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| Like Brandon Yanssens's Purple Raiders, we are now all chasing North Central. Photo by Dan Hunter, d3photography.com |
By Keith McMillan and Greg Thomas
D3football.com
ANNAPOLIS — There they sat, two Mount Union players and their coach, in perhaps a cruel twist.
In the bowels of Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, where the postgame news conferences are held, windows span the length of the room, facing the game field. The Stagg Bowl runners up couldn’t avoid the sight of Cardinals mobbing one another, milling about the field with white “2022 National Champion” T-shirts pulled over their shoulder pads. North Central had won its second Stagg Bowl in the past three. The mighty Purple Raiders had given their all, but were left to gaze at the team celebrating the way they’d have liked to.
Heading into 2023, in a sentence we never thought we’d write, we are all Mount Union.
From the moment in 1993 when Larry Kehres led the Purple Raiders to their first national championship through the one in 2017 when Vince Kehres led them to their 13th, they have been the standard by which Division III success is judged. From 2005 through 2014, UW-Whitewater clashed with Mount Union in all but one Stagg Bowl. The Warhawks’ six wins were seen as, if not a major changing of the guard, a transition to a two-team guard. The Purple Powers were then joined by a third, as Mary Hardin-Baylor broke through after years of knocking and won the Stagg Bowls played in 2016, 2018 and 2021. North Central added a dash of red and became the fourth national powerhouse by making three straight Stagg Bowls.
Mount Union is no longer alone at the top. They’re peering through the glass at the champions like everyone else.
North Central coach Brad Spencer isn’t quite convinced.
“We’re not there yet,” the longtime offensive coordinator said after winning a championship in his first season as head coach. “When you look at those three programs and the history that they have, it’s pretty incredible. ... to be in the last three, it’s a good start.”
But there’s reason to believe the Division III landscape is forever different, and the next North Central could come from various places.
Kevin Bullis retired after UW-Whitewater’s surprising first-round exit, and since Jeff Thorne, who built North Central into champions alongside his father, is no longer the Western Michigan offensive coordinator, it’s fun to speculate. Could Thorne, whose program recruited Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin, slide right in atop a rival powerhouse? Could a man who bled red for so many years go purple and become his old protégé’s rivals? Seems unlikely, but the Warhawks’ job is as marquee an opening as D-III has to offer.
What about Wartburg, which took the lead twice in the fourth quarter at Mount Union in the semifinals? Was Chris Winter at the helm of one special team making a run, similar to Brockport in 2017, with an experienced group where everything from injury luck to late-game heroics broke their way? Or have we seen the beginnings of something sustainable? Rival Central was a threat in 2021 with Gagliardi Trophy-winning quarterback Blaine Hawkins. Should we be considering the ARC winner a threat to go deep each season?
Before UMHB coach Pete Fredenburg retired after the 2021 Stagg Bowl win, he said Trinity was the toughest challenge, and the Tigers took UMHB to the final play again in 2022. They’re on the doorstep, and their opportunity will always come in the first or second round given that they’re trapped on the Texas island with UMHB. That’s a blessing and a curse -- they can’t get to the third round or later because they have to beat UMHB to get there, but if/when they do, they’re championship contenders.
UW-La Crosse has become a Top 10 mainstay and has coaching stability where the rest of the conference doesn’t. Their past five losses are 14-6 at semifinalist Wartburg, 34-31 vs UWW, 34-20 at 2021 runner-up North Central, 13-7 at 2021 semifinalist UWW, and 45-24 at D-II titan Grand Valley State.
Aurora broke through with the playoff upset of UW-Whitewater, and if Coach Don Beebe hangs around and keeps building depth into that roster, they’re going to be difficult to beat. There’s a certain instant credibility that comes with going into Perkins Stadium in the playoffs and winning — and not on weird fluky stuff. They beat UWW straight up. The NACC doesn’t season them for December games, but they’ve also found challenging games out of conference to help with that (St. John’s, North Central).
Then you’ve got a handful of teams that seem to have plateaued in that strata just below the top four. St. John’s, Linfield, Wheaton, Hardin-Simmons. Programs that we recognize as being very good -- better than most -- but maybe not teams that we consider true title contenders.
Could the next team to break through come from further down the ladder, a Johns Hopkins, an Ithaca, a Delaware Valley? Maybe Randolph-Macon, which went 10-0 for the first time in school history and couldn’t hang on to a 14-point fourth quarter lead against the Aggies in Round 2?
That might be a stretch, but an alum can dream.
And isn’t that exactly the point? What North Central has done is cracked the purple stranglehold on the Stagg Bowl, and given all shades of blue, green, brown, gold, yellow and red reason to believe. A team that was known for being bounced in the second round, once by its archrival that it had beaten earlier in the year, finally broke through. It kept on chugging after Gagliardi-winning quarterback Broc Rutter graduated, and again after record-setting wide receiver Andrew Kamienski joined the coaching staff. So don’t think North Central can’t keep it going without Gagliardi-gathering running back Ethan Greenfield.
Remember, the Cardinals were no different than these teams for a lot of years until they finally did the thing at Mount Union in 2019. For most teams in that holding tank just below the very top tier, it’s not that they don’t have the guys, it’s that they just haven’t cleared that one obstacle.
Way back in the day — this is Greg reminiscing here — I was a high jumper for a year in high school. Every day in practice, I struggled to clear what would be the opening height in most meets, until one day I got over it. Weeks of knocking that stupid bar over were done. I didn’t do anything different really, it’s just that one time I actually cleared the bar and after that, I always cleared that height.
I think it’s similar for most of these teams. They have the ability, they just don’t have an experience of actually clearing the bar.
Many D-III schools would find commonalties with North Central, a private college with an enrollment of less than 3,000. And many programs, whether they’re 2-8 or 7-3 or 15-0, can identify with the strong culture of brotherhood, community service and raising men for futures beyond football. That part of North Central is something many of the 240 D-III programs can see their reflection in.
You can’t grow dominant linemen or athletic wide receivers on trees. The coaching acumen earned with time, and the extra development that takes place during deep playoff runs, isn’t easy to replicate. But if you can build the foundation, notch a few wins, and give yourself reason to dream ... well, you’ll still more than likely be among the teams peering through the glass while the champions celebrate.
But one team has to win the Stagg Bowl when it returns to Salem, Virginia to celebrate the 50th playing of the game in 2023.
Why can’t it be yours?