D3football Daily Dose

So we’re finally ready to kick off the Division III season!

What’s that? There were games already tonight? Three of them? Really?

Hm.

Well, here are my two-cents (plink, plink) on this week’s action any way.

Wish you were here: If I could be at any Division III game this week, it would be UW-Stevens Point versus No. 11 Hardin-Simmons.

Lots of interesting story lines here. It’s a measure of the West (Stevens Point) and South (HSU) Regions strength, as Keith McMillan points out. It’s the return of Cowboys QB Jordan Neal who missed most of last season for Hardin-Simmons.

Plus it’s a chance for Stevens Point to show 2006 will be better than 2005. On the third play from scrimmage last year HSU running back Quinton Jones ripped through the Pointers’ defense for a 61-yard touchdown. The Cowboys rolled to a 38-12 win and Stevens Point was headed toward a 1-4 start. This Saturday is a second chance for the Pointers to make a first impression.

Don’t sleep on this one: Wilmington finished ninth in the OAC last season. Mt. St. Joseph won the HCAC and its automatic bid to the playoffs. But Wilmington played the Lions tough last year, holding them to -21 yards rushing in a 21-17 loss. The Quakers could score a win in this Cincinnati area skirmish.

Looking ahead: No. 25 Thiel plays Geneva College. The Golden Tornados are slated to join Division III and the President’s Athletic Conference (PAC) in 2007. And, with this mascot, I’m already looking forward to it.

Open House: Minnesota-Morris opens Big Cat Stadium against Lawrence. Looking at the photos, the place looks pretty nice. Plus the Cougars already have a 14 point lead according to that one picture!

As we detailed this summer, lots of other schools will also get to show off their improvements over the next couple weeks.

Just throwing it out there: With Saturday’s game against UW-Eau Claire, St. John’s Head Coach John Gagliardi enter his 58th season and set a new record for most seasons as a college football head coach. He’s currently tied with Amos Alonzo Stagg, namesake for Division III’s championship game.

Speaking of which, would there be any interest in renaming the title game once Gagliardi retires? How about the Gagliardi-Stagg Bowl? Someone else may’ve suggested this before and I thought it merits consideration.

Most likely Top 25 team to lose: Could be No. 25 Thiel since Geneva hosts and is a solid program. Huntingdon might be a trendy pick, but winning at No. 24 Ithaca is a tall task. Yes, Huntingdon was one quarter away from beating SCAC-power Trinity (Texas) last season. They also lost to 3-7 Maryville (Tenn.).

Super ridiculous pick of the week: I do this every week and have never been right. But optimism abounds in Week 1. In fact, I’m feeling so good that I’m picking not just an upset, but predicting the score.

So let’s go with St. Thomas in a last minute victory over No. 18 Central. The Tommies narrowly missed beating Coe who beat Central last year. And everyone knows comparative scores are always accurate!

St. Thomas 21 No. 18 Central 17

And finally…

Brought to you by Mapquest: NAIA’s Valley City State, hosting St. Olaf.

D3football.com is at two of tonight’s three games kicking off the Division III football season. This is Keith McMillan, here at Shenandoah’s Shentel Stadium, and Ryan Coleman is apparently in the house at Hamline’s game.

Clear weather here, although the remants of Ernesto are supposedly coming up the coast. A couple of big questions will begin to get answered tonight. Will Catholic be better off with another new head coach, one that went 0-8 in one season at Becker? Was Shenandoah’s 1-9 record after a playoff season merely an anomaly? Are either of these teams primed to make any noise this season? Sometimes the first game is a sloppy one and hardly an indicator, but if either team looks good tonight, I’ll let you know.

Not yet ready for the wireless revolution here at Shentel, which is funny because this stadium is about as state-of-the-art as they come in Division III, so I’m on the same computer (I think) that is running the game stats. That said, it might be the end of the quarter or even halftime before I check in again.

There are audio links to the game, Around the Nation is up and we are ready to go for another season of Division III football. (Pause for anthem) … Let’s get it on!

