CoSIDA E-Digest April 2013 • 1

y Larry Happl
Central Communications Director
and Sports Information Director
In NCAA Division III, arguably the
most recognizable name for athletics
communications professionals is
not that of a coach, administrator or
athlete. It’s Pat Coleman, this year’s
CoSIDA Jake Wade Award recipient.
The Jake Wade Award is
presented annually by the national
CoSIDA organization to an individual
who has made an outstanding
contribution in the media to the field
of intercollegiate athletics. Jake
Wade was a widely acclaimed sports
journalist and national magazine
contributor for the Charlotte Observer
who later served as sports information
director at the University of North
Carolina from 1946-62.
Most recent Jake Wade Award
winners include Malcolm Moran (2013,
former USA Today, New York Times
and Chicago Tribune award-winning
sports reporter and current college
journalism professional); Lee Corso
(ABC/ESPN Sports); Pam Ward
(ESPN); and CBS Sports’ Tim Brando
and Billy Packer.
For the Division III membership,
Coleman’s D3sports.com family of
websites is as ubiquitous as that fourletter
sports media behemoth out of
Bristol, Conn. And each fall Coleman
is Chris Fowler, Lee Corso and Kirk
Herbstreit rolled into one.
The biggest difference, of
course, is that while many are paid
handsomely for their work in the
national media, Coleman largely does
his work in his free time - sometimes
more than 60 hours a week - after he
returns home from his 40-hour-a-week
day job. And, much like the studentathletes
he covers, the financial
compensation he receives wouldn’t
be enough to jeopardize his amateur
status, if that were a concern.
Yet the sites combined for 8.2
million visits and 35.8 million page
views in 2012. More than 50 percent of
JAKE WADE AWARD
Pat Coleman, D3sports.com
the traffic is generated by D3football.
com and D3hoops.com alone.
“What began as a hobby for Pat
has become the go-to source for
almost every Division III SID,” says
Blair Cash of George Fox (Ore.).
Behind Coleman’s success-beyond
raising sleep deprivation to
an art form - is his intense passion
for Division III, developed while the
Minnesota native was a student at
Catholic University (D.C.), where
he changed his major from music
education to Spanish, with an eye on a
career in foreign service.
“I don’t know how I became a D3
guy, but I am a D3 guy, through and
through,” Coleman says. “I consider it
the highest form of amateur athletics
on the planet. That’s special, and
should be celebrated.”
After graduation, Coleman found
himself designing websites and in
1997 noticed that a site he followed
- then called Division III Basketball
Online - hadn’t been updated in a
while. He called a colleague who
was the site’s developer, Centennial
Conference commissioner Steve
Ulrich, and “about five minutes later”
took over the site himself. He did not
CoSIDA E-Digest April 2013 • 58
imagine the consequences of that
conversation.
“I figured I’d spend a couple hours
a night, two to three nights a week
updating it,” he says. “I soon found
out there’s this massive community
out there that’s really interested in that
information and a lot of SIDs willing
to help. It very quickly turned into an
every-night job.”
D3football.com, now his most
popular site, was added in 1999. More
recently, sites run by others were
developed for baseball, soccer and
hockey.
Coleman stresses the enterprise
couldn’t succeed without the hundreds
of SIDs who post scores and stories to
the site.
“It is very much a collective, like
AP,” Coleman says. “SIDs have the
ability to post directly, without a middle
man, and provide national buzz for
their schools. And we have the ability
to take the most compelling content
out of that and give it more exposure.
“I’m indebted to the SIDs. They
provide the engine behind this.”
The appreciation is mutual.
“Division III sports can be divided
into what came before Pat’s D3sports.
com and what’s come afterwards,”
says Michael Warwick, SID at SUNY-
Geneseo. “And for an SID working at
a Division III school, and fans, friends
and family members who follow
Division III schools, the difference
between the two is as dramatic as the
one between pre-Beatles music and
post-Beatles music.”
Veteran Guilford College (N.C.)
SID Dave Walters agrees.
“Before Pat, we had to hope for
the unlikely ‘Faces in the Crowd’
reference or a rare ESPN moment to
get Division III into the national media,”
he says. “Thanks to his passion,
vision and expertise, folks around the
country can appreciate the efforts and
accomplishments of those students
who play exclusively for the love of the
game.”
Continued on Page 60