Purple Raider pipeline: Nick Siriannis formative 7 years at a DIII powerhouse

June 15, 2024

It might not have been a surprise when Nick Sirianni made the three-hour move from his hometown in western New York to Alliance, Ohio. His two older brothers had preceded him with decorated careers of their own at Mount Union, so it made sense that Nick would follow in their footsteps. In five years as a player (1999-2003) and two years as a coach (2004-05), Sirianni left a lasting impression on those around him and received an inside look at what it takes to build a dynasty. He might not have ended up as the best football player in the family, or even the best coach among his college teammates, but he wouldn’t be the Eagles’ new head coach if it weren’t for the lessons learned then.

Note: Interviews have been edited for clarity and length.

Larry Kehres, Mount Union head coach, 1986-2012: Nick has two older brothers. His older brother Mike … and then his middle brother, Jay, came to Mount to play basketball. In his last year, he played football because we were really short on quarterbacks, so Jay helped us out. And Nick was the third. Mike was a good receiver. So Nick had to follow in the footsteps of two older brothers. Sometimes that’s not the easiest thing, but he did it quite well.

Mike Sirianni, Washington & Jefferson head coach; Mount Union wide receiver, 1990-1993: I think (Kehres) knew about (Nick) because he was my little brother. He was always around. My dad still is. I’m sure he drives Nick crazy, too. We (Washington & Jefferson) would play at 1:30 and he’s there at 11. He beats us there. I’m like, “Geez.” And he did the same thing when I played. He would bring Nick and Nick was like 8 years old with a Mount Union jersey on.

Larry Kehres: I think it can be a little easier when an older brother has been in your program. Nonetheless, recruiting is one young man at a time. But Nick had been here to watch games. He was familiar with the campus. It wasn’t like he was new to us when he made his recruiting visit. He had been here to watch games and perhaps that made it a little easier.

Mike Sirianni: He had some thoughts about playing basketball in college, I think. And I had just started at W&J. We tinkered with that, but I don’t think that was ever going to happen. I had just become the offensive coordinator. But I think (going to Mount Union) was always a strong consideration. I definitely know he looked at other schools, but, you know, he felt comfortable there. Obviously, he made the right choice.

Larry Kehres: Mike was a very good football player and track athlete. I was just answering a note from a former player about Nick and he was kind of giving me credit. I said, “These three Sirianni boys, the credit goes to their parents.” Because Nick has a tremendous mom and dad. Their father was a coach — a track coach and a football coach. So they grew up with track, basketball and football. Mike was very good. He played on our first national championship team (in 1993). I mean, Nick had older-brother role models, great father, teacher, coach. He was well prepared when he came to Mount. He was an excellent receiver in his own right.

Mike Sirianni: (Nick) better be the first person to admit this: If I don’t go Mount Union, (becoming head coach of the Eagles) doesn’t happen for him. And how I found Mount Union was at a college fair, believe it or not, at St. Bonaventure University. I remember it like it was yesterday. My mom was like, “What about Mount Union? Why don’t you talk to their coaches?” I’m like, “Mount Union? Ohio? I’ve never even heard of the place.” But she convinced me because she liked the lady that was selling the school.

I actually called them. They didn’t even recruit me. I called them, like, “Listen, can I come visit? My mom likes the school.” I went, liked the school and I ended up going there. So if you look at (Nick’s career), my dad gets a lot of credit. Obviously, Nick, deservedly so. But my mom’s the one that put everything in motion. Because if she doesn’t say, “I like the lady at the table,” I don’t think this happens. It’s funny how everything happens for a reason.

Mike Miller, Mount Union defensive back, 1999-2003: Nick was one of the first people I met. Him and (tight end) Josh Lidell were both from western New York. I was a defensive back, he was a receiver and we became fast friends. Obviously, we had a lot of time spent together on the practice field.

Rob Adamson, Mount Union quarterback, 1998-2002: It’s crazy. When you get to Mount, there’s 150 freshmen. And there’s another 120 or so varsity players. You got 250 guys out there, so I don’t even really remember Nick as a freshman.

