Quote from: The Third Division on November 08, 2026, 12:37:22 AM

Quote from: IC798891 on November 07, 2026, 11:56:01 PM

Quote from: The Third Division on November 07, 2026, 11:40:12 PMIs this what happens when your school hires a young and possibly overly ambitious head coach?

Brandon Maguire is 34 and in in his first season as a head coach
Michael Toerper was 34 when he was in his first season as a head coach, at Ithaca
Dan Swanstrom was 35 when he was in his first season as a head coach, at Ithaca

You don't have to like the playcall, but I'm sure what Maguire's age has to do with anything.

Is there a reason they haven't hired anyone over 50?

Come on.  I'm not sure what your point is here.  If you spend 45 seconds talking to Brandon Maguire, you wouldn't possibly think he doesn't know ball.  There are a TON of really good head coaches in Division III right now and a whole lot of them are not 50. 

In the last 20 years, only five Stagg Bowls were won by HCs over 50 (six if you want to count Leipold's last one where he was age 50 exactly).  I don't think the correlation you've invented here actually exists. 

Quote from: WAF-WDE on October 30, 2026, 02:13:42 PM

Quote from: wally_wabash on October 19, 2026, 01:52:20 PM

Quote from: JCUStreaks70 on October 18, 2026, 05:29:20 PM...

The NCAC is absolutely a meat grinder league right now, even with Wittenberg wandering around aimlessly in the abyss (temporarily, I assume).  There's room for even more depth here. 

Wally, I think Wittenberg's struggles in football reflect the systemic challenges it is facing.  Elsewhere in this thread I noted a comment from the Wabash College BoT that highlights one of the most pressing challenges.

No doubt they are correlated, but I don't think anybody saw an 0-8 coming.  The sky was falling for Wittenberg football after a pair of 7-3 seasons prompted a coaching change after the 2021 season.  There are three teams in the division that score fewer points than Wittenberg.  If you remember when the bottom absolutely fell out from under Allegheny's program from about 2012-2015, this is sort of like that.  Wittenberg has a lot of work to do on the field, but obviously keeping the institution open is a bigger priority. 

Quote from: D3fanboy on October 26, 2026, 10:34:08 AMIf Mount beats ONU and BW, they are a playoff team...unless the bottom 2/3 of the OAC conspire to keep the Raiders out of the playoffs and the 4th place conference team from playing in a postseason bowl game.  Doesn't seem likely, imo.

let's just say its:
4. Etta
5. ONU
6. Cap
7. Wilma
8. Ott
9. Muskie

Etta is voting for Mount 100% to get the bowl game.  Five coaches left to vote, is there enough of a vendetta against Mount for kicking FG on 1st down in the 4th for years and years to go against the recruiting chip of "nearly half of the conference in the postseason!"  or "we're only one game away from playing in the postseason!"?

The way the math is trending, 8-2 Mount Union is extremely likely to go through with or without the automatic bid which is going to make a secret vote virtually meaningless.  Honestly the best thing that could happen for this silly tiebreak.   

Just a little bit of NACCtion for you all this week in ATN. 

Quote from: BergAlum2 on October 20, 2026, 04:15:26 PMNot sure how the NPI numbers would work out for getting 2 OAC at large bids.  I know in the D3 podcast a few times logan hansen listed the conferences most likely to get 2 at large teams in, and the OAC has not been mentioned, yet.  Shame there are less at large bids than last year.  Idk if Logan Hansen ever takes a gander here, but curious if it's even mathematically/realistically possible for us to get two in via at large bids.

This would only happen if Mount Union wins the double secret vote and BW and HBerg each finish 9-1.  This probably gets three OACs in the field.  Please note that my "probably" here is backed up by absolutely nothing other than I'm assuming most 9-1 runners up will go through. I haven't cross-checked with Logan's scenario generator. 

I'm column E this week.  Surprised to only see one ORV. I think there are 10 teams that you could vote for and not be out of pocket.  The eight here plus Hanover/MSJ I think are all NRFP-worthy at the moment. 

Quote from: MCScots2013 on October 19, 2026, 11:44:10 AMPat is a man of the people! 7.2/10 on  his attempt at saying Maryville. 

Acceptable:
Murvul
Maraville
Maravul (this is most common)

Unacceptable and downright unholy:
Mary-ville
Kills me that our PA and broadcast say it this way to appease Yankees with unrefined auditory skills.

The bolded is probably where I land most often. Occasionally I might let slip a Murvul. 

Hope you all get about 5 deep in a ring around that field on Saturday.  Should be a tremendous college football game. 

Quote from: JCUStreaks70 on October 18, 2026, 05:29:20 PMI know people claimed JCU "Ran away" from Mount, when leaving the OAC; but I will die on the Hill that the NCAC is not only a better fit for JCU academically, but also for sports pedigree. When in the OAC, JCU had the Mount game and MAYBE a game against Heidelberg, ONU, and BW (though the rock has remained in University Heights since 2013, sooooo)..

