ATN Podcast 303: New UMHB coach; scheduling big; SOS

We’re continuing our offseason series diving into interviews with new coaches at Division III football powers, as we check in with Larry Harmon, the new head coach of the defending national champion, Mary Hardin-Baylor. Much like last month’s guest, new North Central coach Brad Spencer, Harmon had been an assistant coach at his school for years, including defensive coordinator for the past 17. Harmon talks about what the expectations are for the Cru’s title defense, the transition into taking over the UMHB program, and what the team learned from spring ball. Plus, UMHB made some of the biggest news of the Division III offseason in April, announcing an ambitious non-conference schedule of Muhlenberg and UW-Whitewater. Plus, three words: ASC-WIAC Challenge?! Sounds like it could happen. That leads us into the other podcast conversation, where we dive into exactly what strength of schedule means, why it’s broken, and what it would take to fix it. We have that conversation with Logan Hansen, @LogHanRatings, the former Wartburg player whose ratings have been refined over the past decade to provide a quality ranking of Division III football programs. The current SOS metric could take a couple of minor tweaks to fix obvious flaws, and we talk about those, but it needs a wholesale replacement which involves measuring home-field advantage, and yes, margin of victory. Logan talks about how that works, why running up the score won’t work, and much more in our conversation. Plus, Pat and Greg talk about the various big games on the schedules that have been announced so far. Pat Coleman and Greg Thomas talk about it all in the latest D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast. The D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast is a regular conversation covering the wide range of Division III football. Hit play, or subscribe to get this podcast on your mobile device. Full episode: [display_podcast] You can subscribe to the Around the Nation Podcast in Apple Podcasts, and many other places. You can also get this and any of our future Around the Nation podcasts automatically by subscribing to this RSS feed: http://www.d3blogs.com/d3football/?feed=podcast Here’s how to find us on some of the major podcasting apps: Apple Podcasts: D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast Google Podcasts: D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast iHeart Radio: D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast Stitcher: D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast Spotify: D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast Theme music: Power 2 by DJmentos. Photo: North Central athletics