Mike Miller: One of my first memories is standing in line waiting to get our equipment, and there’s people walking away just saying, “I don’t think this is for me.” That was some of my first memories of camp. We had a big, brand new locker room, but all the freshmen had to go underneath the old stadium to the old locker room. So, you found out real quickly who wanted to be there and who didn’t.

Randy Knapp, Mount Union wide receiver, 1999-2003: I joke about it with people all the time. … I played safety my freshman year and I said I want to play offense, and they threw me at receiver, and there were at least 40 receivers at that point. I was like 20th on the depth chart.

Matt Sotcan, Mount Union defensive back, 1999-2002: I transferred in my sophomore year … and I remember the coaches actually went through four-a-days. There’d be like 125 freshmen, 125 sophomores-through-seniors. So they’d have practice in the morning for the freshmen and then the upperclassmen. And then we’d do lunch and come back and do it again. … And the coaches did that just so guys could get on the field and they could see ‘em. It was amazing how structured it was to be able to see 250 guys every day.

Randy Knapp: You’d get lost. I didn’t even know half my teammates. It was very intimidating. … The only way to do anything to get noticed was to outwork people.

Matt Sotcan: Not as a slight to the other teams we played, but there were a lot of times where the second team was probably just as good as the team you were playing that Saturday. Kind of the iron sharpens iron-type thing.

Larry Kehres: I asked every recruit over many, many years: “Are you passionate about football?”And they generally understood what I meant by that. And I was looking for those guys. You know, this is a D-III school. I wasn’t saying that there’s a potential here for you to have a full, athletic pay-your-tuition-room-and-board scholarship. You had to operate on financial aid based on need. But were you passionate about being successful in football? And so, our program, me and the assistants, we attracted those types of players. I could kind of tell by the way they answered the question if they really were. I wanted those guys that loved football.

Mount Union poses for a photo after winning the 2002 national championship. (Andres Alonso / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)

Sirianni slowly worked his way up the depth chart. In 2000, when Mount Union won the first of three consecutive national championships (which made it six titles in seven years), Sirianni never caught a pass. In 2001, he became a starter in his third year.

Rob Adamson: I have an 11-year-old son that’s huge into football and he was asking me about Nick and I told him, “I threw more passes to him than anybody.” That guy was always the guy that, if we were gonna have a throwing session in the summer, once or twice a day, or anything that involves football, Nick was involved in it.

Jason Candle, Toledo head coach; Mount Union wide receiver, 2000-2001: He was a 6-2 guy that could run good routes and worked really hard at perfecting his craft. I think that’s what a lot of his teammates really appreciated the most about him was that he worked really hard. You know, he was a fun guy to be around, but when things got serious and there was work to be done, he was always a guy that you could count on, staying extra on the field to do more, that kind of thing.

Chris Kern, former Detroit Lion; Mount Union cornerback, 1999-2002: I’m not trying to toot my own horn, but I was really fast back in the day. You can’t compromise speed. There weren’t many of the wide receivers that played very well against me. … We definitely got each other better. He never stepped away from the challenge. “Oh, Chris is up, I’m gonna wait my turn until somebody else is up.” He’d always step right up and work on his craft.

Matt Caponi, Iowa State cornerbacks coach; Mount Union safety, 2000-2003: He was just the ultimate competitor. Loved going against him in practice and one-on-ones. There was a couple offseasons where we were workout partners and he would push himself in the weight room and push myself in the weight room and I think that competitiveness and everything that he did on the field and off the field kind of allowed him to be successful … being a really good player and then overcoming some injuries to end up having a really, really good career.

(Courtesy of Mount Union)

Jason Candle: My last year (as a player), we were the two receivers and midway through the year he was injured and forced to miss the entire season. I think probably, a guy that had worked really hard to get to the point in time where he was a contributor and doing a really good job to that point in the season, to get hurt and miss that year was a blow for our team and certainly to him. But I think it was really cool to see him go through that injury and really persevere through it and come back and have a great finish to his career.

