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Where it started at Mount Union

ALLIANCE — Long before Mount Union was a small-college football power that captured 13 NCAA Division III titles, the Purple Raiders were struggling to get their first one.

The 1992 season ended with a 29-24 loss at Wisconsin-LaCrosse in the Purple Raiders’ first national semifinal berth.

“It was the was the coldest game in my life,” said linebacker Matt Stamp, a Salem High School graduate. “I was playing special teams and I was covered head to toe and was still freezing.”

He remembers when they plowed the snow off the field, the grass went with it.

“We should have beat that team, but it was very heavy and talented junior class,” Stamp said. “It helped propel them to the next year.”

With strong-armed quarterback Jim Ballard and 12 other starters returning, along with record-setting wide receiver Ed Bubonics after missing the previous season due to a back injury, the Purple Raiders were the preseason favorites in 1993.

After losing to the eventual national champion in their first four playoff appearances, this was the Purple Raiders’ year. Mount Union got over the hump on the way to a 14-0 season and the first of 13 national titles.

“It was fun and exciting,” Stamp said. “As you get older, you come to enjoy it more than when you were on the team. It was always about the next play and the next game. You never thought about the playoffs. You never overlooked an opponent. We were always prepared. We knew what the other team was going to do.

“It was always what we would have to do to get the next win.”

Stamp and West Branch High School graduate Todd Muckleroy were valuable special teams performers and backup linebackers on Mount Union’s 1993 team.

“I can’t believe it has been 25 years ago,” Muckleroy said. “My wife says, ‘Do you remember the names.’ I say, ‘Just like yesterday.

“It never leaves your memory because you were squaring off against them every day and appreciated their talent.”

Larry Kehres was in his eighth season as head coach and was doing things no one else was. His 27 years at Mount Union are unparalleled, posting a 332-24-3 record.

“There’s no mystery why he has so many wins,” Muckleroy said. “Certainly that year he put guys in the right spots and they were successful in the spots he put them.”

“It was interesting,” Stamp said. “Now that I look back on it, they seemed to take a lot of good kids on the verge of D2, but maybe a step slower — they would move them into different positions and they played.”

The Purple Raiders were heading in the right direction.

“Coach Kehres didn’t yell a lot,” Stamp said. “When he got upset, there was a reason for it. He was calm, cool, methodical and always in control. He didn’t get too excited. He had the goal of where the team was going and we followed his lead.”

Most teams today feature the spread offense. Kehres was using it years before it became the thing to do.

“These guys weren’t born when that happened,” Muckleroy said. “A lot of the teams were more run than pass. I think back when I was watching Mount Union as a kid when Ken Wable was there, it was three yards and a cloud of dust.

“Coach Kehres was an innovator. He spread the field out and let the athletes make plays.”

The biggest playmaker was the 6-foot-4 Ballard, who finished the season by passing for 4,555 yards and 54 touchdowns.

“For a Division III team to have a quarterback with the type of arm he had was a luxury,” Stamp said. “He was a special talent. He put the ball places you didn’t think he would put it. He wasn’t going to lose.”

NFL scouts were watching his progress.

“I think if you’re good enough, they’ll find you,” he said before the season.

“He led the offense, but the team was full of guys that had the same approach, like Jim Gresko and Rob Atwood,” Stamp said. “Gresko would get them fired up.”

The Purple Raiders opened the playoffs with a 40-7 win over Allegheny (Pa.) as Ballard passed for 347 yards and five touchdowns.

Albion (Mich.) was up next and was leading 16-14 late in the third quarter, the first time the Purple Raiders trailed in the second half all season. Bubonics scored on a 52-yard pass with 12 seconds left in the third quarter and Gresko ran for 175 yards and three touchdowns in a 30-16 win.

“Albion was good,” Stamp said. “When it came to those tense moments in the game, you didn’t really think about it because we had a methodical approach.

“That goes to Jim Ballard. When we got down, you knew somebody was going to make something happen. Nobody on the team thought we were going to lose to Albion.”

Mount Union hosted St. John’s (Minn.) in the national semifinals. St. John’s had set an NCAA regular-season record by averaging 61.5 points a game.

