is the one in which we get to talk about Stagg Bowl XLVI, the 24-16 win by Mary Hardin-Baylor, and discuss the postseason awards. In this pod we discuss, debate, and then announce the D3football.com Offensive Player of the Year, the D3football.com Defensive Player of the Year and the D3football.com Coach of the Year. It’s...

The crew is all in place for the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl, and Pat Coleman and Keith McMillan are joined by Frank Rossi and Greg Thomas. (Adam Turer was in a big old jet airliner.) We’ll get you up to date on the latest going on with each team: Who’s healthy? Who’s out? What will they do to replace them? Plus, we’ll tell you why  neither team  has been able to practice in thi...

Same faces in a new place, as Mount Union and Mary Hardin-Baylor will head down to Shenandoah, Texas, this week. Keith was in Alliance and Pat was in Belton to cover the semifinals and give their take on their game, plus everything surrounding the two semifinal games. Plus, we brought in a guest to help us talk more X’s and O’s and break down each side of the ball for Mount Union and M...

Staggered starts! One game at noon, the other at 3:30! Replay! Video review! That’s what the semifinals are all about. In both of them, we have teams which have met before. In the case of Mary Hardin-Baylor and UW-Whitewater, they’ve met five times, with the Warhawks winning them all, dadgummit! Keith’s keys to the game, Pat’s picks to click, and someone from Mount Union wh...

Whether pounding the rock, running a non-Wildcat, throwing deep down the field or just being what we thought you were, there’s a storyline for each game on Saturday. Jackson Erdmann finishes the game with a separated shoulder and Mary Hardin-Baylor finishes with a pair of interceptions and a three-point win. And, as T.J. Josey says, it’s a game the Cru sorely needed. UW-Whitewater&#821...

We’ve got one national semifi… no, sorry, four national quarterfinals, and we think three of them are shaping up to be pretty good, as RPI can certainly hold its own against Johns Hopkins, UW-Whitewater and Bethel should be a clash of similar teams and UMHB and St. John’s will give each other what should be the best test either of them has faced this year. Of the eight head coach...

Well, how about that, with RPI getting a big upset win, and Johns Hopkins getting a large win to send Frostburg to Division II on, and St. Norbert giving a valiant effort and Mount Union looking all Machine-like? No, we know — many of you are not happy with the unbalanced way the bracket was laid out, and some of you are talking about reseeding the bracket. There are definitely positives and...

Sixteen teams play eight games over a course of four hours on Saturday, in the second round of the NCAA Division III playoffs. And we should be in line for some great games, now that we’ve gotten through the first round. Exactly how good? Pat ranked all eight games from worst to best, with one particular matchup getting particularly high marks. In addition, we talked with Rod Sandberg, coach...

Keith McMillan pleaded for a first round of the playoffs that didn’t stink. And he got it, if nothing else, because his alma mater, Randolph-Macon, upset John Carroll. Now, your mileage may have varied. With a margin of victory of nearly 34 points on average, these were not great games. With a near quadruple monkey stomp and several other games that looked like the usual top seed vs. No. 8 s...

If the second round of the playoffs is your big turkey dinner with all the trimmings and every side you could want, then the first round is like that tray of vegetables and dip that you end up nibbling on while you wait. You can smell that turkey, the stuffings, the greens, the bread, but you have to wait. We all have to wait. And now, not only do we have to wait, but we’re hungry. Pat Colem...

That line up top is what the national committee chair told us when talking about new restrictions on travel for the NCAA playoffs, as the NCAA clawed back one of the first-round flights the committee had previously been given to play with. What else did Jim Catanzaro say? We asked about seeding Mount Union and John Carroll to meet up in the quarterfinals, about whether St. John’s deserved a...

Often this time of year we do a projected Division III NCAA Tournament field, but this year we’re so busy making podcasts that we didn’t do one. Instead, Pat and Keith are doing both at the same time: talking through the process of selecting at-large teams right on this podcast. This is a projected playoff field if the season ended today. All six teams that we got to choose can affect...

The number of teams in the tournament now is up to 13 teams which have clinched automatic bid to the 2018 Division III playoffs. But even though some parts of the Division III playoff picture got clearer, others got cloudier — and that’s even assuming you could see the picture on Saturday. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say some of us were shut out of some of the big games. We went...

This is where we get to crunch time. We could hand out as many as 15 of the 23 remaining automatic bids to the NCAA Division III playoffs on Saturday, and so you can follow along, we go through each of the remaining conferences, rather exhaustively, to tell you who can clinch on Saturday, what they need to do, and who might be waiting until Week 11. All 122 games on Saturday will take place in an...

The first set of regional rankings came out on Wednesday, and our team went through all four regions and looked to see what made sense and what was out of place. You see, the first regional rankings don’t take into account results against regionally ranked opponents, because that relies on a previous regional ranking and … there isn’t a previous ranking yet, just the current one....

Yep, three teams have clinched their automatic bids to the NCAA Division III football playoffs, with 23 more to go, plus five true at-large bids. And it’s those at-large bids which will receive a ton of attention … first off, because they’re the most difficult decisions the committee will make, and secondly, because those teams are going to be candidates to get a first-round home...

Our Friday podcast is our game day special, the one you listen to when you know to know everything about the upcoming week’s games. Pat and guest co-host Frank Rossi of In the Huddle go through a half-dozen big games, then a half-dozen one-liners, and Frank makes six picks at the end to see if he can take them to the house. Basically, this entire podcast consists of putting Frank on the spot...

Are you new to Division III football? Is your team in playoff contention for the first time in a while? Are you a coach of a team which hopes to be in the playoffs someday? Or do you feel like you’re an expert when it comes to the Division III football postseason? If you fit  any of these categories, this episode of the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast is a must-listen. That’s...

Well, there were some interesting losses and some unexpectedly narrow wins on Saturday. While that didn’t change the playoff picture as much as it changed the Top 25, there were still some key changes. There’s one team out there specifically that has to feel much better about its playoff chances after this week, and Pat and Keith talk about that and more in the latest D3football.com Ar...

Our Friday podcast is our game day special, the one you listen to when you know to know everything about the upcoming week’s games. Pat and Keith go through a half-dozen big games, then a half-dozen one-liners, and Keith makes six picks at the end to see if he can take them to the house.  But on one Division III football campus, there was a lot more going on this week than just preparing for...

Every Sunday night we take questions from listeners and followers on Twitter with the intent of answering the best one on the Monday podcast. When listeners turn around and give us 10 additional good questions, well, we need to do another entire podcast! Pat and Keith tackle the following: What’s the most interesting conference race? Does the CCIW race make the conference seem stronger or we...

The Johnnie-Tommie game definitely fits the bill of someone taking down the big dog, and so does WashU’s win vs. Wheaton. Both get a good amount of discussion, especially with the state of the CCIW standings and the D3football.com Top 25. Why isn’t WashU ranked? You’ll hear some of that in this podcast. Plus, a reader question prompts a discussion of what separates the power team...

This weekend’s key games include one game for first place, and a bunch of games that could help determine who remains in the playoff hunt. And now, heading into Week 7, there’s just enough reason to begin to really talk about the playoffs. If you’re new to playoff consideration, we’ll give you a quick rundown of how the NCAA calculates and tabulates strength of schedule and...