Salisbury ended up winning the New Jersey Athletic Conference in its first season in the league, rather than conference favorite Wesley.  Salisbury athletics photo by Paul Jacko

By Ryan Tipps
D3sports.com

SALEM – This was a year full of surprises in Division III football.

Not only did we not see a Mount Union/UW-Whitewater Stagg Bowl, but there were a handful of significant upsets in the regular season that affected how the brackets would be aligned.

UW-Whitewater saw its streak of 26 regular-season wins broken by UW-Oshkosh in a 10-7 defensive battle, while Hardin-Simmons got the best of its in-state and American Southwest Conference rival, Mary Hardin-Baylor, for the first time since 2004.

Both UW-W and UMHB, however, avenged their regular-season losses with wins in the playoffs.

Elsewhere, Salisbury beat its Route 13 rival, Wesley, for the first time in more than a decade, upending the trajectory of the realigned NJAC. Perhaps most notably was that Salisbury’s win came just a week after the Gulls lost to Christopher Newport, a team that struggled to a 4-5 conference record in its first NJAC season.

Conferences such as the IIAC, LL, MAC and SAA also ended the year with new faces at the top of the heap, helping to keep us on our toes throughout the various turns of the season. Plus, the Empire 8 was competitive all season, with Cortland eventually coming out on top in its first season in the conference.

It was also exciting to see what corners of the nation that new records would emerge. Among the highlights:

• Gagliardi Trophy winner Joe Callahan of Wesley became the first Division III quarterback to pass for more than 5,000 yards in a season.
• Kwame Do of Occidental set a SCIAC record with 4,133 rushing yards.
• Ripon’s Ron Ernst set a MWC record for most career victories with 160.
• Gagliardi Trophy finalist Matt Pawlowski passed for an ODAC-record 611 yards against Catholic on Oct. 31.

Those are some of the national anc conference records set this season. The team records and outstanding performances are almost too numerous to note. If there are ones that you want to highlight, please use the comments section below.

How my ballots shaped up

The nature of college football is how our perceptions change over the season. Teams rise and fall as injuries, nonconference games, conference alignments and other things take their toll. To give you a snapshot of my thinking start to finish, I’m sharing my preseason poll, my ballot at the end of the regular season and my final, post-Stagg Bowl votes.

Our preseason picks revisited

Every August, an email arrives in our inboxes with a list of 20 questions. In it, a five-member panel of D3football.com staffers is asked to look through the preseason Kickoff publication and try to predict how the season will shape out.

Some picks are absolutely genius – others are colossal flops.

Part of the pressure of the picks, though, is that Around the Nation revisits each of the questions and answers in December, and I dole out points (or partial points) for each of the picks. Bottom line: The scores are primarily for bragging rights, but perhaps when you subscribe to Kickoff 2016 next fall, you’ll have a better idea of which of us has a functioning crystal football.

The panel was made up of Publisher Pat Coleman, Managing Editor Keith McMillan, Around the Region columnists Adam Turer and Josh Smith and myself, the Around the Nation writer.

Let’s begin!

Which will be the last team chosen in Pool C, and what will their record be?

Josh, Adam and Keith all chose teams that had records of .500 or below, while I went with North Central, pegging the Cardinals to be 8-2 instead of the 7-3 they turned out to be. Pat was the best in this category, going with Ohio Northern and their 8-2 record. Much had been debated in the aftermath of Selection Sunday, and while it’s generally agreed that Ohio Northern might have fit the playoff criteria the least, it also seems likely that the Polar Bears were the penultimate team chosen (Whitworth probably being the actual last team). Fact is, though, we’ll never know for sure, and because Pat nailed one of the low-end Pool C teams, as well as their record, he deserves the point here.

1 point: Pat

Which team will be the most surprising playoff entry?

Josh’s pick of Northwestern and Pat’s pick of Trine were far closer than Keith’s N.C. Wesleyan or my Cal Lutheran, yet none of those made the playoffs or were ultimately on the bubble for consideration. Adam, however, chose Salisbury, whose upset of Wesley in the regular season propelled the Gulls to the title in their new conference, the NJAC. Salisbury is frequent visitor to the postseason, but Adam had the keen eye to see that a new conference wouldn’t hold them back.

1 point: Adam

Will UW-Whitewater and Mount Union meet in Stagg Bowl XLIII?

Whitewater’s regular-season loss negated any perceived need to slot these two teams on opposite sides of the playoff bracket. UW-W and UMU met in the playoffs, but bracketing paired them up in the semifinals, not the national championship game. Mount won the battle up front and doled out a convincing 36-6 victory, but regardless, it didn’t happen in Salem. Josh was the only panelist to project a rematch at the Stagg, so everyone else gets a point.

