😁 Happy Thursday.

📆 What’s Happening Today. The DIII Membership Committee meets today, while the joint meeting between the NADIIIAA/DIIICA executive committees concludes.

🔈 What We’re Hearing. “One thing that I learned at DePauw is that you can learn as much as you want or as little as you want. I wanted to know everything about everything.” - Bill Rasmussen

🎶 Your Morning Pick Me Up. Powersurge. Jim Long

“Bill Rasmussen, the founder of ESPN and a 1954 graduate of DePauw University who pushed to get the legendary Monon Bell football game on national TV, died Tuesday after a battle with Parkinson's disease. Rasmussen was 93.

Rasmussen's death comes 48 years and two days after the moment he blurted out a really crazy idea that not only changed his life, but entirely shifted the way people consume television, launching the 24-hour news cycle.”

» How It Started. “Rasmussen was a 45-year-old former sports broadcaster and public relations executive who had been fired three months before from his job as communications director for the New England Whalers of the World Hockey Association. He was looking for a new way to blend his love of sports with technology."So, he and his son were sitting in traffic and stuck and just brainstorming and spitballing," says Ken Owen, former anchor at WRTV and WISH-TV and a friend of Rasmussen. "And Bill came up with the idea of 24-hour-a-day sports.”

» DIII Connection. “After high school, Rasmussen passed up an invitation to a minor league affiliate of the Detroit Tigers and headed to Greencastle, Ind., to attend DePauw University where he was a Rector Scholar majoring in economics and on the baseball team.”

» Quotable. "Bill was a tremendous representative of DePauw,” said Rasmussen’s long-time friend Bill Wagner, assistant athletics director for communications. "His entrepreneurial spirit and vision made the world better. His positive attitude was unmatched and lifted everyone around him. I will miss his friendship. We lost a true legend and pioneer."

» What They’re Saying. "Bill was a remarkable man — a visionary and an innovator who conceived the idea of a network entirely devoted to sports," ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro said in a statement announcing Rasmussen's death. "Quite simply, none of us would be here today if it wasn’t for Bill’s passion and all the hard work and entrepreneurial spirit he put into building ESPN in the late 1970s."

» The Final Word. “After leaving DePauw, Rasmussen never forgot the university. He came back often to help, to speak, to talk to students, to champion the school, and that included his beloved Monon Bell football game between DePauw and Wabash. In 1977, with Rasmussen's encouragement, ABC aired the Monon Bell as a regional broadcast. In 1979, the same year ESPN launched, CBS' Charles Kuralt did a feature on the game during his "Sunday Morning" show. It never failed. If DePauw needed Rasmussen, he was there.”

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Can a NESCAC member win a third consecutive men’s national title?

That’s the question as the 2026 season kicks off on September 1. Tufts won the national crown a year ago with a 2-1 overtime win against Trinity (Texas). The previous season, Amherst captured the national final in PKs versus Connecticut College. And it was the Camels that raised the trophy after winning the 2021 title match.

» Players to Watch. Ryan Bechtel (M, Sr., St. Olaf); Kasdan Blattman (M, Sr., Macalester); Ben Brody (D, Sr., Edgewood); Parker Burke (F, Jr., Wilmington); Alex Depperschmidt (D, Sr., Mount Union); Noah Gray (F, Sr., Grove City); Colton Hudson (D, Sr., Grove City); Quentin Gomez (D, Sr., Washington U.); Christian Hodges (GK, So., Augsburg); Brady Leitner (F, Jr., Hobart); Samuel Theiss (F, Sr., Trinity TX); Matt Torrell (M, Jr., Calvin); Gael Vera (F, Jr., Wheaton MA)

» Returning Leading Goal Scorers. Ronan O’Connor (Jr., Saint John’s), 20; Nickolas Santana (Jr., Western Connecticut), 19; Mateo Secaira (So., Illinois Tech), 18; Jefferson Lopez Coreas (Jr., Marymount), 17; Brody Calvert (Sr., Massachusetts Maritime), 16; Erick Cortes (Sr., Rutgers-Newark), 16; Shafi Ibrahim (So., Thomas), 16; David Ivarsson (Sr., Thomas), 17.

» Career Goal Scoring Leaders. Roberto Velasquez-Osorio (Sr., Manhattanville), 38; Parker Burke (Jr., Wilmington), 36; Brody Calvert (Sr., Mass. Maritime), 35; Erick Cortes (Sr., Rutgers-Newark), 35; Davis Knight (Sr., Piedmont), 33.

» Winningest Active Coaches. Paul McGinlay (Trinity TX), 591-98-48; Jon Anderson (Babson), 482-209-98; Erick Baumann (Dominican), 470-127-54; Pepe Fernandez (Maryville), 430-199-58; Lenny Armuth (Drew), 416-162-63.

stats provided by NCAA Stats

“For the first time, the finals of all three NCAA Women’s Lacrosse Championships will be held at one site.

Towson, which is in the Baltimore metropolitan area, will host the 2027 championships at Johnny Unitas Stadium May 28-30.

Subaru Park, the home of the Philadelphia Union MLS franchise, will host the 2028 championships. Subaru Park was originally set to host the 2027 NCAA Women’s Lacrosse Championships, but a scheduling conflict made the facility unavailable.”

» Quotable. “We are thrilled that the NCAA will be hosting a joint Division I, II and III Women’s Lacrosse Championship in 2027 and 2028. All three committees have the utmost confidence in the Towson University staff and the city of Baltimore to successfully host the first-ever joint NCAA Women’s Lacrosse Championships.” - Erica Adams, Bridgewater State, DIII committee chair.”

» What You Need to Know. “The format for next year will be the Division I semifinals being played Friday, May 28, followed by the Division II and Division III national title games Saturday, May 29. The Division I championship game will be Sunday, May 30.”

» Tuition. “Universities of Wisconsin leaders announced the system will freeze tuition for two years, starting in fall 2027, provided the state “invests $190 million to support the cost of the freeze and other operating needs that preserve educational quality,” according to a news release. For two years after that, the system will commit to keeping tuition raises at or below the rate of inflation.”

» Finances. “Anna Maria College plans to sell its nursing program for $1.1 million to nearby Assumption University next month, according to court documents filed Monday. Anna Maria closed this year following its spring term due to financial duress and filed for bankruptcy in late June to pay off its debts and liquidate its assets.”

» Government. “The U.S. Department of Education released a proposed rule Wednesday to overhaul the accreditation system to carry out key pillars of the Trump administration’s higher education policy agenda. Education Department officials said the overhaul would “break up entrenched accreditation monopolies.” They accused a small group of traditional accreditors of driving up college costs and pushing ideological agendas on campus.”

» Rankings. “The University of the South, also known as Sewanee, has been ranked second in the Princeton Review's category for most beautiful college campus.”

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