CLAREMONT, Calif. -- D3football.com spent a fair amount of time in SCIAC country this past weekend, with people in attendance at four games, including photo galleries. But while Linfield-Occidental was the game with the biggest national significance, a contest closer to the other end of the Division III spectrum was the most entertaining. That was the Lewis & Clark/Pomona-Pitzer game, which was won by Pomona-Pitzer 33-28 on its last possession of the game, three blocks away from a 14-6 game in which Claremont-Mudd-Scripps beat Puget Sound.

Pomona-Pitzer coach Roger Caron spoke with D3football.com executive editor Pat Coleman after the game. Before he could even ask a question, Caron offered the following observation:

RC: This was a fun game. This was Division III at its best. Two academic outfits going at it.

D3: Did you feel like you guys executed your offense well? This was a far better offensive performance than the game down the street.
RC: Jake (Caron, the quarterback) is our heart and soul. He was ill today. Usually we want to run the option, we're going to get him in the flank on play-action. Today he just stood in the pocket. He's really good about scrambling and finding people, we practice that all the time. I was really worried because with him ill, and Colin Regan, our best receiver, really not playing today … a place like this, we're one deep. But R.J. (Robert Maki) picked it up a notch and Jake played with some courage.

D3: There were some tense moments down the stretch for your defense, say, one linebacker in particular (he shouted something unprintable at an assistant coach from the field, easily heard by the crowd).
RC: Same thing, we had a couple guys sick. Our best inside backer tried to play but he had to come out, he was so sick. I think that flight back from Puget Sound, that airplane, I think a bunch of our guys picked something up. We were sluggish all week and not nearly as sharp as we were a week ago. Fortunately, we were able to hang in there.

D3: What's it like coaching Jake?
RC: It's kind of fun, coaching your own son, first of all. How many college coaches get to coach their son? And two, having him as quarterback is fun. He's a competitor, you know, we argue all the time, he's screaming at me, I'm screaming at him. It's a nice relationship. It's the way it's supposed to be. He doesn't get any favoritism, in fact, he gets chewed out a lot worse than anyone else, because you can never have that appearance of favoritism. But the kid's a major league player. He's a great player and he's done a great job – I'm more proud of him for what he's done in the classroom. A lot of people will say that's bull, but that's not bull – if you knew where he came from academically you would know what I was talking about. I'm very proud of him playing hard today because he was very sick.

D3: Does Jake get any extra freedom over the offense?
RC: Yeah, because he's a three-year starter, he's known the offense since he was a little kid. So when I say something and he says no, there's usually a reason he's saying no and well, I won't argue with him and we'll move on to the next play. Like today he felt so crappy that we'd wanted to do a lot of sprint-out because they like to bring inside linebacker pressure. I wanted to get him on the flank but he was just so ill that we couldn't do it. We were going to run a lot of option. We started the game running some option and had some nice plays but he said, 'I can't do that anymore.'

D3: And you took a year's sabbatical a few years ago and went out and coached him in high school, right?
RC: I coached him in high school. I coached him a little bit in Pop Warner. I coached him in Pop Warner because, no offense to the Pop Warner coaches but this big, tall talented kid, they didn't know what to do with him. Pop Warner coaches at times are old school and how many up-downs you can do is more important than learning how to play football.

D3: And you were doing that at the same time you were coaching here?
RC: Yeah. I think a parent should spend as much time with their kids as they can, and then when they go off, they go off and there's no regrets. A lot of parents look back and say, I wish I spent more time with my kids. I know I won't say that.

D3: Well, you've still got a year left, 16 more games or so.
RC: Yeah. It's just a pleasure working with him because he can just make all the plays. He's just a great kid.

D3: And he has a high school teammate who he seems to be connecting pretty well with still, it seems, Robert Maki.
RC: Yeah. He's a kid who went out to Connecticut with Jake for two years, to private school. I see him as my surrogate son. I've known him since he was 5.

D3: Right. Because his dad died while they were out there.
RC: His dad died, and I feel like R.J. can always come to me for anything. He's an amazing kid. He's small, he's not all that fast, but he just wins games. He's a funny kid. He wins games. He's an amazing kid. And Pomona, I think, is fortunate to have him. He is what I would like to think the school should be all about. Great kid, good student, does lots of stuff for the community, and if we had a hundred more R.J.s I think we'd win a lot more games.

D3: Going 2-0 is a pretty good start for you. What's the conference season look like for you guys?
RC: Well, we have Chapman coming up, and they're still non-conference. But I don't think they've been as good as they've been and we're a little better, so we expect to be competitive. But then it's Murderer's Row for us. We're running into teams, every team's got a hundred players. As you saw, we have about 45. That's when we start to struggle. But if we stay healthy, we've been really lucky and haven't lost a kid, if we can stay healthy, we can battle. We're razor-thin, if Jake goes down or R.J.

D3: I was impressed that Lewis and Clark's starting quarterback went down and they had somebody else.
RC: He's a player, he's a good kid. Good player in high school. I think that freshman is going to be a good player because he's quick. I think they're doing a good job at Lewis and Clark.

D3: Are you running across them recruiting more because Chris Sulages is a Southern California guy?
RC: Sometimes. The Pomona kid is a different kid. The Pomona kid is looking at Stanford, the Ivies. But we will with Pitzer. Lewis and Clark and Pitzer will be looking for the same kid, generally speaking.

D3: How does that work, recruiting to two different academic institutions?
RC: You're recruiting two different colleges.

D3: So do you look at a kid, and decide he's going to be a Pitzer guy or he's going to be a Pomona guy?
RC: You look at his GPA, the kind of classes he's taking, his SAT and his ACT, we've already made the decision.

D3: What's the difference?
RC: Pomona, we're looking at 2000 or better on the SAT, 30 or better on the ACT, better than a 4.0 with AP and honors classes.

D3: That's all.
RC: Yeah, that's all. There are a lot of kids like that. And Pitzer, we're looking at a 3.5, 1700 on the SATs, 25 ACT. Still a really good kid, but there's so few of the other kids, because if he's really good, obviously, he's going to the Ivies. If he's really, really good, he's going to Stanford.

D3: What's your breakdown on your roster between Pomona and Pitzer?
RC: Two-thirds Pomona, one-third Pitzer. Maybe not quite that wide, because Pomona's almost twice as big as Pitzer. That's how we have to break it down initially. And that's not hard and fast, but if someone said, make a general statement, that's what it would be. The kid's got 1600 on the SAT, great kid, 3.5, applying to Pomona is a waste of his time. So we struggle on.

From the battle of the quarterback draws to the battle of Top 25 teams, there were some telling results in the games between the SCIAC and the Northwest Conference this past week.

Pat Coleman went out to the coast and saw three of those games personally, splitting time between the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps/Puget Sound game and the just as evenly battled but significantly more entertaining Pomona-Pitzer/Lewis and Clark game before closing the night with Occidental-Linfield.

The Claremont and Pomona stadiums are so close together, at least three separate groups of Lewis & Clark fans stopped at the other game, thinking they had found the stadium.

After the game, Pat Coleman spoke with Pomona-Pitzer coach Roger Caron about a wide range of subjects, including recruiting players to two different schools at the same time, coaching his son, the quarterback and his team's 2-0 start.