D3football Daily Dose

Phew!

Keith McMillan alludes to this in his introduction to Kickoff 2008, but for those out here in the public areas of the site, more planning and preparation went into this edition of Kickoff than any of the previous three, and we think it shows.

For those not aware, in the past we’ve done two or three feature stories, four player profiles and then the meat of Kickoff, the 239 team capsules, rankings, etc. This year we added quite a bit of content to that. Here’s our list of feature stories:

For the love, not records: Nate Kmic and Josh Vogelbach are within sight of the D-III all-time rushing and passing marks
Bethel joins the big leagues: The Royals are no longer solely a one-and-done playoff team. What’s next?
River Falls still running from its past: Record passing numbers didn’t bring the Falcons a better win total
At Averett, nowhere to go but back up: Cougars went from 7-3 to 0-10 and try to bounce back
A decade of pitch and catch: One quarterback/receiver combo has been at it a lot longer than most
Bottomed-out Cowboys plan to restore defense: Hardin-Simmons defense let it down last year, down to last in D-III. But there’s a plan
New coach’s story starts with Capital D: The Crusaders’ new coach has defense in mind
Presidents elect to bury the past: Last year’s season ended too soon for W&J, and they’re not looking back
Bluejays fly below radar on their own campus: With everything going on at Johns Hopkins, it’s hard to get people to focus on football
Change spreads to Augustana: The Wing-T powered Augustana to four consecutive national titles in the ’80s but now the Vikings are spreading it out
South Region rivals look to rise again: Wesley and Salisbury are not all that far apart, by any measurement
NJAC finding strength in numbers: As the conference gets larger, the talent level grows
For Wabash QB, a year makes all the difference: Matt Hudson was the third option a year ago; now he’s had a whole offseason as the No. 1
Whitworth’s Kemp destined to quarterback: Jack Kemp’s grandson and Jeff Kemp’s son seems like a natural at the position
In Iowa, floods fail to dampen spirits: The natural disasters over the summer struck campuses in different ways
Boltus still leads Hawks’ air show: Hartwick’s offense is still going strong

Plus, as always, we preview and rank all 239 teams, rank the conferences and predict the basic to the arcane for 2008.

Somehow this season we actually managed to get it done and get some real sleep the night before. Often I’ve pulled an all-nighter the night before it gets published, and we’re always tweaking content right up until it goes out the door. But Keith and I and our Hands Team (Ryan Tipps, Gordon Mann) spent a lot of time on it in recent days and we had great photo help from Josh Bowerman.

Use the comments function on Kickoff to discuss and banter at will — it’s new, based on readers recommendations and built by Ryan Coleman. He’s also an iPhone junkie, so you better be sure that Kickoff is iPhone-ready.

So enjoy.

Over the next week, thousands of Division III football players will be reporting for camp. There’s no one single reporting date for training camp in Division III football: it’s based on a formula that takes into account not only the date of the first game (Sept. 6, even for those who start on Thursday, Sept. 4) and the first day of classes.

So if your favorite team starts tomorrow and your opening week opponent starts two days later, you’re not supposed to have a leg up. Each school is supposed to have 21 practice opportunities, accounting for two-a-days when permitted before class starts.

As teams report, our reporters are doing their rounds of telephone calls to coaches in order to get the latest information for Kickoff. But I’m thinking about the freshmen coming into their first collegiate camp.

Certainly many of the hundreds of freshmen who will be putting on pads in the next week or so have some idea of what they are getting into, some knowledge that Division III football is like nothing they’ve ever experienced. Others may have been deluded into thinking that Division III is glorified intramurals, that it’s not serious football, that they can dominate just because they were good in high school.

News flash: Everyone here was good in high school. Pretty much everyone started (unless you were Terrelle Pryor’s backup), most were all-conference, many were all-city/region/district and some were all-state. And some have three years on you. So come in with high expectations, but stay grounded … or someone will ground you the moment you put on pads.

We don’t often get the freshman perspective, but there is an incoming player for Colorado College who is already blogging about “The D3 experience.” Recommend checking out Chris Jarmon’s blog to see what he has to say when he reports for camp on Friday.

Every year Princeton Review releases a set of rankings that colleges trumpet (“One of the Top Schools in the Country!”) or down play (“Rankings, schmankings”). Here is a quick look at which Division III schools cracked the lists related to sports. I wouldn’t take them too seriously after seeing who made the list of places where intercollegiate sports is supposedly unpopular. But they might help people pass the time through a slow offseason.

Students pack the stadiums

1. University of Florida
14. Wabash College

Best athletic facilities

1. University of Maryland
3. Wabash College
20. St. Lawrence University

Intercollegiate sports unpopular or nonexistent

1. Eugene Lang College (NY)
14. University of Chicago
15. NYU
16. SUNY-Purchase
17. Harvey Mudd College (part of Claremont-Mudd-Scripps athletics)
20. Emerson College

Note: Originally I had shown St. John’s (MN) on this list. The website now says St. John’s (NM). I’m not sure if I read it wrong or the site had the letters of the state transposed and fixed it. I’ll assume its the former and apologize for my mistake. I still question the credence of this list given the inclusion of NYU.

