By Christopher Mitchell, d3photography.com

By Keith McMillan
D3football.com

SALEM — Cortland is your national champion, and Division III football has never made less sense. And yet, as piece after piece fell into place during the Red Dragons’ run to an improbable but wholly earned Stagg Bowl 50 victory, certain things could not possibly make more sense.

To borrow a phrase from Cortland star wide receiver Cole Burgess, you can only understand life backwards.

And to understand how the Red Dragons reached this particular college football apex, first accept that setback is the father of success. Failure begets glory. 

It was Burgess, he of the five touchdown catches in the penultimate and ultimate games of his college career, who missed the 2021 school year for throwing a party that violated COVID restrictions. His setback had the most-silver of linings. Had Burgess played that year, his eligibility would have been up before this season, and this magical run to national prominence doesn’t happen. 

Cortland players were open about how starting 2022 9-0 and then losing the Cortaca Jug game to rival Ithaca and a first-round playoff contest at Randolph-Macon on consecutive Saturdays prompted soul searching. Red Dragons acknowledged how the mid-September 2023 home loss to Susquehanna in which they led 35-21 with 5 minutes to play was a kick in the pants. They admitted their hearts skipped beats when Clayton Marengi’s throw sailed out of the end zone at Endicott as time expired in Round 1. They talked freely about needing to convert fourth-and-5, fourth-and-15 and get a two-point conversion with 1:23 left against Grove City, and needing the Wolverines’ kicker to miss a game-winning 37-yard field goal attempt at the end of a 25-24 win in Round 2.

“You only need to win by one,” they’d say.

They’d get healthier, and go on to win by 17, by 35, and ultimately, by one again.

The setbacks and scares made the outcome all the more savory. 

Cortland lived a dream, proving true every coaching cliche and motivational poster one can think of. But it is all spot on, and absolutely authentic in describing the champions of what might be the greatest Stagg Bowl of the 50 played.

(I Googled “motivational poster perseverance.” The search returned a picture of a cat on a rope and the tagline, “your current situation is not your final destination.” That would have applied for Cortland during its lows on the way to the highest high!)

Without throwing shade at North Central, we can objectively appreciate this classic Stagg Bowl. Defeat might be the setback that fuels future iterations of the Cardinals. Perhaps we’ll hear next year’s national champion say that the soul-searching after Friday night’s loss was the setback that lit the fire. 

One of the great gifts Cortland gave D-III during its Stagg Bowl run, however, is that we genuinely have no idea where the next national champion is coming from.

For years I’ve written post-Stagg Bowl columns that suggest if a D-III fan from a non-powerhouse squints hard enough, she or he could see a day when the school they love has its turn. In a division ruled by Mount Union and its 13 championships and 22 Stagg appearances since 1993, and UW-Whitewater’s six titles in nine years, finally in 2016 Mary Hardin-Baylor and in 2019 North Central came in through the crack in the door. In 2023, Cortland kicked it smooth off the hinges.

• 2022 column: Today, we are all Mount Union

A team from the Empire 8 is the grand champion of a 32-team bracket in which perennial powers Mary Hardin-Baylor, St. John’s or Linfield were nowhere to be found. Mount Union was bounced in the second round of the playoffs against Alma and finished ranked ninth, three spots behind the Scots, two behind Randolph-Macon and one ahead of Grove City.

Division III football has never made less sense. 

To some, this is how it should be, no more Purple Powers or North Central lording over the division. If Cortland can do this, many teams can dream. But the Red Dragons’ fire-breathing triumph was extra special, and perhaps inspiring, for fans of D-III football in the Northeastern United States. No longer do they have to hear that an East team hasn’t won a Stagg Bowl since Ithaca in 1991 or been to one since Rowan in 1999.

Stagg Bowl Most Outstanding Player Zac Boyes, whose father Jerry played for Ithaca in two early Stagg Bowls and coached Buffalo State to a monumental upset of UW-Whitewater in 2012, was more than happy to put on for his region.

“Being a New York team and winning the game is awesome,” Boyes said. “We are New York high school football. Just to show everybody we’ve got ballers all around. We did this for New York, we did this for Cortland obviously. But just to spread awareness that we’ve got D-III ballers, and there’s just good football in New York.”

“You wouldn’t believe the amount of emails and texts I got from coaches in the Northeast this week wishing us luck,” Cortland coach Curt Fitzpatrick added.

Stagg Bowl 50 was incredibly validating for Cortland, for New York, for the Northeast, and for all of the really good D-III programs that until Friday had seen themselves just a tier or two below the elite. Yet isn’t it amazing how much turned on Brad Spencer’s decision to go for two Friday night with 1:20 left? Already a North Central legend as a player, an assistant coach, and for starting his head-coaching career with 29 straight wins, Spencer without hesitation left his Gagliardi Trophy-winning quarterback on the field to try for the 39-38 advantage.

Spencer might have been the only person in Salem Stadium who didn’t want to see more of a game that was tied at 17, 24 and 31 in the furious back-and-forth second half, when all but 10 of the night’s 75 points were scored. It might be debated in North Central circles for years whether Spencer’s choice was the wrong one, or an unnecessary one, perhaps motivated by hubris or by being caught up in the moment.

But, from Spencer’s view in that moment, his offense had scored touchdowns on drives of no shorter than 65 yards and no more than three plays the past three times it had the ball. It had barely needed to show a two-point conversion play all season. It gained 583 yards on the night, 404 on the ground. Surely three more was not too much to ask. 

“I felt like we had momentum, felt like our guys were primed and ready, felt like we could gain three yards,” Spencer said. “I just had ultimate confidence in our players to get it done. ... We’ve been aggressive all year. That’s been our m.o.”

The offense being unstoppable could have been the argument for the Cardinals taking their chances in overtime, especially if they thought they had the better team. But Spencer had also watched the North Central defense give up five Boyes touchdown passes in the second half, on drives of 73, 65, 72, 63 and 73 yards. Twenty-five yards to paydirt in however many overtimes it would have taken to sort it out would have been light work for the offenses led by Boyes and Luke Lehnen.

Players always want to go for the win, and sometimes it’s the coach’s job to reel that in, do the prudent thing and kick the extra point. But North Central and its swashbuckling head coach chose to chase the lion, and gamble on the biggest two-point conversion attempt of them all.

The problem with gambling is sometimes you come up snake eyes.

Fitzpatrick’s gamble in the same moment paid off. The fourth-year Cortland coach used a timeout that could have been sorely needed, if trailing by 1, to set up a game-winning field goal attempt. Called right as Lehnen started a sprint-right play to the wide side that would have given him the option to throw front pylon to all-American wide receiver DeAngelo Hardy or take it in himself, the timeout led North Central to choose another play call. 

Spencer didn’t waver. Lehnen took a lead-blocked quarterback run left, to the short side of the field. Red Dragons cornerback Naz Jean-Lubin and linebacker Jaden Martinez flew in to make the tackle.

Cortland had its Disney finish, the unassuming upstarts vanquishing the mighty favorites. Eighty seconds later, there were no more setbacks to overcome. The Red Dragons had shifted the D-III paradigm, and were set to bring the walnut and bronze back to New York — fittingly, on the bus — from the quintessential D-III city of Salem. The puzzle pieces had each fallen into place, and Fitzpatrick, Burgess, Boyes and Martinez could hardly believe it 30 minutes afterward. They’d always believed it could happen, just like your D-III school believes it might someday have its night under the lights, and now it actually had.

This night belonged to Cortland, just as Burgess had written on his vision board in March of 2021.

And finally, it all made sense.