Photo by Steve Frommell, d3photography.com

By Keith McMillan
D3sports.com

SHENANDOAH, Texas — It was all a dream.

North Central crashing through the purple-tinted glass ceiling and into the pantheon of Division III national champions by winning the 47th Stagg Bowl in convincing fashion was the stuff dreams are made from.

But it was also quite literally a dream that John Thorne had when he took over a downtrodden Cardinals program in 2002. John’s son, Jeff, who coached the last team into the 32-team field to the title on Friday night, also dreamed about his father weaving his way through the crowd on the field after the game so he could hand him the Walnut and Bronze championship trophy.

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That was the rare thing that didn’t happen exactly as Jeff Thorne envisioned it, as John appeared not to want to overshadow his son’s accomplishment, just as the mighty North Central offensive line refused to accept the Stagg Bowl Most Outstanding Player trophy from running back Ethan Greenfield, who won it and very much wanted them to have it. But pretty much from the moment D'Angelo Fulford’s end-zone heave was intercepted by Jake Beesley to clinch the second-round stunner at Mount Union — meaning the Purple Raiders would not be one of the four semifinalists for the first time since 1994, before the players that led the Cardinals the rest of the way were even born — it has been a fantasy from which no North Central player, coach or fan has wanted to wake up.

The rest of Division III is alert, however, to how the team in red dethroned the third purple power, Mary Hardin-Baylor, by beating the second, UW-Whitewater, in UMHB’s home state, at the place where it won last year’s title against the first. NCC’s second-round win over the original purple power exorcised a demon from the last North Central team to sniff a Stagg Bowl; in 2013, Mount Union’s Gagliardi Trophy-winning quarterback led the Purple Raiders to the game-winning score of a 41-40 game in three plays.

This time, it was North Central that had the Gagliardi Trophy winner taking snaps and making it look easy. There were no last-minute heroics because NCC was so far ahead in the final three games of the season that it never needed any. But Rutter called an audible with his team up 34-14 in the Stagg Bowl’s waning minutes. Even though there were five receivers running verticals and UW-Whitewater assigned two men to keep wide receiver Andrew Kamienski from having a free release, there was never a doubt where the ball was going and why.

With that throw, to a gliding Kamienski, who leapt to catch the ball and went untouched the final 10 yards for the 28-yard score, Rutter became D-III’s all-time leading passer, surpassing Monmouth’s Alex Tanney, who is currently a New York Giant. Rutter’s 14,258 career passing yards have company; the catch was Kamienski’s 31st for a touchdown this season, a new Division III mark.

With those video-game numbers, maybe this North Central season felt less like a dream and more like augmented reality.

But it was real, and it did happen. D-III fans didn’t fill Woodforest Bank Stadium like last season, but hundreds of North Central alumni — some wearing their jerseys from back in the day — made their way to the Houston suburbs five days before Christmas to receive a gift live and in person. North Central has played football since 1898, but until John Thorne was hired, the seven Cardinals teams that won seven games in a season were the most successful the school had ever had. (Thorne went 6-4 in Year 1, and NCC hasn't won fewer than seven since.) Surely the pre-2002 North Central football players had national championship aspirations, but it was Thorne's dream then that set 2019 reality in motion.

John Thorne won four state titles in 22 seasons at Wheaton Warrenville South High. He came to North Central thinking the program had potential. Jeff Thorne, a former Eastern Illinois quarterback, was a financial advisor helping his father coach when the elder Throne became frustrated during a preseason meeting with University of Chicago. "I became offensive coordinator at halftime of the first scrimmage," Jeff Thorne laughed, reminiscing before the Stagg Bowl.

Jeff Thorne likes to quote Mark Batterson, a Naperville native who became a pastor in Washington, D.C. Batterson wrote "Chase the Lion: If your dreams don't scare you, they're not big enough."

When John Thorne took the North Central job, Mount Union was the lion of Division III, and surpassing Purple Raiders was a giant dream. Jeff Thorne talked frequently before the Stagg Bowl about the genealogy of dreams, and said of his father, "He dreamt this. I got the opportunity to see it to completion."