Jock Schools

1. Clemson University
3. Wabash College

Incidentally Wabash was also ranked #3 in best career/job placement services behind Northeastern (MA) and Claremont McKenna (CA). You can look at the all the rankings, including those not related to sports here.

I keep going back and forth as to whether I can manage it but I’m tempted to try this Week 1 tripleheader, taking advantage of my new Minneapolis home base.

Friday night, it would be NAIA quarterfinalist St. Xavier at defending Division III champion UW-Whitewater, a 7 p.m. CT start. Then Saturday morning (yes, morning), East Texas Baptist is at St. John’s, 11 a.m. CT kickoff and Saturday night, Hardin-Simmons vs. UW-La Crosse (at Winona State in Minnesota, shaving some travel time) at 7 p.m. CT.

Doable? Sure. Sane? Not without a second driver. So we’ll see.

Of course, with a lot of drive time (or money) you could make it a quadrupleheader and pick up Thursday night games between Springfield and Fitchburg State or Mass Maritime and SUNY-Maritime. East Coasters could take the former, add Nichols at Westfield State or Curry at Worcester State on Friday night, Rowan at Bridgewater State at noon on Saturday and one of a handful of games that night, say, WPI at Mass-Dartmouth and never leave the state of Massachusetts.

If I were still working at NBCSports.com and living in Connecticut, I guess that would be my itinerary.

We at D3football.com know we are not the only ones writing interesting stories about Division III football, and even if we had a full-time staff of writers we couldn’t corner the market on everything interesting.

I and Keith McMillan and Gordon Mann especially come across many stories we could never hope to write or do justice, since we all have “real” jobs and such. But we haven’t had an easy way to bring all of those stories to you. Aside from the occasional blog post about a story, which takes more time than we usually have to devote, most just get filed away in the cobwebs of our brains.

However, we’re about to change all that, thanks to a new Web site for journalists called Publish2. One of the features of the site is a tool I’m using to create a feed of stories that I’ve tagged as being of interest. You can always find it on the right-hand rail here in the Daily Dose, and we’ll work on getting it incorporated into our already cluttered front page as well.

The feed is labeled “What we’re reading” and contains stories we’ve tagged that are of interest to us, along with a quick summary of why they might be of interest to you. Currently that box contains stories about what a couple of prominent D-III players are doing after graduation, a feature on incoming College Football Hall of Famer Jim Ballard, a trend story and a player profile. You can see what else is in there beyond the five most recent by clicking on the link at the bottom of the box.

Enjoy!

In a decade at Baseball Weekly, I read a lot of stories, and two of the most touching were of how Torii Hunter and Latroy Hawkins each escaped their own home lives through pro baseball. Hunter, especially, had to deal with his own father’s legal issues, to the point of shunning him.

He’s not the only athlete with that kind of problem to deal with. For Dustin Johnson, playing indoor football half a country away keeps him away from a potential source of trouble: his father, who was “shot in the stomach in a drug deal gone bad,” he said.

More on Johnson’s story and his pro career in a story from the Shreveport Times.

I came out to the East Coast in August of 1990, 17 years old, about to start my freshman year in college.

And other than going home for the summer between that and my sophomore year at Catholic University, I’ve been out here ever since.

It’s been a long 18 years; it’s time to go home. We’re leaving Northern Virginia in August and moving to Minneapolis.

I’ll miss the vast number of Division III schools there are here on the East Coast, where I can basically stumble over a D-III school every 20 minutes on the highway. I’ve seen 98 Division III football teams play, as near as I can tell, and been in 58 teams’ stadiums. Now I’m looking forward to seeing a whole new group. I’ve seen only three WIAC teams and stadiums, and St. John’s is the only MIAC stadium I’ve ever been in.

There will be a lot of new things to experience.

Like flying to the Stagg Bowl.

So I apologize that it’s been a bit of a quiet offseason around here. We’ve spent a lot of time repairing, painting and packing. I’ll keep the same day job, as sports editor of the Verizon Central Newsroom, and simply work from there instead of Virginia.

Thanks to everyone who has been so hospitable over my years here on the East Coast. Hundreds of SIDs and coaches have made time to help us cover Division III in the past decade. Now I’ll get a different perspective, meet new people and spend a lot more time on I-94 and I-35 rather than I-95 and I-66.

Our friends at the Double-A Zone have asked the question, Who chooses Division III? It’s the NCAA’s official blog, so you have to take that into consideration, but unlike many ways in which the NCAA deals with Division III (can’t get its own playoff brackets right, doesn’t know how many Pool C bids there should be), the blog has a healthy knowledge of Division III, run by former Brandeis baseball player Josh Centor.

