Team of the '90s : Division III Mount Union, the Best Team You've Never Heard of, Has Won Four National Titles and Lost Only Six Games This Decade

By CHRIS DUFRESNE

Sept. 6, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

ALLIANCE, Ohio —

It is tough to gauge precisely how Mount Union became the dominant college football program of the 1990s, how its point man, Larry Kehres, passed Notre Dame’s Knute Rockne to become the winningest coach, in terms of percentage, in history, or how the Purple Raiders have won three consecutive Division III national titles and 42 straight games, five shy of Oklahoma’s NCAA record.

Kehres, though, has the short answer. On a sizzling Tuesday afternoon in late July, another gridiron camp on the front burner, the 14th-year coach sits in his trophy-stuffed office and ponders the challenges ahead.

It won’t be long before Kehres rummages through a storage shed to extricate pieces of the seven-man blocking sled he reassembles each August.

Kehres doesn’t want to think of the helmet fittings, the shortage of shoulder pads, the chin straps required for the 150 incoming chins.

Mount Union’s secret weapon?

“I don’t think we could have a season without our student equipment manager,” Kehres says, seriously. “We’d have to forfeit.”

The rest of Division III ought to arrange an equipment kid kidnapping.

For it is here, in this working-class town east of Canton, at a red-bricked private college of 2,000 students, that a do-it-yourself dynasty has been unearthed.

The legacy exists almost in stealth--few fans, little fanfare--the scope of accomplishment squashed under the thumb of major college football.

There is no denying the fundamental gap between giant and junior, the quantum leap from Ohio State’s expansive stadium, the “Horseshoe,” to 5,000-seat Mount Union Stadium, the “Shoehorn.”

There is no arguing the quarterback, Gary Smeck, would rather be under center in Columbus.

“I think it would be neat to be at Ohio State, go play at Ann Arbor, and get booed,” Smeck says. “That’s what you want to play for. We get booed places, but by 100,000 people?”

There is no cooking of books to make the national title payout at the Division III Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl (lodging, expenses) stack up against this year’s Sugar Bowl (lodging, $13 million per school).

There is also no denying: Football is football, wins are wins, titles are titles and records are records.

Or that Mount Union is rewriting history.

In the 1990s, the Purple Raiders have won four national titles with an aggregate record of 108-6-1, a staggering winning percentage of .943, tops in college football.

The school is 54-1 since 1995.

Mount Union last lost Dec. 2, 1995, a 20-17 defeat by Wisconsin La Crosse in the Division III national semifinals. The Purple Raiders have advanced to the playoffs 10 times under Kehres and have either won the title or lost to the eventual champion.

Kehres, 49, has won more national titles than Steve Spurrier, Bobby Bowden and Lou Holtz combined and, late last year, eclipsed another legend when he moved decimal points ahead of Rockne in winning percentage.

So what’s wrong with this NCAA football records page picture?

1. Larry Kehres, Mount Union, .889 (138-16-3).

2. Knute Rockne, Notre Dame, .881 (105-12-5).

3. Frank Leahy, Notre Dame, .864 (107-13-9).

Kehres’ spot atop this list is not widely known because Kehres wants it that way.

“It would be foolish for me to comment on that,” he says. “It’s one of those percentage things. As soon as we lose two games, I’m back in third or fourth place. Since I’m still coaching, I don’t like to talk much about it.”

You say false humility?

Kehres insisted the Rockne item not be included in his media guide bio, although local papers got wind of it last season after the item appeared in the team’s game notes.

Kehres isn’t one for back slaps.

“Larry gives me a hard time,” Michael De Matteis, the school’s sports information director, says. “I say ‘Larry, don’t win so many games.’ ”

It was a small P.R. victory that this year’s media guide does include mention of Mount Union’s assault on college football’s most hallowed record: Oklahoma’s 47-game winning streak under coach Bud Wilkinson from 1953 to ’57.

At 42 and counting, Mount Union is knocking on Bud’s door.

Chances?

Last year was supposed to be the rebuilding phase, the Purple Raiders replacing 12 starters, including quarterback Bill Borchert, who started 53 games and led the team to consecutive titles.

