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FEBRUARY 10, 2025 | composed by STEVE ULRICH

News and notes on the largest and best Division in the NCAA. #whyD3
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🏆️ Lots of excited (and tired) Eagles fans today. 

Headlines
📜 NCAA No Closer to Getting Its Coveted Congressional Wish List
🥍 Lacrosse Preseason Players of the Year
🦅 Mount Union’s Sirianni Leads Eagles to Super Bowl Win
🏊️ Big Red, Eagles Top Rankings Entering Conference Championships
🗞️ News You Can Use
👀 Plays of the Weekend

🗓️ What’s Happening This Week. The DIII Financial Aid committee will gather in Indianapolis on Wednesday and Thursday.

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TOP STORY
1. The NCAA Appears No Closer to Getting Its Coveted Congressional Wish List

by Amanda Christovich, Front Office Sports

"As Russell White, who runs an association of dozens of NIL (name, image, and likeness) collectives, was leaving a Senate office meeting in Washington, D.C., earlier this week, he had a somewhat awkward run-in. He came face-to-face with Big Ten representatives, who were awaiting their own rendezvous with lawmakers.

“There were those kind of head nods,” White, the president of The Collective Association (TCA), tells Front Office Sports. “When you recognize each other, you know each other - but maybe you’re not the closest of friends.”

The NCAA and conferences were in Washington to continue to ask Congress to codify the House v. NCAA settlement (which allows for revenue-sharing) and declare athletes amateurs, rather than employees. But the real prize is an antitrust exemption, which would allow them to police the settlement’s terms themselves, and would halt the barrage of lawsuits that have forced them to change to amateurism up to this point.”

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» Situational Awareness. “TCA met with about 40 offices, both Republican and Democrat, in the House and Senate this week - at the same time as NCAA and power conference administrators were doing the same thing. White described a lack of movement on Capitol Hill toward an NCAA-friendly law, despite the fact that the red wave was expected to help the NCAA’s interests. The majority of congressional offices TCA spoke with appear uninterested in granting the NCAA its coveted antitrust exemption, regardless of their political affiliation.”

» The Big Picture. “Democrats are less likely to grant antitrust immunity and a no-employee clause, sources have previously told FOS, given those issues fall on the broader political spectrum (though some, like Sen. Richard Blumenthal [D., Conn.] have said they’re open to the no-employee status idea). But not all of Cruz’s Republican colleagues are on board with antitrust immunity, either, TCA’s meetings revealed—making an NCAA-friendly bill even more difficult to pass.”

» Quotable. “What’s radical [to lawmakers] is not that athletes are being paid,” another attendee of the meetings on behalf of collectives tells FOS. “What’s radical is that the traditional members of college sports need an antitrust exemption. … That’s the biggest hang-up.”

» Continue Reading

LACROSSE
2. Preseason Players of the Year

USA Lacrosse has selected its preseason Players of the Year as the 2025 season gets underway in earnest this weekend with Middlebury’s Hope Shue and Salisbury’s John DeFazio getting the nod.

#WhyD3
3. Mount Union’s Sirianni Leads Eagles to Super Bowl Victory

by Bill Bender, The Sporting News

A proud moment for NCAA Division III athletes, coaches and fans everywhere as former Mount Union wide receiver Nick Sirianni coached the Philadelphia Eagles to a resounding 40-22 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX.

“Sirianni, a 6-foot-3, 193-pound receiver, was a key piece on two national championship teams as a player and one more as an assistant coach. He had 52 catches for 998 yards and 13 TDs as a senior, averaging 19.2 yards per catch and helped set a standard for future Mount Union receivers Pierre Garcon and Cecil Shorts Jr. – both who reached the NFL – to follow.”

Ironically, Sirianni’s first job in the NFL was as an offensive quality control coach with the Chiefs.

"When it's all said and done, you can look back at your accomplishments," Toledo head coach and former Mount Union WR Jason Candle said. "Winning a Super Bowl is the ultimate thing and ultimate feather in the cap and the pinnacle of the sport, so certainly there is something that Nick will have bragging rights over every Mount Union person ever."

» Read More

SWIMMING
4. Denison Men, Emory Women Top Poll

There’s a new team atop the women’s swimming rankings, while the top-ranked men’s team remains in place in the latest CSCAA Division III rankings.

» Regional Rankings (M). Central: Denison, Chicago, Calvin, CWRU; W-MW-S: Emory, Johns Hopkins, WashU, Pomona-Pitzer; NE-N: NYU, Tufts, Williams, MIT;
NE-S: CMU, TCNJ, Geneseo, RIT.

» Regional Rankings (W). C: Kenyon, Denison, Chicago, Hope; W-MW-S: Emory, Pomona-Pitzer, Claremont-M-S, Johns Hopkins; NE-N: MIT, NYU, Williams, Tufts;
NE-S: Swarthmore, Carnegie Mellon, Gettysburg, Geneseo.

» Complete Polls

NEWS YOU CAN USE
5. Lightning Round ⚡️ 

🏀 Basketball (W). Carthage (16-6) handed No. 2 Illinois Wesleyan (20-1) its first defeat of the season as Marianna Morrissey and Malia Green combined for 47 points in an 87-81 triumph.

🏃‍♂️ Track and Field. They did it again. Wisconsin-La Crosse senior Sam Blaskowski set a DIII indoor record in the 60 meters with a time of 6.62 at the Mark Guthrie Legacy Invitational on Saturday, bettering his own mark by .02 seconds. Not to be outdone, UWL’s Lauren Jarrett did the same, lowering her NCAA mark in the 60 to 7.34.

🤼‍♀️ Wrestling (W). North Central captured the team title at the Quad Cities D3 National Invitational. The Cardinals crowned five individual champions to amass 232.5 points to outdistance runner-up UW-Stevens Point.

🏀 Basketball (M). Albertus Magnus defeated Saint Joseph (Conn.), 76-62, on Saturday, ending the Blue Jays’ 71-game GNAC regular-season winning streak.

🏒 Ice Hockey (M). “The Gridiron Club of Greater Boston has announced that 40 players are semifinalists for the 24th Joe Concannon Award, presented annually to the best American-born NCAA Division II/III hockey player in New England.

🏒 Ice Hockey (W). Southern Maine GK Haley McKim became just the seventh woman in DIII history to record 3,000 saves in a career (3,005). She is the second player to reach the milestone this season, joining Buffalo State’s Jessica Auge.

TRANSACTIONS
6. Comings and Goings

BARD - Brody Smith named head cross country/track and field coach
HAMPDEN-SYDNEY - Chad Wien named assistant baseball coach
SIMPSON - Dani Kohut Lynch named director of volleyball. Ike Papes named head men’s volleyball coach
WESTMINSTER (Pa.) - Mike Blasko named head tennis coach
WILLIAM PEACE - Cameron Davis named head cross country coach

1 THING
7. Plays of the Weekend

• Union’s Matthew Garside beats the buzzer and Vassar

• Bates’ Babacar Pouye on a poster

• Goucher’s Nia Edens from waaay downtown!

• Western New England’s Tim Restall from ¾ court

• Banks are open even from the corner for Marietta’s Darius Carden

• Brock Susko on the backcourt door to beat Chicago

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