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| Jefferson Fritz's mad dash to intercept a sure touchdown made sure the rout was on for Mary Hardin-Baylor. d3photography.com photo |
By Keith McMillan
D3football.com
CANTON, Ohio — The first Stagg Bowl played at the home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame seemed at halftime like it’d be one of the best college games in the history of Division III championships.
And then in one whirlwind half, Mary Hardin-Baylor upended everything we thought we knew and crowned itself the new king of D-III.
For 2021 emphatically. But after four Stagg Bowls in five seasons, and three victories, the Crusaders are the new kings of the division, period. Not UW-Whitewater. Not Mount Union. And after the clock ran out on Friday night’s 57-24 victory, not North Central either.
It has been a long climb of fits and starts since the program debuted at the former women’s college in 1998. A Stagg Bowl loss to Linfield in 2004. A seemingly unending string of disappointments against UW-Whitewater. Even the program’s first national championship, the Blake Jackson-led 10-7 win over UW-Oshkosh in 2016, has since been vacated for use of a player ineligible because the program loaned him a used Subaru.
But there’s no doubt now about who sits atop the division.
Mary Hardin-Baylor won an unprecedented 20 games in calendar year 2021 and finished the fall season 15-0. In hindsight the Cru looked dominant and preordained, but in Canton on Friday night, most observers thought a two-point separation at halftime meant D-III’s new heavyweights were set for an anyone-can-win second-half slugfest.
“So did we,” said Kyle King, the UMHB quarterback who passed for 436 yards and three touchdowns, one during the 38-7 second-half onslaught.
Instead, the Cru ball started rolling downhill in the second half, and now we don’t quite know what to make of who ranks behind UMHB. North Central, a team no one had stayed within 13 points of all season, lost to the Cru by 33. Hardin-Simmons lost by 6, Trinity by 10, UW-Whitewater by 17, Linfield by 25. And Whitewater beat previously unbeaten Central by 30. Central beat Wheaton. Linfield had knocked previously unbeaten St. John’s out in the second round, and teams from upstate New York to Pennsylvania to Wisconsin can make an argument that they deserve to finish in the top 10.
And that’s relevant because of who North Central was before it won it all in 2019, and went toe-to-toe with the mighty Cru for a half on Friday. The Cardinals often made the playoffs, and often were bounced in Round 2. It deliberately under coach John Thorne built itself into a championship contender, and there’s a good chance we haven’t seen the last of them.
Still, “I hope we’ve given hope to some other programs who don’t wear purple,” Thorne said.
North Central, even in defeat, completed a two-season run over three real-time autumns in which it beat UW-Whitewater 41-14 in the 2019 championship game, won at Mount Union in the 2021 semifinals, and had a chance to slay the third purple power. UMHB coach Pete Fredenburg said he heard that possibility mentioned during the week, and had no interest in going down in history that way.
UMHB and NCC had gone to UW-Whitewater and Mount Union and upended the purple powers by double digits. On Friday in Canton, the last purple power standing was the one wearing nearly all yellow.
King’s breakout game in the quarterfinal, a 49-24 win over Linfield, yet another purple-wearing perennial contender, showcased a UMHB different than the run-first reputation they’d established over the years. The six touchdown passes against the Wildcats portended what was to come: Brandon Jordan’s day of outleaping any Warhawk who came near, and then the spread-it-around passing attack King piloted in the Stagg Bowl.
“This was an incredible game and Kyle did an awesome job putting the ball on the money,” Fredenburg said afterward.
“I just feel like we ran into a little bit of a buzzsaw,” Thorne said. “That team, the quarterback was just dynamite … His ability to throw the ball down the field with accuracy and touch is incredibly impressive.”
At the half, North Central had weathered the Cru storm that followed NCC taking the opening kick back for a touchdown. UMHB took a nine-point lead, and NCC shook it off and regained that lead. And then in a blur of Mikkah Hackett-caused turnovers and Alphonso Thomas touchdown runs, it was the Crusaders' time. The rout was on and the 2018 kings were coronated 2021 kings.
Fredenburg afterward reminisced about what his plan had been after he first arrived at UMHB in the late 1990s: Stay for a few years to give his offspring some stability, and then try to break back into D-I. Well of course, he stayed. “I’d fallen in love with the D-III atmosphere and the whole essence of it,” he said.
Twenty-four years in, the university is irrevocably changed: The college that didn’t even have a football program is now the best of the best.
There were bumps along the way: Gut-wrenching losses to end seasons. Late-game decision-making criticized. The vacated championship. But now that UMHB has experienced winning a Stagg Bowl three times, the Cru are no longer the have-nots, the hunters, the next men up. They are the program that everyone else hopes they can become someday.
In Salem in 2016, there were whispers that Fredenburg might ride off into the sunset, retiring after taking 12 years to get back to the Stagg Bowl following the loss to Linfield and finally winning. On Friday night in 2021 in Canton, Fredenburg looked like he was ready for several more go-rounds. He let his guard down, and was candid in front of the cameras — joking that he’d prefer the Stagg Bowl had stayed in Texas but that his team would play it anywhere. He talked, as did Thorne, about his Christian faith. Fredenburg spoke in his deep Texas accent, and leaned back in his chair at times and let his players have the spotlight.
KJ Miller praised his fellow wide receivers. Hackett, the linebacker who had the game of his life in the Stagg Bowl, praised the fellow linebacker who more or less took his starting job. King, whose passing total was a UMHB single-game record, said his favorite moment was senior backup quarterback Ryan Redding throwing a garbage-time TD pass, because UMHB wouldn’t have been in the Stagg Bowl if Redding hadn’t led the Cru in a Round 2 win when King was out.
After the most peculiar season/offseason in D-III history, and having taken a meandering years-long journey to the mountaintop, there was no catch phrase to accompany it all. Mary Hardin-Baylor isn’t The Machine, doesn’t Pound the Rock or Win With Nos. They are simply: The best.