An informational posting, not open for comments.

A heads-up for radio broadcasters that the D3football.com Report is returning for (what we believe to be) an eighth season in 2006. The Report is a 3- to 4-minute recorded segment for use on radio pregame shows, a weekly national look at Division III football.

The Report is written by D3football.com’s Pat Coleman and produced by Ray Martel of WFAN (oh yes, and D3football.com as well). It wraps up the previous week’s games and previews the games for that Saturday, including a call of the week highlight from the week before. We provide it free to student broadcasts (broadcasts produced by students on student stations), after all, we remember what it’s like to be in their shoes. The cost for the season for commercial stations is $25, or less than three bucks per game.

It is not available to fans at large. If you want to hear it, let your radio station know it should get on the list!

Contact Pat Coleman at pat@d3football.com to become a subscriber.

Huntingdon feels it can win the national championship. That’s an impressive goal. I’m sure many players have this goal, but also sure that most keep it quiet.

Huntingdon has not yet made the playoffs. They’re ranked … well, you’ll have to be a Kickoff subscriber to find out, but it’s not in our Top 30 in the 1-234 ranking of all Division III football teams. The Hawks went 7-2 last year but lost at home to 3-7 Maryville in Week 11 last year, when a win might have put them in the postseason.

So perhaps the Stagg Bowl is a little out of reach. But they’re talking otherwise:

Quarterback Zack Golson to the Prattville (Ala.) Progress: “This is an awesome school, with great academics, and I think we have a solid football program. I really believe we have a change to win a national championship.”

And to the Montgomery Advertiser: “One of the first things that coach Turk said to us during our first practice is that we would compete for a championship if we believed in him. We believed in him and that’s what we’re on our way to now.”

Coach Mike Turk knows a little more about how to couch enthusiasm properly: “Everybody says they want to win a national championship. But with these guys, I wouldn’t put it past them, because they work so hard and have the right mentality to do it.”

Only thing is, they aren’t the only program that works hard and has a good mind-set.

Anyone seen any other bulletin board material out there?

We’ve gotten official word that the addition to the definition of regional games first talked about in February went through all the hurdles of the NCAA process and is in place for this fall.

As a reminder, this is in addition to every other existing definition of a regional game (200 miles shortest possible driving distance, teams within the same Division III football region, teams in the same conference but different regions).

These are the NCAA’s administrative regions. They now also count for regional games as well:

The NCAA’s four regions, from the bylaws:

Region 1 - Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont

Region 2 - New York, Pennsylvania

Region 3 - Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia

Region 4 - Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming.

We will apply this definition to schedules as quickly as possible. But it’s worth noting that the Linfield/Hardin-Simmons game is now in-region, as is the Mary Hardin-Baylor/UW-Whitewater game.

This can only make the selection process better reflect the strength of actual teams. It’s not perfect, but it’s a step forward.

After nearly 16 years in the Washington, D.C., metro area, I’m moving to Connecticut.

This move has been a long time coming. I’ve worked at USA Today for a dozen years now, mostly with Baseball Weekly/Sports Weekly, but starting later this month I’ll be taking a job at NBCSports.com.

Although I don’t fully yet know what days and nights of the week I’ll be working, you can assume that I’ll be showing up at games in and around the area.

What else does this mean for D3football.com? The site is not going away — shoot, D3football.com/D3hoops.com experience helped me get this job. But we’ll be relying on other people within the organization to do a little more on game nights, when I’m at work, in terms of doing the first updates on the front page, stuff like that. Our recently announced partnership with D3Scoreboard.com will help out as well, since it will improve our collection of scores as well as server performance.

The transition period might be a little rough, and there will be entire days where I am away from the computer, most likely. The job search also has contributed to the somewhat quiet nature of the blog this summer. We ask your patience. But yes, I do have a full-time job, and D3sports.com is not it. We have to pay the bills and feed the three kids, after all.