It’s not often that we’ve had to call a coach back the next day and ask follow-up questions, but when news broke less than 24 hours after we talked with Berry coach Tony Kunczewski, we knew we had to get his take on his team getting Randolph-Macon added to its schedule. For Berry, it’s one season after a 9-1 season with a low strength of schedule e…

When Crawfordsville and Greencastle, Indiana, found themselves beneath a total eclipse last week, it turned out to be a great time to combine a rare celestial event with a chance to talk with the coaches in one of Division III football’s top rivalries. In the case of DePauw, that’s Brett Dietz, whose team has won the Monon Bell two years in a row a…

What’s next? That’s a great question this time of year, and we tackle that big question in a few ways in our January podcast, the first one of 2024. Cortland, now the reigning and defending national champs, says what’s next is turning the page, but before they do, we sit down with Red Dragons head coach Curt Fitzpatrick to reflect on a great (the g…

We wrap up another season, here on the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast. Perhaps not as well as the Cortland defense wrapped up Luke Lehnen on the two-point conversion attempt pictured here on the page, but we try. Was this the best Stagg Bowl ever? We’ve only seen about half of them in person, but our crew does its best to answer that ques…

It’s great to be back in Salem covering a Stagg Bowl, and Patrick and Greg and Frank Rossi are here to preview Stagg Bowl with North Central and Cortland. For North Central, it’s the fourth time in a row they’ve been to a Stagg Bowl, and in four different places, so how does their experience stack up? For Cortland, it’s the first Stagg Bowl, but do…

Just as we expected — one amazing national semifinal and one blowout. Never mind that people generally thought it would be the other way around — not our predictions, by the way, which did not have North Central winning in a blowout. We talk through the Cortland win against Randolph-Macon, hear the reactions of players Cole Burgess and Jack Winey a…

Yep, that’s correct. You see the colors above, and nary a Purple Power to be found. No more UW-Whitewater, no Mount Union, and of course, none of those other prominent purple powerhouses that failed to make the field. Instead, you’ve got the familiar red of North Central, plus Cortland as actual Red Dragons, along with the Yellow Jackets of Randolp…

In our first week of playoffs, the teams that should have been hosting went and won on the road anyway, and while we only had a couple of games go down to the final possession, those were certainly thrilling, memorable games. Endicott gets so close to winning a playoff game once again. Susquehanna almost avoided getting upset at home for a second y…

Oh man. Back in 2011, Patrick wrote a piece on Selection Sunday morning with the headline “Two-loss teams need not apply,” essentially calling out the NCAA football committee for not even considering two-loss teams in previous years and wondering if that would change. It did change. It changed that season and in multiple seasons which followed. As …

If you were are hoping your team can get some help in getting into the NCAA playoffs as an at-large team, we got so close to being able to give you what you wanted on Saturday. But in the end, a few places where teams were on the ropes turned out to be all about chalk and we’ll all be holding our collective breath for another week of what should be…

The game between Johns Hopkins and Muhlenberg ended in a pretty epic way on Saturday. So did Belhaven’s unbeaten streak this season, at the hands of Maryville. And a 20-year long streak went by the wayside this weekend as well. Matt Mitchell talks about getting back onto the field at exactly the right time for Hardin-Simmons in this edition of the …

The season of regional rankings, mock brackets and things such as Pool C teams is upon us, and how better to get things started than by having a conversation with the chair of the Division III football championship committee? We start every year with burning questions, and Northwestern (Minn.) head coach Matt Moore was kind enough to sit down and c…

Greg Thomas starts off this podcast by quoting one of the famous philosophers of our time, and it is true about what point in the season we have reached. If you intend to play in the Stagg Bowl, just know that Week 8 is only the halfway point. In a week where our panel finally grew weary of picking upsets that never came to fruition, Gustavus Adolp…

The crowd had something to get excited about in Alliance. Photo by Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com Subscribe to the Around the Nation Podcast in iTunes. A Salem regular and a Salem newbie will meet Friday night for the 2012 Division III football national championship, as No. 1 Mount Union will face No. 4 St. Thomas in yet another matchup of purple …

Playoff spots will be going out left, right and center today, as we lock up a few more of the 23 automatic bids to the Division III football playoffs. Plenty of action going on, detailed on the front page. Our own Gordon Mann is calling the Delaware Valley-Albright game, and if I weren’t headed to St. Thomas-Bethel myself, that’s what I’d be listen…

With three stories in the local newspaper and two highlight/news packages from a local television station, the UW-Whitewater/UW-La Crosse game got the coverage a game between two top six teams would merit at any level. Joel Badzinski’s La Crosse Tribune game story described how the game went from La Crosse runaway, to nailbiter, to all Whitewater d…

Welcome to Week 11! Starting my day off by watching … yes, watching … the Curry/Coast Guard game on the Penn Atlantic video stream. Just saw Curry fake a punt and run for a first down, then bust open a long run which set up the game-tying touchdown. It’s 7-7 late in the first quarter. You need a strong Net connection to get this video. There’s audi…

NFL Films did a great piece on D3football.com All-America quarterback Zamir Amin back in 2001. It’s back on the NFL’s Web site. I didn’t even know this video clip existed until I saw it this afternoon. Amin was a two-time All-American at Menlo, born in Afghanistan but moved to the USA as a child. The piece focuses on him and Menlo in the wake of th…