And especially with the addition of WashU, the NCAC playoff representatives in the playoffs are far more prepared than most because you have 4 guaranteed tough conference games between WashU, JCU, DePauw, Wabash and Dennison. I am convinced that JCU was so well prepared for a Semifinals run last season because they all the above mentioned, save for WashU, on their schedule.

I fully expect the NCAC to continue to grow in pedigree from a football standpoint, because I do believe Dennison and Wabash will continue to grow and develop, and as long as the other three maintain where they are at, we could have WIAC type craziness of week in and week out games.

The NCAC is absolutely a meat grinder league right now, even with Wittenberg wandering around aimlessly in the abyss (temporarily, I assume).  There's room for even more depth here. 

I'm also interested in Redlands/APU this weekend.  Redlands is likely a heavy favorite here BUT...Redlands probably isn't going to run away and hide from anyone offensively and the APU offense is unlike anything else teams have had to prepare for in the SCIAC.  If the Fly offense gets the Bulldogs on skates a bit, maybe this is interesting in the second half? 

Quote from: ADL70 on September 24, 2026, 09:57:35 PMWeek 2 Scheduled to play Keystone, definitely a bottom rung D3 team. The game was called at halftime due to weather with W&J up 42-0.

I think they could have played through the weather.  The field being 5 feet underwater, less so.   

Quote from: The Third Division on September 20, 2026, 02:14:15 AMHow did APU set themselves up for a win today as opposed to Whittier since both are restarted programs?

Did you expect them both to lose?  Whittier did also prepare to win. 

You should do some research on Mark Speckman's Fly Offense and what he accomplished as HC at Willamette.  It started clicking toward the end of the 1st half and was really effective in the second half.  There Whittier didn't see much of the football- there aren't stats up for this game. yet, but when the box score shows up, I think it'll confirm what I saw last night that APU rushed for a ton and Whittier had limited opportunities in the second half. 

I was column E this week. There are probably seven more teams I could have voted for here. It's fun to have real depth in this region again. 

Quote from: unionpalooza on September 14, 2026, 05:23:49 PMmaybe I'm a weirdo for wishing the highest-penetration media coverage of D3 football wasn't a poll that is more lazy opinion than expert analysis.

I actually had a really tough time settling on what to do with JHU/RMC/Dickinson.  The whole thing would have been a lot easier had Dickinson played and won (or lost) to a team for which I have some kind of meaningful reference point.  Losing to D-I Davidson sounds like not that big of a deal, but Davidson last year only won two games- one against Valparaiso who lost to a D-III team and what was very clearly an any-given-Saturday outlier vs. Presbyterian.  Davidson is not very good.  Exactly how they translate to a D-III tier, I have no idea, which makes contextualizing the result vs. Dickinson difficult, which dominoes its way into JHU/RMC. 

I know it's easy to see the final poll result and ascribe the results to lazy groupthink, but it really isn't that. I put a good deal of thought and time into my ballot each week and I presume most/all of the other 24 who vote in this poll do as well.  If anybody at all wanted to rank in order Dickinson-RMC-JHU somewhere in the 20s, that would have been a perfectly reasonable ballot. But there were other reasonable ways to ballot this week also.

Quote from: MUC 2008 on September 14, 2026, 10:51:13 AMPat had a great point on the podcast - if any other team had wholesale coordinator changes and wholesale roster turnover, no one bats an eye at a 1-1 start with a 1 point loss to a top 5 team on the road. That's the other thing many of us here (myself included, I'll own it) have taken for granted for so long - a coaching staff so well schooled in the minutia and finer things of the game that preparedness and sheer will can change the game. I don't think it's unfair for me to say that, at times, has not been seen by this head coach. LK and VK could take a team that was, on paper, outmatched by its opponent and win - sometimes by a surprisingly wide margin. With this staff, it seems to be the opposite: continually playing down to competition and lacking a killer instinct. Case in point, an end zone INT would, most other years, end in a Mount TD and a 14 point swing. Instead it's an immediate giveaway back. Having a lack of playmakers and "home run hitters" can lend itself to that, especially since no one has stepped up on offense yet.

Ouch!

Quote from: Cardinal773 on September 09, 2026, 08:40:40 PMI know I'm just daydreaming here, but how cool would it be if we could talk ESPN into hosting College GameDay in Naperville on October 10th? They went to Amherst/Williams for the Biggest Little Game back in 2007, why not the Battle for the Little Brass Bell?

If anyone knows anyone who could make this happen, let's get that ball rolling! The tailgating scene is solid for homecoming and it would look good on TV.  Let's do this!

10/10 has Georgia @ Alabama and ESPN is almost definitely going to be in Tuscaloosa.  And if they aren't there, they're at the Red River game in Dallas.  This would be cool for sure, but there is no business reason why ESPN would be in Naperville.