College football’s all-time greatest championship rivalry plays out – on a small scale - in the Iowa State football office now and then these days.
Cyclone head coach Matt Campbell and offensive coordinator Tom Manning played and coached at the University of Mount Union in Alliance, Ohio. Mitchell Moore, ISU’s director of Iowa high school relations and an assistant scouting director, played and coached at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
Why is that a big deal? For seven straight years and all but one time spanning a decade, the Warhawks of Whitewater and the Purple Raiders of Mount Union faced off in the NCAA Division III championship game known at the Stagg Bowl. The reunion of combatants from both sides of the rivalry took place in 2015 when Campbell was hired to be I-State’s new head coach and Moore was hoping to be retained after serving on Paul Rhoads’ Iowa State support staff since 2013.
The intensity of the Mount Union-Whitewater rivalry didn’t have a negative influence on Campbell, who not only retained Moore, but promoted him to his new positions in May.
More Similar Than Different
Manning, who serves as ISU’s O-line coach in addition to coordinating the offense, said the similarities in the dominant Mount Union and Whitewater programs became evident through getting to know Moore.
“Well my first thought was I hate this guy, you know,” Manning quipped. “No, in all honestly, we joked about it the first night I met him. Being from Mount Union and having been a part of what Coach (Larry) Kehres built there, the amount of respect we always had for the Whitewater program was incredible. But I think there are so many similarities in the two programs.
“Even when we first got here, we didn’t know Mitch, but you could tell, hey, this guy’s a lot like us,” he added. “We kind of spoke the same language about the way we were going to approach what we’re doing from a staff standpoint. Obviously you can tell he was part of something very similar to what we were. You can tell how competitive he is. I think one thing if you’ve ever been around a bunch of guys from Mount Union, they’re extremely competitive. And you can say the same for Mitch.”
Separately, Moore said almost the same thing about Mount Union, Campbell and Manning as he saw it from a Whitewater perspective.
“It’s fun and really, when we started playing Mount Union back when I was playing at Whitewater, it was kind of a hated rivalry,” Moore said. “You didn’t like them, they were the beast on top and everybody wanted a piece of them. But the longer that rivalry went, the respect just grew every day, every time you played them. The respect for Mount Union and what they did, the consistency in which they ran their program was unbelievable.
“So to see how these guys from Mount Union and myself being a Whitewater guy, how much it correlates, how much we do things the same in both programs is fun,” he added. “Really, maybe the best two program runs in the history of college football. To see what they do and to see what we did at Whitewater and how similar it is, it’s neat.”
The Rivalry
As the oldest of the three ISU men involved in the UWW-MU storyline, Campbell played on the defensive line at Mount Union from 2000 to 2002 and won three national championships. The Raiders went 54-1 during that span. Campbell returned to his alma mater as a coach for the 2005 and 2006 seasons and Mount Union added two more national titles in those years. As it so happened, ’05 and ’06 were the first of seven consecutive seasons than ended with Mount Union and Wisconsin-Whitewater playing in the Division III title game.
Manning and Campbell were Purple Raider teammates in 2002 and by 2005, Manning was a standout tackle and team captain and Campbell was an assistant coach. On the opposite sideline at that year’s Stagg Bowl was Moore, a Huxley, Iowa, native that played receiver at Whitewater. Although they were both offensive players for their respective teams, Moore remembers seeing Manning on tape as the Warhawks prepared for the title game, and knew of Campbell as well.
“Tom and I played against each other in ’05 a little bit and I remember Coach Campbell on the sidelines because he was such a hot commodity and such a well respected coach at that young of an age,” Moore recalled. “Tommy Manning, as good as he is as a coach, he was that relentless as a player. So of course I remember watching film on him and thinking he was a guy while not huge in stature, as strong and tough a guy as you’re going to play.”
Mount Union fought off Whitewater’s challenge in the 2005 Stagg Bowl, winning 35-28 to capture its eighth national championship since 1993. The Raiders did it again in 2006, beating UWW 35-16 with Campbell coordinating the MU offense and Moore playing receiver as a junior for Whitewater.
By 2007, Whitewater was ready to slay the giant and did so, beating the Raiders in that year’s Stagg Bowl 31-21. Moore remembers it as the turning point.
“They had kind of, really in the mid 90s, starting being that team and continued it through the early 2000s,” Moore explained. “And 2005 is when we cracked the national title game and then lost to them in ’05 and ’06. Then my senior year (2007) we won a national title and really for about seven years there when I was playing and coaching, we kind of became the team to beat.”
Now, Mount Union men like Campbell and Manning will be quick to remind Moore and anyone else that the Raiders bounced back to win the 2008 title game – over Whitewater, of course. But Moore is right that Whitewater became the team to beat over a period of several years as the Warhawks ran off three straight national championships from 2009 to 2011, taking down Mount Union in the final game each year.
Whitewater also beat MU in title game clashes in 2013 and 2014. So who won the Division III crown in 2012? Mount Union, of course, but it topped St. Thomas (Minn.) in the championship game. It was the only time in the decade of Stagg Bowls between 2005 and 2014 that Whitewater and Mount Union did not meet in the title game.
A year ago, Mount Union and Whitewater met in the national semifinals, a game won by the Purple Raiders on their way to another Division III championship win over St. Thomas.
How competitive has the Mount Union and Whitewater rivalry been? The all-time series is even at 6-6, including a pair of Raider wins in 2002 and 2003 in the only regular season games ever played between the schools. Whitewater has a 6-4 edge in post-season games, including a 6-3 record in the nine head-to-head national championship matchups.
In Ames these days, the rivalry manifests itself in a more low key way, usually in the form of casual apparel around the Bergstrom Football Complex.
“The other day in the office, Coach Manning and Coach Campbell were both wearing a Mount Union shirt and every once in a while I’ll throw on my Whitewater stuff, too, so it’s a lot of fun,” Moore said. “One day Coach Campbell was on the road so I picked that day to wear my Whitewater sweatshirt. But he’s not shy or bashful about wearing his Mount Union sweatshirt for sure.”
It seems inevitable that Whitewater and Mount Union will tangle again in a Division III championship game soon, perhaps while Warhawk Moore and Raiders Campbell and Manning are together in Ames. But there are different ideas as to how three Cyclones with a vested interested will watch the next clash of titans when it happens.
“Yeah, we’ll get together I’m sure for a national title game,” said Moore. “Hopefully we’ll be prepping for a bowl game at that time. We’ll get together somewhere and watch.”
Manning isn’t so sure about that plan.
“No, Mitch will not be invited - that’s a fact,” said Manning. “We can’t have any Whitewater guys around us for that game.”
