ALLIANCE, Ohio - A really strange thing is going to happen at the University of Mount Union on Saturday.
There's going to be a football game, and Larry Kehres is not going to be Mount Union's head coach. That will be the first time since 1986.
Mount Union won 11 Div. III national championships in 27 years under Larry Kehres. In those 27 years, the Purple Raiders won 332 games and amassed a .925 winning percentage. National title No. 11 came last December, and on a Monday morning last May Larry Kehres came into the office of his son, Vince, and told Vince that he was being promoted from defensive coordinator to head coach.
"I'm taking over a job where you're the defending national champions," Vince Kehres said. "Who does that? Where does that happen? It doesn't happen."
It is happening here.
Two days after that initial conversation, Larry Kehres officially retired as Mount Union's coach. He's still the athletic director, and he'll celebrate his 64th birthday on Saturday by watching his son's first game as head coach.
Vince is 37. He figures that tonight, he'll be as sleepless as a five-year old on Christmas Eve.
"My dad had hinted, really for a while, that he was thinking about walking away, but it was still a surprise to me," Vince said. "Even though I was kind of prepared, I don't think I allowed myself to let it soak in. I didn't sleep much the night before the official announcement. It was emotional. It wasn't just that I get the opportunity to be a head football coach it was that my dad was no longer going to the coach. He'd been the head football coach at Mount the bulk of my life -- no exaggeration.
"A few hours before it became an official, I had an e-mail ready to send to all the players. My dad wrote some stuff down he wanted me to add and I had to type that and add to my e-mail, and that was really hard. I'm not much of a typer anyway.
"So I'm nervous and sweating and I don't know if I'm really happy or really sad, and all this is hitting me while I'm in my office supposed to be typing an e-mail. I'm looking around like, 'Wow, this is real.'"
On Saturday afternoon, a real opponent will be on the opposite sideline. And Franklin (Ind.) will be in the same position so many Mount Union opponents have been in for so many years, knowing that the gold standard of Div. III football is clad in purple on the other side. That a victory could not just make headlines, but a season.
Mount Union has played in the last eight Stagg Bowls, the Div. III national championship game. Last year's win stopped a three-Stagg Bowl losing streak. The Purple Raiders haven't lost a regular-season game since Oct. 2005.
If all you had to do to meet the standard was go 15-0 every year, you might have sleepless nights, too.
"It's not a fixing job, that's for sure," Vince said. "One thing I have talked about with our players is of course every kid who comes to play for our team knows the expectations, and we don't want it to change. We want those high expectations. Maybe the biggest obstacle that can get in our way is ourselves. We have to practice. We have to work like we've won nothing, because it's a new week and a new season and we really have won nothing."
He's been well trained. A defensive lineman for his father from 1994-97 and an assistant coach ever since, Vince Kehres said he never really thought much about being a head -- especially the head coach -- until a few years back when his father suggested he explore some other jobs. He did some interviews, took some calls, did some thinking, but the right situation never emerged.
There's a new press box at Mount Union Stadium. It's named for the man who paid for much of it, Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator Dom Capers, who was a roommate of Larry Kehres when the two were Mount Union football players. Vince Kehres wants his father to be on a headset on Saturday, but Larry isn't sure. He might prefer to watch from the new recruiting room in the pressbox, the one Larry won't let the school name for him.
His inclination is to stay out of the way. If he didn't think Vince was ready, he wouldn't have stepped away.
"It's different that at the end of practice, I used to be the guy standing there listening. now the players are circling around me," Vince said. "It's different that I'm not just with the defense, that I'm making more notes during practice, taking lead during staff meetings. The attention to the small details, that's different. Otherwise, it's just football.
The football business has been very good to the Kehres Family, and Vince tells himself that on the nights he's worried about not getting enough sleep. A championship structure is in place. The program's status and the new guy's path to the bigger office have been earned.
The night before Mount Union's first summer football camp, Vince Kehres didn't sleep much. He sweated details, worried that people hadn't really done what they'd told him they'd done and wondered if everything would be in order when he arrived around 6 a.m. He realized he'd worried the night away, all the way past 4 a.m., before he convinced himself it was.
That next morning, it was.
"All that time spent thinking everyone was looking to me and it was all on my shoulders was wasted time," Vince said. "We have great people around here. My role and my title might be different, but I'm a part of it. Everybody's part matters, and everybody helps make this place what it is.
"I remember loving getting more responsibility as an assistant coach, jumping at that chance. So, I just started delegating a little bit more and everything worked out."
Come Saturday, there's a game to win. From here through December, as these things go, there are games and trophies to win. Vince Kehres has seen it all before.
Now, he's the guy giving the speech and sending the players out the door.
"The morning of that first game is going to be really exciting and really terrifying," Vince said. "Probably more terrifying."
Here's a hunch that Vince Kehres and Mount Union are going to be just fine.
