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ALLIANCE -- Players come and go, but Mount Union football is always the head of the class in the Ohio Athletic Conference.
Mount Union, winners of 35 of the last 36 OAC titles, was picked to win another in 2026 by the league’s head coaches.
The Purple Raiders received eight of nine first-place votes and collected 64 points, followed by Baldwin Wallace with 54 points. Ohio Northern finished third with 53 points and the final first-place vote, followed by Heidelberg in fourth (43 points), Marietta fifth (32), Muskingum sixth (31), Capital seventh (21), Wilmington eight (18) and Otterbein ninth (8). Head coaches do not vote for their team in the balloting.
Mount Union is coming off an 11-1 season, the 30th straight season the Purple Raiders won at least 11 games.
They lost 32 lettermen, including 15 starters from last year’s team, but still should be at the top and in the hunt for a 14th NCAA Division III national championship.
“I think it is a testament to our program,” Mount Union head coach Geoff Dartt said. “We have been able to find a great number of talented kids who want to attend Mount Union.”
Dartt is 50-4 in four seasons as head coach, including two NCAA Division III national title game appearances.
Mount Union has won 84 regular-season games in a row and hasn’t lost an OAC game since November 2016.
One of the returning starters is senior right tackle Mitch Coffee, who was an All-Ohioan at West Branch High School.
The third-ranked Purple Raiders start their 2025 season with at fifth-ranked Wheaton College in Illinois at 2 p.m. next Saturday, Sept. 5.