That's not to say the road to the top wasn't filled with disappointment. North Central first made the playoffs in 2005. There were 11 Cardinals playoff teams before 2019, and all but the very first won a game and advanced. But there were eight second-round exits, a home quarterfinal loss to UW-Whitewater in 2010, and the one-point semifinal defeat in 2013. Seven North Central teams entered the playoffs ranked in the top 10. Five times the season ended at Benedetti-Wehrli Stadium, and once, in 2016, the Cardinals won their first 11 games before rival Wheaton ended their season in a second-round rematch.

So when Broc Rutter and Bryan Beauchamp and 2019 player after 2019 player said this Stagg Bowl was for all the North Central players who came before, they didn't just mean the guys who made the trip to Texas and wore their tattered old mesh red game jerseys. These Cardinals exorcised all the demons, for all the years that ended with a gut punch. Beating Wabash in Round 1 was for the 29-28 playoff loss in 2011. Beating Mount Union was for 2013, and beating UW-Whitewater was for 2007 and 2010.

"When you finally take out one of the purple powers, it’s significant," Jeff Thorne said during Stagg Bowl week about the Mount Union win. "Our players understand that’s a program-defining win. We had a different swagger after that."

Of course, those inside the program said they always believed they would win. But it's different when it actually happens. And all along, the Cardinals were never satisfied just with getting further than other North Central teams had. They needed to realize the dream.

As any Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, Philadelphia Eagles, Cleveland Cavaliers or Washington Capitals fan could tell you, when the season in which everything comes together finally happens to you, it's indescribable. It validates all the pain. It's heaven on earth. It moves men to tears. It feels surreal, like living a dream.

At Woodforest Bank Stadium, people handed toddlers over the fence for North Central players to hug after the win. Young women with red and black bows in their hair and painted faces posed for pictures surely destined for Instagram. And all Cardinals players could talk about was how happy they were for alumni, how the team was a big family, and how much they loved their "brothers for life."

Photo by Steve Frommell, d3photography.com

The players were a coaches’ dream — “How easy my job is, coaching guys like this?” Jeff Thorne asked rhetorically during the postgame news conference/afterglow, as Rutter, Greenfield, Kamienski and Julian Bell heaped praised on one another in fawning but totally sincere ways.

Even when players suffered through their one personal nightmares -- one lost a father in a motorcycle accident, another to cancer -- they had each other's backs. There were injuries and a player who didn't want to burn a redshirt year and miss the rest of this championship run. The season started with a canceled flight to Norfolk to face Christopher Newport, and a diversion to D.C., after which buses broke down. North Central players said they could laugh things off after that. They also said the midseason loss to Wheaton was the wake-up call they needed.

North Central in 2019 had quintessential D-III stories we can all relate to. Many of us have ridden a bus that broke down on a road trip, played alongside a transfer who hated scholarship-level football and came home. We have suffered crushing defeats, both on and off the field, and relied on our faith, our family and our "brothers for life" to get through.

In that way, this North Central team had it all, and is all of us.

In another way, the Cardinals did what few squads in the 247-team division can realistically do: win five playoff games against perennial postseason participants. Few teams have a loaded roster with a four-year starting quarterback playing with a star wide receiver he's thrown to since childhood, behind an offensive line that got one of its best players to come back to school to play for a line that gets treated like royalty. (If we learned nothing else about NCC this past week, it's that we should all be copying their brilliant strategy for recruiting O-line: Giving them the best locker-room perks, first dibs on food and first-class seats on flights.)

It was refreshing to see someone experience the Stagg Bowl for the first time, and play as well as any champion has. Watching someone new come through and make fantasy reality should energize all the programs that believe they can make the leap, and it should energize the past champions to reclaim their throne, lest they be surpassed. Division III didn't get its dream Stagg Bowls -- Wheaton vs. North Central, or a Jackson Erdmann vs. Rutter shootout -- but we got to watch a program make its dreams come true.