Around the Nation board

[HScoach]

Strong safety Matt Kostelnik recovered a bad punt snap in the end zone with 6:37 left in the first quarter, giving Mount Union a 14-0 lead. Ten seconds later, Kostelnik intercepted a pass and returned it 24 yards for a touchdown.

Meanwhile, quarterback Mike Jorris threw touchdown passes of 21 and 82 yards to receiver Pierre Garcon. He also threw a 67-yarder to Justin Wray, helping Mount Union assume a 34-7 lead with 13 minutes left in the first half. At that point, the Purple Raiders had executed a grand total of five offensive plays.

I mean jeez. Are you running up the score or getting your players some game action for when a team actually challenges you?

K-Mack:  Ric and I did the radio broadcast of that game and it was a very strange one indeed.  The Otterbein defense looked like Heidelburg as 5 of MUC's offensive TD's were scored on 1 or 2 play drives.  Couple that with 2 quick defensive scores and MUC could have easily scored 90+ if they would have tried.  And the last 4 TD's were nothing more than simple running plays (2 of these scores were 1 play drives), but I guess the Otters thought it would be more fun chasing the ball carrier than actually tackling him.

[Ron Boerger]

OK, Keith, here's a question for you to possibly research in a future ATN:  Why the heck don't more schools offer live stats during games?  It doesn't seem all that hard to do since (according to my limited understanding) they can be provided using the same stats already being collected at games.  Takes much less bandwidth than broadcasts, you don't have to pay announcers, and you would hope that most schools have internet capability in their stadiums by now.

It's a lot easier to keep up with several games at once this way, that's for sure.  Not as satisfying as listening to a game being called by a good set of announcers, but how many schools have good announcers?  ;-) 

[PA_wesleyfan]

Ron 

   I agree.. Wesley has them this year. But It's hard to listen to the webcast,  the radio webcast and read live stats all at once..... Tho a lap top helps next to the PC.

Ya ya I (might) a DIII fan..


  I think that maybe some facility's don't have room in the press boxes or the people to type all that...

[Ron Boerger]

PA,

a number of schools in the SCAC are difficult to get scores/info from ... small towns, with very little media coverage.  As Pat said elsewhere (if not in so many words) it would certainly help if more schools (of all conferences) would do a better job of updating scores via the d3scoreboard.com service, too.

[K-Mack]

From what I can tell, outside of using the same computer program to do stats, little across the board is the same in D3. Schools and their game-day operations vary from sophisticated to one pro and some student help type of things. Some are already wired for the internet and very tech-savvy, some are more stuck in their old ways.

Short of CoSIDA pushing for some standardization across the board, I'm not sure what we can do but opine.

The live stats updating from the official stats in the press box are really nice; to do on the web may be more difficult, I don't know, but halftime or end-of-quarter uploads would seem to be a snap.

As far as Otterbein, I take it they're not the same team that beat Capital last year?

Or is it once again Mount Union being just that good (i.e. 70-0 over JCU last year, and JCU went 7-3).

Dunno.

Any readers want to come up with column ideas for this week?

[diehardfan]

Any readers want to come up with column ideas for this week?

This is totally a homer question, but...

Gordon (and other people) brought this up earlier, maybe even on this board (maybe the top 25 board) but there's been some discussion this year about whether the CCIW is not a strong conference, and that they've just been "given the benefit of doubt" cause we have to face mount union fairly early on every year come playoff time. While, I'm certainly not going to argue for us being in the top 3, I'm reluctant to think we're bad. I'd be interested in hearing what you guys think on if it's really just that we're not good period, or if it's just a down year for us. Now that the non-conference season is over, it would be fairly easy to compare stats from this year to other years, I would think.

What about a regular season, non-conf, non-playoff streak list of all teams that have red as a school color and still have grass fields... haha... just kidding!

[K-Mack]

There was a Daily Dose thread, maybe reaction to Week 2 or something, where Gordon and I disagreed publicly over the strength of the CCIW.

Especially since some people were operating under the assumption that Augie was the league's best team and they had a loss (now two), and North Central had the bad defeat to Conc. Wis. ... If Wheaton and Carthage turn out to be the best teams, that changes that argument.

I just go by the playoff performance vs. MUC, as opposed to vs. all other teams, the regular-season non-conference record (something like 22-3 last year) and such.

It's definitely a down year so far, but it's too early to judge. Also, last year's non-conf record was a serious anomaly.

Maybe I can go more in-depth another day; I'm at work and need to head home.

-- KMc.

[K-Mack]

From the blog, re: the Raiders "running up the score."

Raiderguy Says:
The 26th of September, 2006 at 2:54 am

What are you supposed to do?

Four fumbles and a blocked punt in the first quarter and a sustained drive and you're sitting 42 -zip in the first fifteen minutes.

Your stating QB has stats like 4-5 50 some yds and two TD's and he is done.

"WWRD?"

Starting wideout 2 catches 22 yds and two TD's, done for the night.

Turnovers will kill ya!