The Johnnies were held to minus-6 yards of offense in the first half and fell behind 43-0. Ballard threw for 325 yards and a playoff-record eight touchdowns in three quarters of play at muddy Mount Union Stadium during a 56-8 win.

Mount Union made travel plans for its first national title appearance in Salem, Va.

“I remember going to Salem, Virginia, and thinking it was going to be 70 degrees,” Muckleroy said.

It wasn’t. The Stagg Bowl was played in snow squalls, 35 mile per hour wind and single-digit wind chills.

The opponent was Rowan (N.J.), which had nine starters who transferred from Division I programs.

“They were big and good,” Stamp said. “We had really good players who always seemed to step up at the right time. Guys like Jim Ballard and Ed Bubonics always stepped up when you needed them to.”

Mount Union trailed in the fourth quarter for the first time that season, but Ballard completed 9 of 11 passes for 128 of his 387 yards passing to give the Purple Raiders a 34-24 and their first national title.

“Rowan had the best athletes, but we had the best team,” Kehres remarked.

“I think about some of those guys I was on the field with and some of the skill,” Muckleroy said. “Back in 1993, they didn’t have the skill they do now.”

The Purple Raiders returned to Alliance to a hero’s welcome.

“It was something that had never been done before at Mount Union,” Stamp said. “We flew back to Akron and drove through Alliance with a police escort. That was at 1 a.m. and people were lining the streets holding signs and banners.”

There have been 12 more national titles since, including last season, but the 1993 Purple Raiders are the only ones who hold the first trophy.

“A lot of people told me this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” Larry Kehres said after the game. “If I thought it was, then I guess I’d quit.”

“You knew that when they got that first national championship under their belt, they would get more because they would attract more athletes,” Muckleroy said. “I knew it was just the start.”

Title defense

Stamp was a starting linebacker the next season as a senior. The Purple Raiders had holes to fill, but still went 10-2 and reached the second round of the playoffs. That 1994 season is the last time Mount Union didn’t advance to the national semifinals.

“That was difficult, not for me, but they were young on the offensive side of the ball,” Stamp said. “We graduated everybody. The defense had a lot of experience.

“You started seeing those young kids growing up. If we could have got past (eventual champion) Albion, we would have won another (national title.)”

Notes

• Stamp, now 45 years old, is a partner for an accountant firm, CBQ Partners, in Columbus.

“I still donate to the school and the program,” he said. “It was a good experience. I’m proud of the school.”

He attends football game there on occasion.

“Mount Union has a bigger brand because it has been on ESPN so many years,” Stamp said. “When you tell them where you went to school, they ask, “Did you play football?’ And I say yes. It starts a conversation.”

• Muckleroy took classes at the University of Akron his first year of college, but missed football and transferred to Mount Union.

“I went back to Akron the next season,” Muckleroy said. “Now being a coach, you have a lot of appreciation for what it really is to be a college athlete. I lived it one year. It was a lot, keeping up with your studies and the social scene. It was probably a little bit too much for me.”

His one college football season in 1993 is one he will never forget.

“When you’re in your 40s, you think about some of the things you could have done in more than one year,” Muckleroy said. “It was a blip in time.”

He has no regrets, though.

“It’s kind of interesting how life plays out,” he said. “One of the first classes I took when went back to Akron, as fate would have it, I would meet my wife to be.”

Muckleroy is now the head boys basketball coach at Canfield High School.

“I have the ring (from the championship team). That’s really about it,” he said. “I keep it in my basketball office. I think it shows the importance of you do the right thing … don’t take it for granted when it’s right in front of you.”

• Current Mount Union head coach Vince Kehres was a freshman defensive lineman when Stamp was a senior.

“He’s a little bit like his dad, more action than talk,” Stamp said. “He’s super good with kids and coaching. I would send my kids to play for him.”

Vince Kehres is 70-4 in five seasons as head coach.

• Stamp and his sons, entering grades 6, 9 and 11 at Olentangy Liberty High School, visited the Mount Union campus a few weeks ago. “We went to the bookstore and got some sweatshirts and stuff,” he said.

• Stamp said he still has a Stagg Bowl banner signed by members of the 1993 championship team and his jerseys from Mount Union and Salem High School are hanging in the basement.

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