In light of the fact that Division II has spent a fair amount of time over the past few years trying to find its identity, there’s now apparently some sort of buzz. For me, I’m not sure what “I Chose Division II” actually means, while Division I’s identity is fairly clear and Division III has staked out the student-athlete high ground as the only purely amateur division (non-scholarship) in college athletics.

However, there seems to be some discussion from commenters, not much of it well-informed, as to what Division III’s identity is. Those people need a good dose of D3sports.com readers to fill them in. (I myself have a comment that is awaiting moderator approval.)

Meanwhile, the core question: Should Division III do more to brand itself? Speaking as someone who has done most of the branding of Division III over the past decade, absolutely. I look at what Division II has done in this area over the past few years, in terms of fancy promotional spots, games on CBS College Sports and football playoffs on ESPN, a full package of streaming video broadcasts of football and basketball, and I am definitely jealous. All Division III fans should be.

Division III should be branding itself. It should not be left to people like us here at D3sports.com or Steve Clay and D3Cast or Robb Modica and D3Scoreboard.

We just wasted a bunch of time and money figuring out Division IV was not the place we really wanted to be. So let’s spruce up our house a little bit while we’re here. Let’s show the rest of college fandom that this is not just glorified intramurals. Let’s get our games out there for people to see.

Why did you choose Division III? Go tell them.

And tell us below.

In a sports world plagued by stories of athletes using performance enhancing drugs, it’s natural to wonder whether this is a problem for Division III athletics, too. Rich Scarcella of the Reading (Pa.) Eagle looks at how Albright College is addressing this concern.

While the NCAA tests Division I and II football and baseball players for steroids and has year round tests to determine what other scholarship sports have a higher risk of steroid use, that level of testing hasn’t extended to Division III. There is random testing at NCAA playoff events and a pilot program from the NCAA to address the problem outside of the postseason.

The cost of testing and a conventional belief that non-scholarship athletes have less incentive to use performance enhancing drugs are two reasons given for less testing at this level. But 2006 events at UW-Stout and a 2005 NCAA survey in which Division III athletes reported the highest levels of amphetamine use (see page 12) have called that conventional wisdom into question.

As noted in the Reading Eagle article, the NCAA has a pilot program that tests athletes year-round for performance enhancing and recreational drugs, including marijuana. Alcohol is only tested for certain sports, like rifle shooting. Because it’s essentially a fact-finding study, there are no sanctions for testing positive.

But Albright has gone considerably farther. There are sanctions for testing positive with a “three strikes and you’re out” policy. A missed or refused test is considering a positive result. And alcohol is a tested substance. The Albright athletes interviewed had a divided opinion on the testing.

Sophomore running back Nate Romig says, “At the Division III level a college can’t give money to someone to play football…At Division I and II, colleges are paying you to play by giving out scholarships. They can do what they want to do to those athletes. They can test. I’m paying my way here. I do feel that my privacy is being invaded to a point. It is an infringement. I have teammates who feel the same way.” Despite the reservations, Romig also feels the testing should be adopted at other schools.

Athletic Director Steve George points out that the divided opinion isn’t confined to the athletes. “I’m not sure we had the support from the other side of the street (administration). On a college campus, there’s a liberal point of view that students should be allowed to experiment and to be able to find their way. When I came over to the athletic department, we had some issues.”

Personally I like randomly testing athletes for performance enhancing drugs throughout the year. If you’re trying to police this kind of drug use, you should cover off season workouts. And I like testing for recreational drugs during the sports season.

I’m less clear on testing for recreational drugs in the off season. Though morally opposed to the use of illegal drugs, does a basketball player or football player represent a college any more than any other student? If you’re going to test the athletes, why not other groups, too?

I’m no NFL expert and I steadfastly do not claim to be. All I know is that it seems from sheer numbers that Division III has had a banner draft and free agent season.

Rob Rodriguez, the Christopher Newport defensive back who was a senior in 2006, got his name added to the list and will be in the Kansas City Chiefs’ minicamp this weekend. That means nearly a dozen new D-III players will be in camps along with the two draftees. And we had two draftees for the second year in a row.

The D-III/NFL connection was looking a little light in recent years, after Ethan Brooks, R.J. Bowers, R-Kal Truluck and Bill Schroeder left the game. But Fred Jackson was a nice addition to the NFL contingent last season and Rodriguez is another alumnus who has stuck with the game. Former UW-Whitewater tight end Pete Schmitt is working out with the Washington Redskins during their offseason period and is in their minicamp this weekend after entering training camp with the team last year. John Carroll’s London Fletcher continues to carry the flag for Division III players in the league and Trinity (Texas) grad Jerheme Urban got some notice as an Arizona Cardinal last season.

Won’t argue with it and won’t try to explain it. Just hope Division III fans can enjoy the ride.