Stagg Bowl file photos

By Ryan Tipps
D3sports.com

SALEM, Virginia — It’s unlikely that in 1993, at the first Stagg Bowl held in Salem, anyone realized that the foundation for a relationship was being laid that would span the next three decades.

Mount Union made the Division III championship game for the first time in school history. Though undefeated throughout the regular season, the Purple Raiders were viewed at the underdogs by many when stacked against a bigger and quicker Rowan team, which was packed with Division I transfers.

Snow flurries and a nearly zero-degree wind chill greeted the teams and their fans for Saturday’s game, just one day after the Virginia host city relished temps that reached into the 70s. Embracing the cold, the Purple Raiders muscled out a challenging 34-24 win, sealing that first of numerous Stagg Bowl victories with a scramble into the end zone from quarterback Jim Ballard.

Jim Ballard accepts the inaugural Gagliardi Trophy from John Gagliardi, the St. John's coach whose team Mount Union had routed in the 1993 semifinals. Stagg Bowl file photo

Salem “had a big-time feel to it. The stadium seating sat far off the field, and you really felt like you were down in front of all of these people,” the Gagliardi Trophy-winning Ballard said, referencing the more than 7,000 spectators. The meals and pregame pomp were lavish. The atmosphere was invigorating.

It was “far different than Mount Union Stadium,” he said.

Mount Union would go on to appear in the Stagg Bowl 21 more times, winning 12 of those and building a legacy that is unmatched in college football -- all the while cultivating a local fan base 400 miles from their home in Alliance, Ohio.

“It’s not Christmas if I don’t see purple,” said Dave Robbins, who served as one of the host families during the early years of the Stagg Bowl in Salem. In 1993, Robbins was tasked with showing coach Larry Kehres around Salem, offering advice on places to visit and helping him and his staff get settled.

Getting to the Stagg Bowl has never been easy, but that’s what has made this Div-III dynasty -- and the reunion of meeting almost annually in a place such as Salem -- so rewarding for so many people.

“The former players talk about the different teams, and players from different eras find Salem as this hallowed ground to talk about their championship-game experience,” Ballard said. “We worked so hard in the early ‘90s to get there. In ’92, we went to the national semifinals, and that was as far as any Mount team had ever gone. And then for us to come back in ’93 and win it and get over the hump, we were like, ‘There’s never going to be another team like us again.’ ”

Little did they know.