D3football.com 2001 file photo

By Keith McMillan
D3football.com

This story actually starts about 105 miles north of Salem, along I-81 in Virginia. And it involves the kind of occurrence we’ll never again see in college football.

On the Day Time Stood Still in 2001, Division III sent the wrong team to the Stagg Bowl.

To understand how this could happen, you first must understand budget-limited football in the 1990s. Every game was recorded, but usually with VHS video cameras on a tripod atop the press box. There was no live streaming. Replay was first used in D-III at the Stagg Bowl in 2005. Twitter didn’t catch on until 2007, and by 2009, D-III teams were getting savvy with social media. At that time, ESPN didn’t air each semifinal game, or even send much more than a camera to catch some B-roll footage.

In Dec. 2001, Rowan was essentially UW-Whitewater 2005-14: The only powerhouse that could go toe-to-toe with Mount Union. But they were also the 1990s Buffalo Bills; K.C. Keeler’s teams had played in five Salem Stagg Bowls and won none. Many thought, and still think, the 2001 team was the Profs’ best.

Rowan, nursing a 24-21 lead after a late goal-line stop, took a safety with 42 seconds left and kicked off to midfield. Part way through QB Jason Lutz’s rollout, Bridgewater’s game clock stopped at :01. Lutz completed a heave to Nick Lehto, who is tackled at the 1. Rowan players stormed the field. But with a second on the stopped clock, Bridgewater got to run another play and threw the touchdown pass that sent them to Salem.

Keeler immediately called it a travesty and vowed to protest, but NCAA rules declare the game over when teams and officials leave the field. Bridgewater viewed the end-zone angle of the footage on Saturday night, and vacillated between saying it wanted to forfeit and defiantly declaring it deserved to play for the championship in the week that followed.

By Monday, the NCAA admitted there had been an error by the Virginia-based clock official. I wrote an Around the Nation column I still prefer not to read or link to. Keeler went on a publicity tour with the video, but at 2001 speed, it was well into the following week before the shocking end-zone angle made the rounds. When a member of the Division III selection committee saw it, he told us it made him “sick to his stomach.”

Had this happened in 2023, the clock-stop video would have made the social media rounds in the hours, if not minutes after the game. Outrage would have ensued. You think North Central and Mount Union fans complaining about having to play on the road is bad? Rowan led the national semifinal game after 60 minutes were played, and yet, Bridgewater played the next Saturday in Salem.

The Eagles’ story was remarkable — a group that had gone 0-10 as freshmen were seniors on the Stagg Bowl roster. Lutz, running back Davon Cruz, linebacker Jermaine Taylor and the rest of the Eagles acquitted themselves well in Stagg Bowl XXIX. By kickoff, nobody was talking about the clock mishap, and Salem Stadium was at capacity, turning fans away.

If anybody thought the Purple Raiders were going to make quick work of the Eagles, those notions were dispelled with a 67-yard Lutz-to-Marcus Richardson touchdown pass 20 seconds in. Though Mount Union eventually opened a 30-13 lead on a Jason Perkins interception return and a 95-yard touchdown run from Gagliardi Trophy-winning running back Chuck Moore, Bridgewater scored two fourth-quarter touchdowns and Mount Union needed to recover an onside kick and get a first down before it could kneel it out.

In the end, Bridgewater helped deliver an epic Stagg Bowl, in front of the largest crowd in Salem Stagg Bowl history: 7,992 people. It showed the drawing power of a Virginia school in the championship game.

We’ll never know how Rowan would have performed in the same slot. Bridgewater’s conference, the ODAC, had its 10-0 champion left out of the postseason in 1998, the last year before automatic bids were introduced. We’ll never see that again, we’ll never see another 50-50 tie, and we’ll never again have an utterly preposterous football moment where the video doesn’t immediately make waves nationally.