LSU? Alabama? Well … unless they’ve won six straight league championships, three straight national championships, compiled 45 straight wins, and finished the last three seasons without a loss … then no.
Currently, the most dominant team in college football may very well be the NCAA Division III National Champion (for the third year in a row) Wisconsin-Whitewater. The Warhawks defeated rival Mount Union, 13-10, last night in Salem, Va. It was the seventh straight meeting in the national championship between the two schools and, yes, the Warhawks have won the last three.
Wisconsin-Whitewater is led by head coach Lance Leipold, a former Warhawk player, who in five years at the school is a staggering 72-3! Yes, 72 wins and only three losses. The Warhawks have won the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference championship for the past four seasons with Leipold (and have won six in a row). They have lost just one conference game during Leipold’s tenure. Surprisingly, the Warhawks have finished the last three seasons 15-0.
Leipold was a quarterback in the UW-W from 1983 to 1986 and is still in the school’s top 10 in various passing categories. In 2003, he was inducted into the school’s Athletics Hall of Fame. For all that Leipold and the Warhawks have done, equally impressive are his opponent’s stats in the last seven games for the national title.
Along with the Warhawks, the Mount Union Purple Raiders have been equally dominant with Larry Kehres, the dean of NCAA Division III head coaches. Kehres, in his 26th season as head coach, has an overall record of 314-23-3, has won the Ohio Athletic Conference championship 22 times, has 19 undefeated seasons, and has won an NCAA record of 10 championships. national. In the past 11 seasons, the Kehres-led Raiders have lost just seven games. Oh, and four of those losses … were in the national championship game.
To put what these two schools have done in some perspective, think about this. Neither LSU nor Alabama have the most dominant record in NCAA Division I FBS football in the past five years. That record would belong to Boise State, which is not far behind on its own, it has gone 50-3 in the last four years. Head coach Chris Peterson is the closest thing to Leipold in Division I. Peterson has a remarkable 73-6 (.924 winning percentage) in his six seasons at the helm. But the Broncos have not won a national championship and, as they did a year ago, they lost a game at the end of the season that cost them their conference title.
It is absolutely amazing what Wisconsin-Whitewater and Mount Union have accomplished and hope they will continue. The Warhawks will lose to All-American RB Levell Coppage and QB Matt Blanchard, but they will have a senior class that has never lost a game. I’m sure they’d like to keep that streak alive, and if the story continues, they may face Mount Union for the eighth time in a row next year.