ATN Podcast 377: Let them play!

The current football student-athletes of the NESCAC are probably too young to envision a crowd of fans in the Astrodome chanting “Let them play!” about the Bad News Bears. They are too young to remember the Astrodome. And they are nothing like the Bad News Bears, but still, the powers-that-be in the New England Small College Athletic Conference have not allowed their conference teams to participate in the Division III football playoffs. Ever. Because the Ivy League does it that way, right? Well, that’s changing, starting this year, and a group of NESCAC student-athletes are organizing on their campuses to make sure that they don’t get left behind, or pushed off another year. That’s the NESCAC Football Players Association (NESCACFBPA), a group representing football student-athletes at all 10 member schools, and we talk with a number of them on this edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast. This edition of the podcast is sponsored by GameStrat: The Most Reliable & Fastest In-Game Video Replay System on The Market. D-III football coaches should click here to learn more. The presidents of the NESCAC need to act now, not wait and make these student-athletes wait for another year when they have waited for generation after generation already. Hear from Vaughn Seelicke of Tufts, Jack Lucido of Wesleyan, Parker Huynh-Benningfield of Bates, Aidan Moss of Middlebury and Justin Keller of Tufts about the issues, what they learned from Ivy League student organizers, and how they are working to make this happen here, in 2025. In addition, we chat with new Lewis & Clark head coach Brett Elliott. Yes, that’s the Brett Elliott who has been offensive coordinator at Linfield, who led Linfield to a national title as a quarterback and was the 2005 D3football.com Offensive Player of the Year. He’ll talk about the quick and efficient interview process, how he found out who his leaders are on his new team, and what he did on his first weekend on the job. Plus we update the Cortland coaching search and take your questions, many of them, and more in this edition of the podcast, as we start Season No. 19. The D3football.com podcast is a podcast that is weekly during the season and monthly in the offseason, by Patrick Coleman and Greg Thomas. The podcast was started in 2007.  Hit play, or subscribe to get this podcast on your mobile device. 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 iHeart Radio: D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast Spotify: D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast Theme music: Power 2 by DJmentos. Tufts athletics photo