"I Am a Champion, and I Refuse to Lose"

Photo from The Canton Repository

It's November 26, 1994. I've just turned five years old and am probably playing with toys or something while my parents decorate the house for Christmas. Bill Mack has just led the North Central Cardinals football team to their second consecutive 3-6 season, but closed the campaign with back to back victories. Meanwhile, up in Michigan, defending Division III national champion Mount Union has lost to host Albion College in the second round of the playoffs. The Britons would go on to win the Stagg Bowl two weeks later.


I bring up this background from 25 years ago because that day was, more or less, the low water mark of Mount Union's football program in recent history. The Purple Raiders would go on to make it to at least the semifinals each of the next 24 seasons, reaching the Stagg Bowl a staggering 20 times in that span, winning a dozen of them.

I really became aware of this history in 2007 when I started my undergrad studies at North Central. At this point, the Stagg Bowl earned the nickname of the "Purple Bowl" as the Purple Raiders battled another purple-clad team in Wisconsin-Whitewater seven consecutive years and nine out of ten, including every year of my undergrad time. Whitewater has fallen off that pace a little bit, missing the playoffs in 2012 before coming back to win the next two titles over the Raiders. They haven't been quite at that level since, but are still a power. Mount Union remains the gold standard in Division III.

It's against that background that we look at North Central. John Thorne came in in 2002 and immediately turned the program around. After opening his collegiate coaching career with a 6-4 record, he steadily improved the program into, by the time I got there, a perennial Top 25 team and frequent playoff participant. My senior year, the Cardinals ran the table in the regular season and made their first quarterfinals, where they dropped a tough 20-10 home game to Wisconsin-Whitewater. The high water mark for the program came in 2013, when the team ran the table in the regular season, then knocked off Albion, UW-Platteville, and Bethel to earn a date with the Purple Raiders in Alliance with a trip to Salem on the line. I did a brief writeup of that game the day after the Raiders rallied late in the snow to top the Cardinals by a single point.

It was a tale with an ending like so many others before it: a really good team goes into Alliance, Ohio with dreams of grandeur, only to fall short. So you'd be forgiven if you opted on Selection Sunday, when the Cardinals just snuck in as the final team into the field of 32, to gulp a little bit at seeing a second round date with the Purple Raiders. To paraphrase a meme, one does not simply walk into Alliance and expect to win. But a lot of the prognosticators gave the Cardinals a puncher's chance once again, even if D3Football's expert panel unanimously picked the Raiders to win.

Then the game started, and the shootout many were warning could happen happened. Basically every Mount Union score was promptly answered, with the Cardinals even taking an eight point lead in the second quarter. But then the Raiders scored 18 unanswered, and I'm sure many thought, "That's it; North Central had its chance and couldn't put them away." But then something funny happened: the Cardinals worked their way back, and thanks to their defense making some timely plays, not only got the lead back, but went up by double digits and I'm sure got all of Alliance sweating. At the end of the day, 59 points was just barely enough as one final time... the Cardinal defense came up big.

Hey guys...we’ve got a game next week. #WeAreNC #d3fb pic.twitter.com/CiqoKPcCBd

— NCC Cardinals (@NCC_Athletics) November 30, 2019

As of when I posted this, this video had over 60 thousand views; I probably account for like half a percent of those as I've all but injected this video directly into my veins. I got to watch it in real time though, and like with every major sports moment in any fan's life, you'll remember exactly where you were when it happened. I was in my family room, holding my seven week old daughter in one arm and watching the game on my phone in my other hand. I may have been the only person baby-talking "We just need a stop" in the history of sports. Then when Jake Beesley came up with that interception thanks in part to Tommy Hyland coming right after D'Angelo Fulford for the third or fourth straight play... I had to try hard not to yell in her ear while at the same time fighting back tears.

North Central's football team has become a national power in the past decade-plus, but always seem to run into a buzzsaw in the playoffs. On Saturday, they were the buzzsaw that went blow for blow with a legendary program... and came out on top. It's unquestionably the biggest win in program history... maybe in school history in any sport, which says something given the dominance of Al Carius and the men's cross country program as well as the men's track and field teams.

The Cardinals host Delaware Valley this coming Saturday, their latest home game in a season since the aforementioned 2010 date with UW-Whitewater. The Aggies are no lightweight either, boasting a defense on par with Mount Union's this season, and the Cardinals may have to go east for a semifinal against another opponent if they make it that far. And that's before we even get into who they could have to play if they make it to Shenandoah Valley for the Stagg Bowl: three teams with championship pedigrees, plus the team that handed North Central its only loss this season in Wheaton. But this may very well be a team of destiny that could go on to add another Walnut and Bronze to an already packed trophy case.