But Smeck, a sophomore, stepped in and rallied the new edition to another Ohio Athletic Conference title and 14-0 mark, mounting six come-from-behind wins.

It was Kehres’ most satisfying year.

“They achieved more than what was realistic to expect,” he said of his team.

Not that it wasn’t hairy at times.

Albion College in Michigan almost halted the streak in the first round of the 1998 playoffs, Mount Union’s 21-19 victory preserved when the Albion kicker pushed a 34-yard field-goal try wide right in the final seconds.

With seven starters back on offense and five returners on defense, Mount Union is well-positioned to make a run at a fourth-consecutive title and Oklahoma’s vaunted streak.

If all breaks right, Mount Union will break Oklahoma’s mark on Oct. 16, at home, against Otterbein College.

No surprise, Kehres doesn’t like talking about Oklahoma, either.

For one thing, Mount Union has a tough Sept. 11 home opener against . . . gulp, Albion, those wannabe streak busters.

For another, Kehres thinks perspective is important.

“I try to talk with the players about accomplishments within Division III,” he says. “No matter how many games we win, I don’t think you can compare us to Oklahoma. It’s two totally different things.

“I don’t want to demean the significance, but I don’t think it’s up to me to talk about it.”

“And,” Kehres adds. “we might not beat Albion.”

Career Capers

Funny how life works.

Larry Kehres and Dom Capers were teammates at Mount Union in the early 1970s. Kehres, a quarterback, still holds the school record for longest touchdown pass: 95 yards.

Of the two coaching prospects, Capers was the NFL star gazer.

“That was Dom’s goal,” Kehres says. “He was more goal oriented. My first goal, I wanted Mount Union to be good.”

Capers left on a fast track that landed him the head-coaching job of the expansion Carolina Panthers.

Kehres ventured as far off as Bowling Green, serving as a graduate assistant for one season, then coached on the high school level before returning to Mount Union for good in 1974. After 11 years as an assistant, he became head coach in 1986.

Success brought opportunity, but Kehres has stayed put. Last year he was offered, and turned down, the Kent job.

“I couldn’t give up a job like this for that job,” he says. “You can move forward in your own job. I’ve learned how to be a better coach. Do I dream of things like that? Certainly. Am I motivated to do things to land a job? No. I’ve always been a cautious person.”

Capers didn’t last at Carolina.

Kehres, meanwhile, rubs records with Rockne.

Ohio Players

How does Mount Union keep it up, year after year?

Location, location, location.

Ohio is a hotbed for talent, and Mount Union sits in its epicenter--an hour southeast of Cleveland, hour and a half west of Pittsburgh, minutes from the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the football factory town of Massillon.

Even after Ohio State strip-mines the state of talent, there are enough nuggets left to satisfy a small-college powerhouse.

Mount Union can’t offer much. There are no scholarships, no in-home visits by coaches, and tuition at the private college, founded by the United Methodists in 1846, is roughly $19,000 a year.

“This is a little more what college football should be,” Kehres admits.

In-state players who can’t make the Division I cut flock to Mount Union to play for Kehres. If you show up, you make the team--the Purple Raiders have dressed as many as 180 players for homecoming games.

Players are fundamentally sound, benefactors of solid teaching. Miami of Ohio may be known as the “cradle of coaches,” but the state’s high school mentors share adjoining cribs.

With only two paid assistants, Kehres stocks his staff with top-notch volunteers, most of them retired.

“Our running backs coach, he’s got a stadium named after him,” Smeck says of Rudy Sharkey, an Ohio prep coaching legend. “Coach always teases that he’s the only living guy he knows with a stadium named after him.”

Jim Corrigall, fired as Kent coach in 1997 with time left on his contract, asked Kehres if he could coach Mount Union’s linebackers last season. Kehres, who rejected the job Corrigall lost, said sure.

There’s no telling how long Mount Union can extend this legacy.

The streak will end someday, some way, somewhere.

Then again. . .

“Maybe,” Kehres says with a grin, “it won’t happen.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Winningest Teams of the ‘90s (with division), through 1998

1. Mount Union (III)

108-6-1, .943

2. Williams (III)

63-7-2, .889

3. Florida State (I-A)

97-13-0, .882