Welcome Back, D2 Fans
July 31st, 2024 4:00pm
Welcome back, D2 fans. I know, you never really went anywhere, but as the calendar turns over to August, our attention shifts to the fall football season and our community comes back together. We may be in mid-summer, but before we know it, teams will be reporting for camp and the 2024 football season will be just days away. As always, a new season brings many changes. This year Division II will have new members, new conference affiliations, new rules, plenty of new coaches and, for the first time ever, a 12-week schedule. We’re going to touch on all of those things in the coming weeks but as we prepare to kick off a new season, I want to tell you about a few things that will be different at D2football.com.
Earlier this year, our founder and visionary, Brandon Misener, suffered a health emergency that has kept him hospitalized since early May. We’re pleased to say that he is making progress in his recovery but it will be a long and difficult journey. We’re hopeful there will be ways for Brandon to contribute to our efforts this fall as this site has been his passion for nearly 25 years, but our goal is to allow him to devote all his energy to rehabilitation.
His absence will be hard for us. Brandon covered a lot of ground for D2 and making up for that is nearly impossible. As I am sure most of you know, none of us do this professionally. We all work full-time, demanding jobs and D2 is something we do in our leisure time. We plan to work as hard as we can to maintain “business as usual” but not having Brandon at full capacity means a few things will be different. Before the season kicks off, we want to be fully transparent about a few things we know.
First, rest assured that Inside D2Football will continue. We will be live on Sunday nights at our normal timeslot (8pm eastern / 7pm central) beginning on August 18. The format of the show and the things we cover won’t change much. Visually, you’ll notice some differences because Brandon did nearly all of the graphics and video editing as well as coordinating guests. We have some ideas for maintaining production value but it will be a little different. We’ve all been doing shows and podcasts for a few years so we’re not rookies, but please forgive us if anything is a little clumsy in the opening weeks of the season.
The Elite 100 watch list will be our first in-house publication of the new season and you can look for it in the first week of August. The watch list represents 100 players that we expect to be under consideration for our Elite 100 team that will be announced after the season. The Elite 100 list is a collaborative effort, but Matt Witwicki did nearly all of the heavy lifting with research and player vetting. I cannot thank him enough for the hours he put into compiling the list so that we can recognize these very deserving players.
The preseason Top 25 will be released in early August. Once the season starts, The updated poll will be released weekly on Mondays…at least that’s what we’re hoping for. Until we get through a couple of rounds, we can’t set an expectation on timing. Tallying the votes and creating the updated poll was something Brandon facilitated solo so we have a lot of things to figure out.
Players of the week will be announced on Tuesday mornings, assuming all conferences post their players of the week by Monday afternoon.
Columns and podcasts from our crew of in-house talent will be published Tuesday-Friday. I am pleased to say that with one exception, everyone that was with us last year will continue for 2024. We do not have a columnist for every league. I wish we’d had opportunities to recruit new writers but given all of the things we’ve been scrambling to cover, we decided to maintain what we have rather than attempt expansion and potentially spread ourselves even thinner.
Our MIAA audience will know that Brandon picked up coverage of the MIAA early last year due to a sudden and unplanned vacancy. That will not continue, however, we do have plans in place. Our own Matt Witwicki will host an MIAA weekly podcast with Jon Dykstra, sports editor of the Maryville Forum, providing expert knowledge and commentary.
The national preview column will be different this year. It takes many hours to research, prepare and write that column each week and with the extra work I’m picking up, I’ll have less time available. We’re talking about some ideas for continuing national coverage in a podcast format, but nothing is finalized yet. It may evolve as we go and I can only ask for your patience and understanding as we figure out what is feasible.
Scores…it pains me to say it, but as of now, we are planning to discontinue real-time score updates on the website. We love the value of having the most current, live scoreboard you could find, but it is a massive time commitment. It requires having at least one person (usually more) anchored to a desk from noon to midnight every Saturday chasing and updating scores. Brandon did that more Saturdays than he would care to admit. Unfortunately, it is a very tedious task and also prevents a person from actually watching games. If we had a budget to pay three or four people to do it every weekend, we would. But that is not our reality. We hope to maintain a composite schedule on the website and update all final scores, but do not have plans for real-time updates.
We sincerely hope that everyone in our community enjoys the remainder of the summer and we hope you are as eager for the new season as we are. It’s been tough to figure out how to keep this machine working, but it's worth it and we can’t wait to see on Sunday nights to talk some D2 Football. In the mean time, it would mean a lot to us if you would consider making a contribution to the GoFundMe campaign established to assist Brandon and his family. We would love to hit the goal before the start of the season. Many of you have aleady donated generously and for that, we are extremely grateful.
Chuck Bitner
Sr. Editor and National Columnist