I suppose turnovers are unsportsmanlike too Greg? Oh just give'em the ball back ...you don't need it.

That would be the sporty thing to do.

Only trouble with games like this is you are not getting tested before the tougher games in the schedule like ONU in two weeks.

[diehardfan]

"Oh just give'em the ball back ...you don't need it."

I know that was supposed to be a joke, but just think about doing that seriously for a second... I believe that would probably be the most embarassing thing you could possibly do to a team. And funny, in a painful way.

[K-Mack]

That's kind of what I think about kicking the field goals on second down.

It's like, they're trying to say "there's no need for us to score anymore here, we won't run it up" and yet what there implying is that "there's no way you can stop us from scoring another TD even on a handful of 22 dives, so let's not bother with the whole running plays thing."

I agree completely about your starters needing some work against live competition, knowing you have opponents that will play you tough ahead ... sooner or later.

[K-Mack]

This is as promised, rescued from my laptop while the home internet was down. Apparently it's bad to have a bookshelf resting on your cable wire. You learn something every day.

Intended for last week's ATN:

My 26-35
Around the Nation resumes its weekly trip inside the mind of a D3football.com Top 25 voter. Take it in stride, however, as the other 24 voters clearly don't give a crap what I think (and that may end up a good thing).

As always, be reminded that the Division III top 25 is the most exclusive ranking in football. With 234 schools, 209 teams go unranked each week. We have fewer spots in our poll than we do conferences (26) and playoff spots (32).

That said, there are always unranked teams that deserve consideration. Generally those teams are among our others receiving votes – there were 31 of those teams this week – but here's where I acknowledge their possible top 25 worthiness.

My Week 3 vote and fourth ballot, including the preseason, didn't change a whole lot from Week 2. Only three teams I ranked lost, and since Delaware Valley and Linfield fell to other teams on my ballot, Texas Lutheran was the only one that dropped out. Howard Payne moved into my top 25 (and not just because they were another Texas team) while Wartburg held steady for me at 26. Cortland State was the 27th team on my mind after their 17-10 (mentioned above?) win over Brockport State.

In hindsight, I should have slotted the Yellow Jackets behind the Knights and Red Dragons, although I admit to having an artificial restrictor on Wartburg, since I already rank Coe and Central. I did much the same thing with the third Liberty League team, although Union made it easy with the loss to Springfield. This early in the season I'm wary of ranking three teams from one conference when there's so much yet to prove, although in the case of the OAC, Mount Union, Capital and Ohio Northern each clearly deserve their spots.

St. John Fisher, UW-Oshkosh and UW-Stout are 28-30 for me, followed by an group of teams I'm keeping in mind by not slotting. In no particular order are Bethel, St. Olaf, Alfred, Concordia (Wis.), Mount St. Joseph, St. Norbert and Monmouth.

I started taking a closer look at these teams: Cal Lutheran, Carthage, Lycoming and Springfield. North Central, Washington & Jefferson and Union can get back on the radar with a couple more weeks of consistency, and Averett followed our expected pattern given their early schedule, so more information is needed.

Concordia-Moorhead could play its way back into things against No. 4 St. John's on Saturday, as could Trinity (Texas) against DePauw and – to a lesser extent -- Rochester against Union, Carroll against Monmouth and Colby against Trinity (Conn.).

[Mr. Ypsi]

A small correction on this week's column.  You say 4 conferences have three unbeatens each, but forgot the CCIW - Wheaton, Carthage, and Elmhurst. 

Perhaps you were thinking ahead to Saturday when either Carthage or Elmhurst will get their first loss.

[jmw73]

What took so long to get Cortland State into your Top 25? You seem to be one of the last ones to do so.

[Ralph Turner]

Great ATN Board.

I also appreciated the LaCollege article in the Town Talk.  That "scrimmage" will help the Wildcats.

As for the merit-based scholarship article, I was a recipient, and grateful for it.  My dad (Mom was a homemaker) made slightly more than the proverbial $40K (Calculations available at The Inflation Calculator) but only a little more.  Without the aid from McMurry, it would have been tough.

Finally, the article on getting football players who are serious about their education...

I kinda thought that the football/athlete/gender-balancing article (the 3rd of the articles) was a "fluff" article and a bit too "preachy"...  Yeah, that is blunt, but the first time that a school admits student-athletes who are not academically qualified,  their admissions disrupt the campus, the classroom and the school environment so much, that the admissions people, faculty, administration and Board of Trustees remember it... for a lonnnnngggggggg time!

Overall, thanks for the reading material, and your ATN is one of the best features that the site has!

[K-Mack]

A small correction on this week's column.  You say 4 conferences have three unbeatens each, but forgot the CCIW - Wheaton, Carthage, and Elmhurst. 

Perhaps you were thinking ahead to Saturday when either Carthage or Elmhurst will get their first loss.

Yeah, not sure how that happened since Wheaton, Carthage and Elmhurst's unbeaten records are all referenced in the column.

Will fix.