Division III Mount Union football is a national championship factory. Its 2005 coaching staff featured five future NFL or college head coaches — including Nick Sirianni and Matt Campbell — whose bond continues today.
ALLIANCE, Ohio — Long before Nick Sirianni was swearing and posing in front of the TV cameras during a playoff win as the head coach of the 15-winLarry Kehres was running a championship factory at Mount Union, not a clinic for aspiring coaches. That one became a byproduct of the other was more than coincidence, but it was never the intended result. Standards were high, and even offseason brainstorming sessions turned competitive.
Nick Sirianni was a three-year starter at WR for Mount Union then began his coaching career at his alma mater in 2004. “We were all trained well,” Sirianni said. “Sometimes coaching just takes opportunities given. We got breaks, but we were coached — coached as players and coached to coach — by the guy who, in my opinion, could be the best coach in the history of football. I’m not shy to say that. The more and more I learn about coaching, I have more and more respect for the man.
“When I think of that time and that staff in particular, I think of things like competitiveness, presence and having a lot of ideas. Believe me, they challenged me — and they challenged each other. And I think kind of combining that mindset with traits of creativity and attention to detail, those are things really good coaches tend to have.”All of them have taken different paths, though there have been multiple intersections involving various Mount Union alums.
“All three Sirianni brothers were tall, lean and could grow a beard in 15 minutes,” Larry Kehres said. “A wonderful family, and all of them are good football coaches.”Last August, Nick Sirianni’s Eagles spent four days in Northeast Ohio for joint practices and a preseason game against the. On the day before the preseason game, Mike Sirianni’s W&J team scrimmaged at Mount Union.
“Two years, now that’s a serious drought at Mount Union,” Campbell said. “So that was the big challenge, and given that we had all played there, it’s one we took personally and seriously. I think we all had goals and we definitely had our own ideas, but the first thing was right in front of us: winning. Every single day, trying to win in practice came first.
Larry Kehres preferred to limit full-speed tackling in practice, and though he said he was “all for the competition,” he warned his young coaches about getting overzealous and risking injury. “He never let us be comfortable. No matter how many we won by, he always pushed us. When you continue to go deep in the year, you need that. He just had a way of making every week a challenge and building guys up. Early in the week, it was like, ‘You can’t do anything right. You’re terrible.’ And right about the time we as players were thinking, ‘I hate this guy,’ all of a sudden he’d say we were looking better.
“I come off the field and coach is telling me I embarrassed him,” Sirianni said. “He was telling me he had friends at the game who were high school coaches and he couldn’t tell them that he preached discipline and attention to detail if I was going to be running around getting 15-yard penalties.
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