1 point: Pat, Keith, Adam and Ryan

Who will reach the national semifinals?

The national semifinalists were UW-Whitewater, Mount Union, Linfield and St. Thomas. Everyone chose UW-Whitewater, no one chose St. Thomas, and everyone but Keith hit Mount Union. The rest of the picks was a mix of Linfield, Mary Hardin-Baylor, Wesley, Wartburg and John Carroll. Partial points all around.

0.75 point: Ryan and Pat

0.5 point: Josh and Adam

0.25 point: Keith

Who will win the national title?

Adam was the only person to get this question right, while Josh, Keith and I went with UW-Whitewater, and Pat chose Linfield.

1 point: Adam

Who will win the MASCAC and SAA’s first automatic bid?

The MASCAC’s Framingham State was a popular selection, with Josh, Adam and me all going that route, while Pat and Keith chose Western Connecticut, which finished the season 5-5. No one got Hendrix out of the SAA. All of the picks were in the direction of Centre (which had a good season) and Rhodes (which floundered).

0.5 point: Josh, Adam and Ryan

Does the loser of UMHB-Texas Lutheran make the playoffs?

Despite TLU finishing 8-2, it’s not likely they were a serious threat as the lone Pool B pick or in the next one or two as a Pool C selection – at least not with 9-1 Wartburg and 9-1 Guilford still on the table. Only Pat said “no” to this question, and gets the point.

1 point: Pat

Which 2014 playoff team will have the worst fall-off, record-wise?

This is always a dicey question, because instead of picking a team to succeed, we’re trying to gauge which one will tank. There were a lot of good picks here: Adam said Christopher Newport, which dropped off four wins from 2014; and Pat went with Hobart, and Keith chose Macalester, both of which were down five wins. I whiffed with Delaware Valley, which matched last year’s nine-win season. Josh gets the prize, though, as MIT went from a 10-1 record last fall to a 2-8 outing in 2015.

1 point: Josh

Which team will have the best improvement over its 2014 record?

What initially looked like a homer pick for Washington and Lee graduate Adam turned out to be savvy thinking, as the Generals went from 2-8 team last season to a playoff bound 10-1 this year. Other picks were Trinity (Texas) (up four wins, by me); Eureka (up three wins, by Pat); Illinois Wesleyan (up three wins, by Keith); and Rowan (down one win, by Josh).

1 point: Adam

Under new coach Kevin Bullis, which week does UW-Whitewater play its last game?

Adam and Pat, the only two people to pick teams other than Whitewater to win the Stagg Bowl, both correctly said the semifinals.

1 point: Adam and Pat

Who will be the D3football.com offensive and defensive players of the year?

Not a single panelist picked either side of the ball correctly. Adam’s pick of Wesley quarterback and Gagliardi Trophy Joe Callahan at least nailed a first-team All-American on offense. Other picks of Wartburg’s Logan Schrader or St. John’s Sam Sura were farther back. The winner of offense of the player of the year honor was St. Thomas rusher Jordan Roberts. Defensively we all came closer: Mount Union’s Alex Kocheff and Linfield’s Alex Hoff were first-teamers, and Justin Dischler was a second-teamer. However, it was Mount defensive lineman Tom Lally who got the overall honor.

0 points awarded

Who will have the better season, the QB replacing Kevin Burke, the WR replacing Jake Kumerow or the RB replacing Domonique Hayden?

Josh and Keith both correctly surmised that the quarterback replacing Burke, Taurice Scott, will have the best season of the bunch. He not only led his team in dynamic fashion to a national championship, but he was also named most valuable player of the Stagg Bowl. Adam hedged it a bit (and thus gets only partial credit) by saying that the Thomas More rusher would have the best stats of the bunch but that the Mount signal-caller would win the title. So he backed himself into a half-point.

1 point: Josh and Keith

0.5 point: Adam

Rose-Hulman and Illinois College combined for 142 points in last year’s meeting. How many points will they combine to score in their 2015 game?

The result in 2015 was a 51-33 Rose win, giving a point total of 84. Josh guessed 72, Adam 99, Keith 67, Pat 65 and me 70. Josh was just 12 points off the mark; he wasn’t dead-on correct, but proximity gets the point in this question.

1 point: Josh

Who will win the MWC?

The two-divisional conference paired St. Norbert and Monmouth in the conference title game, with the Green Knights coming out on top. Adam, Keith and me projected Monmouth, but Josh correctly foresaw St. Norbert’s fate.

