Mount Union's Larry Kehres Selected Ohio Coach of the Year Record Eighth Time
Monday, January 30th 2012 @ 11:27 PM
(Mark Zindar/Columbus Dispatch) In 1999, Mount Union's all-divisions college record for most consecutive victories ended at 54 in a loss to Rowan in an NCAA Division III semifinal.
A reporter tried repeatedly without success to get Raiders coach Larry Kehres to comment about the anguish and disappointment.
What will Mount Union learn from this defeat, the reporter asked?
Without hesitation, Kehres said in a calm voice, "Grace and humility."
The Raiders have been the symbol of excellence in small-college football, having won 10 national championships, as well as owning the two longest winning streaks in any division (54 and 55 games) and the longest regular-season winning streak in any division (110 games). Through it all, Kehres has remained the same humble, grounded man who was hired as coach at his alma mater 26 years ago.
"My father does practice what he preaches, and that is being consistent in everything you do and rolling up your sleeves every Monday and going back to work," said Vince Kehres, the team's defensive coordinator. "You always know what to expect from him. We talk about grinding out good days, and he has done that for a long time."
Larry Kehres, 62, was voted The Dispatch Ohio College Football Coach of the Year for a record eighth time by his peers. He was tied for the most awards with former Youngstown State and Ohio State coach Jim Tressel.
Mount Union won a 20th straight Ohio Athletic Conference championship this past season and finished with a 14-1 record after a third straight loss to Wisconsin-Whitewater in the national championship game.
Otterbein coach Joe Loth said Kehres ranks among the greatest coaches in the sport's history.
"Larry Kehres never walks into the room like he owns the place, but he walks into the room the smartest person," Loth said. "He is sharp. He does such a great job in every facet of football and academics. Larry is the benchmark.
"Coach Kehres has done something that will never be duplicated in the history of college football with the 10 championships. That won't ever be done — ever. You look at those two winning streaks, and what is astonishing is, they were back-to-back. One streak ended and another began."
Mount Union is so successful that anything less than a national championship is looked upon as a disappointment by its players and fans.
Defensive tackle Chris Favazzo, a St. Charles graduate from Blacklick, said he had an empty feeling on the bus ride home from the loss to Wisconsin-Whitewater in the 2010 national championship game.
"A 14-1 record sounded so bad," he said. "It was almost as if the rest of the season didn't matter."
Favazzo has said that Kehres is successful because the players absorb everything he says.
"Coach is so organized," he said. "Every single minute on the practice field and meetings is accounted for. We go into games so prepared that all we have to do is play like we've been coached."
A major part of the Mount Union system, Vince Kehres said, is not letting emotions run too high or too low.
"Coach does a good job of taking emotions out of the game," he said. "He does want someone who is passionate about football, but we try to have few peaks and valleys. We don't want to set ourselves up for a drop-off. We don't have a lot of rules, but you must follow the few that we have. You act like a man and we treat you like a man."
mznidar@dispatch.com
Voting results
Results of balloting for The Dispatch
Ohio College Football Coach of the Year award. First-place votes are worth three points, second-place votes two points and third-place votes one point (not all coaches voted for three coaches; first-place votes in parentheses):
COACH, TEAM PTS
Larry Kehres, Mount Union (8) 38
Butch Jones, Cincinnati (7) 25
Frank Solich, Ohio University (4) 18
Mike Hallett, Heidelberg (3) 15
Rob Keys, Findlay 5
Bill Conley, Ohio Dominican (1) 4
Darrell Hazell, Kent State 4
Greg Debeljak, Case Western Reserve (1) 3
John Snell, Baldwin-Wallace 2
Tim Beckman, Toledo 2
David Barr, Urbana 1
Luke Fickell, Ohio State 1
Mind That Your Football Program Matters
Monday, January 9th 2012 @ 3:27 PM
(Mike Podoll, Associate Publisher/Editor-In-chief - AFCA) When Larry Kehres led the University of Mount Union to the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl victory in 1993, which gave the Raiders their first NCAA Division III National Championship in front of a nationally televised audience, the game's color commentator made a rousing statement as the final seconds ticked off the clock, emphatically stating, "And the tiny school in Alliance, Ohio, with an enrollment of 1,000 students ... has just won the national championship!"
Eighteen years later, with more than 300 gridiron victories and 10 national championships under Kehres' belt, the school in Alliance, Ohio, isn't exactly tiny these days. Today, enrollment hovers around 2,200 students, which is a 220% rise in school numbers since Kehres' football program first put its stamp on the national college football landscape.
Looking at college tuition and expenses data for Mount Union as published by the CollegeData.com (the site is run by 1st Financial Bank USA), the difference between 2011 school enrollment numbers of 2,200 as compared to the 1,000-student enrollment in 1993, represents a difference of approximately $42 million more in total gross revenue. Furthermore, those numbers are strictly enrollment related and tied to student tuition and expenses. They do not factor in revenue generated by the football program or financial help the school receives from alumni and boosters. In other words, Mount Union's success is a big deal in every sense of the word.
It's impossible to quantify just what sort of impact that Mount Union's success on the football field – and the national exposure it derives from being an annual college football powerhouse – has had on school enrollment. Or whether there is a tangible correlation between winning football championships and the growth in student numbers. In fact, it would be completely unscientific and inaccurate to attach a "cause-and-effect label" on Mount Union's football success as tied to growth in school enrollment.
But that being said, winning championships, running a clean program, playing games on ESPN, building a rabid Raider fan-base in football hungry Ohio, having former Mount Union players become big-names in the NFL (think Pierre Garcon in 2010 Super Bowl) and earning national notoriety in college football year-in and year out, can't hurt school enrollment numbers, right?
DIDN'T HURT
Kehres, who's also Mount Union's athletic director and a 9-time AFCA Coach of the Year award winner, as being a former AFCA President (who completed his term in 2010), deflects personal credit for the growth in school enrollment and dismisses any insinuated correlation as doing the school administration and school's marketing efforts to recruit new students a severe disservice.
"Mount Union has worked hard to grow the school on its own. We've added new academic programs, built new facilities and raised lots of money," says Kehres. "Just because we won some football championships is not the reason we've done that ... but it certainly didn't hurt."
Rather than a recruiting tool, PR machine or a revenue generator, the true role of a football program, according to Kehres, is to serve as a reflection of the school's big-picture mission statement for educating and preparing students for future success in life, and to cultivate positive, productive members of society.
"If your football program is helping student-athletes to become effective professionals and effective family members, then you are helping your institution achieve its mission," says Kehres. "The degrees to which an institution can demonstrate that it is achieving its mission, offers proof to potential students that the school is a good place to receive an education and that's when the school's enrollment numbers truly begin to rise. As a football program, we're simply a component part of the big picture of the academic institution and we need to remember that."
BE IN LOCK STEP
Kehres adds that football coaches must get in line with the mission and values of their institution. "My job as the athletic director and football coach is to contribute positively to my school's mission statement," he says. "Winning games is one way to do it. But if you're winning games, yet not producing successful graduates, then you're not really contributing to the mission statement of your institution. Whenever you hear of a big-time football program that gets into some sort of trouble, you invariably hear someone say that the program needs to get back into line with the guidelines of the institution."
So then what happens if a football program perfectly mirrors the mission statement of the school and continuously displays a high standard of excellence on the gridiron? Things like Mount Union happen. And that, my friends, is called a win-win scenario.