1 point: Josh

Which Empire 8 and NJAC teams will make the NCAA playoffs?

The whole panel went with St. John Fisher out of the E8, and while the Cardinals tied with Cortland State at 6-2 at the top of the heap, it was Cortland that won the tiebreaker. In the NJAC, many of us correctly saw multiple teams getting chosen, but only Adam had both Wesley and Salisbury on his list. Others of us had Montclair State and Rowan as possibilities.

0.5 point: Adam

Which team that went winless in 2014 will win the most games in 2015?

Adam, Keith and I all went with Grove City, which retained its winless streak. Josh’s Anna Maria had a lone win in the ECFC, but Pat’s Hamilton ended with a 2-6 record. Still, the question wasn’t which of us would pick the closest but rather which team would win the most. We all overlooked Minnesota-Morris, which improved to a 4-6 record in 2015.

0 points awarded

Which team with a new coach will have the biggest gain in the win column?

Trine, which was picked by Josh, Pat and me, held steady with a 6-4 mark, as did Keith’s Augustana at 5-5 each of the past two seasons. Adam’s Susquehanna went from 2-8 to 5-5 this year, so he gets a nod for a solid pick. Still, no one chose the nation's the biggest improvement. That honor went to St. Norbert, which climbed from a six-win season in 2014 to an undefeated regular season this fall.

0 points awarded

What will be the most surprising upset of the season?

Josh’s pick (Northwestern over St. Scholastica) and Pat’s pick (Trinity over Texas Lutheran) both missed their marks, though they were just one-score victories for the favorites. Adam projected that Hobart would lose its first conference game since 2011, specifically against Rochester. While Hobart did, in fact, lose two conference games, neither of those losses came against Rochester. I picked Ohio Northern over John Carroll, which happened by a 30-27 score and helped to propel ONU into the postseason. Keith – well, I saved Keith’s pick for last because he seemed to go out of his way to make it complicated. He gave three answers, two of which turned out to be correct: DePauw over Wittenberg and Puget Sound over Pacific Lutheran (a 6-2 final score). The one he missed? Stevenson over Delaware Valley, in which DelVal won by just a field goal. All in all, every game we came up with was either an upset or a nail-biter, much to the panel’s credit.

1 point: Ryan and Keith (yeah, he missed one, but gets credit for getting two right)

Alma mater excluded, which game are you most anticipating?

This isn’t a scoreable question, so I’m going to repeat everyone’s picks for you, and you can evaluate the worthiness of them yourself.

Josh: Wheaton at North Central on Oct. 24.

Adam: St. John Fisher at Thomas More on Sept. 5.

Ryan: Mary Hardin-Baylor at Texas Lutheran on Oct. 24 (and hopefully ending on Oct. 24)

Keith: Wesley at North Central on Sept. 26. (I'm a sucker for a huge non-conference clash.)

Pat: Alma at Finlandia on Sept. 5. Taking it one week at a time.

And lastly, will you give us a one-sentence prediction we’re unlikely to see anywhere else?

Again, I’m pasting the responses below, and scoring them along with including comments in parentheses after each pick.

Josh: Both national semifinals and the Stagg Bowl will each be decided by seven points or fewer. (Nope, none of those three games ended being decided by one score or less.)

Adam: For the second straight season, there will be at least three conferences that end in at least a three-way tie for first place. (The ASC was the only conference to have a three-way tie.)

Ryan: Seven of the eight teams in last year’s national quarterfinals will be there again in 2015. (Only four from 2014 again made it to the quarterfinals.)

Keith: UW-Whitewater takes its starters out before halftime and still wins by more than 50 in Week 2 against startup Finlandia, one week after surrendering 300 passing yards but making Belhaven look like, er, Mummes in a season-opening win. (UW-W did have that big win over Finlandia, as expected, but certainly didn’t come close to surrendering 300 passing yards to Belhaven.)

Pat: The NCAA won't have to issue any corrections as to the number of at-large bids to be awarded to the various pools this season. (Snarkiness aside, he’s right.)

1 point: Pat

And the prognostication winner is ……. Adam, who notched seven points. Congrats to our Around the Mid-Atlantic columnist. Pat came in second with 5.75 points, then Josh with five, Ryan with 3.25 and Keith with three.

In closing

Thank you for reading Around the Nation this year and for your support of Division III football and our website!

Throughout the offseason, we’ll be updating our Coaching Carousel (http://d3football.com/notables/coaching-carousel) as hirings and firings takes place across the country.

Find us again late next summer as our preseason All-American team is announced for 2016, our preseason poll comes out, and the new edition of Kickoff is released to provide insight into another great year of gridiron games.