Larry Kehres: You may have heard of compartment syndrome, which is a rather serious injury you can suffer to a lower leg. Nick had that, and it kind of put his athletic career on hold for a little while. It’s something you have to work to bounce back from.

Mike Sirianni: I remember when it happened. I remember going to see Nick in the hospital. And I also remember hearing that they don’t know, let alone if he can play again, if he’s ever gonna be able to run again.

Zac Bruney, Wheeling University head coach; Mount Union quarterback, 2001-2004: He had surgery and they botched the surgery. He ended up with a very, you know, nasty graft and stuff. I mean, it was a bad deal. I don’t know malpractice-wise, but it kind of screwed his leg up pretty good.

From a 2003 story in the Sunday Post-Journal in Jamestown, N.Y.: Nick suffered a torn calf muscle that nearly killed the nerves in his calf. A staph infection followed, as did more bad news.

“My parents knew how bad it was and kind of hid it from me,” Nick said. “After the first surgery, my doctor in Ohio said it looks like you’re going to be all right, but you’re not going to be able to run or cut like you were, and you may not be able to play football.”

Nick, the youngest son in one of the area’s most ardent football families, began to cry.

“Fortunately, we brought him home to Jamestown and the care he got here we’re very thankful for,” (Nick’s dad) Fran said.

Added Nick: “It doesn’t take a lot to motivate me. Being told that I’m not going to be able to do something made me want to go out and prove to everyone.”

Zac Bruney: It was a pretty tough deal for him. But he persevered and he kind of willed himself back, because a guy with less mental fortitude probably would have just let his playing career play itself out and not really battled through (it).

Mike Sirianni: Blessings aside, he was able to get back on the field. That was pretty amazing that he was able to overcome that. I mean, you talk about learning things through the game of football, dealing with adversity. He did that, and I think that’s another reason he’s where he’s at. He fought through that and could have very easily given up and he didn’t. He was starting at the time. So, I mean … He was on his way to having a really good career and that kind of derailed him for a little bit.

From the 2003 Sunday Post-Journal story: “In 2002, in the middle of another Purple Raiders championship season, Nick thought he had mononucleosis. That was, if you can believe it, the good news. Instead, a CAT scan found he had a cyst on his liver, which forced him to miss three games.”

Mike Miller: You find out how much you really love the game when you get a setback like that.

Chris Kern: Nick just put in so much damn work between his junior and senior year to get to the level (where he could play). He’s just a hard worker. He’s a dedicated guy. He’s always been a good friend and tremendously hard worker. Just nonstop work, work, work. He wanted to achieve a goal and he definitely got there.

Tom Manning, Iowa State offensive coordinator; Mount Union offensive lineman, 2002-2005: Whether it was in preparation for the football season, in regards to the training aspects of it, if it was actual practice, if it was games, if it was on the intramural basketball court, (he was) a highly, highly competitive guy. Competitive within the team, competitive against an opponent. That’s like the first thing — the guy hates to lose. And he loves the preparation and he loves the actual competing against people. He’s the kind of guy that no matter what you’re doing, he’s gonna find a way to make it competitive, which I think is what I’ve really always enjoyed about him. We’re doing X-Y-Z, you know, “Hey, I betcha I can throw this ball farther than you.” He’s one of those guys.

When (Sirianni and I both worked for the Colts in 2018), we were walking off the practice field and he asked me if I wanted to do punt, pass and kick. “Nick, we’re like 37.”

Zac Bruney: We played in kind of a summer league, outdoor basketball league up the road. Jason Candle and myself and Nick and some of the other guys we played with who stayed for the summer. Now those games, we didn’t really know those guys we were playing against because it was random guys who were home from college in the Youngstown area. Those games would get pretty heated and competitive. Yeah, Nick, he had a good little swagger to him.

Jason Candle: I vividly remember some of those. Those were epic battles. … Our thing was, always try to compete in everything, whether that was playing video games or on the basketball court or doing whatever.

Mike Miller: I used to go up and visit him in New York and we’d play in the Gus Macker three-on-three tournament. I went up there and got a chance to meet his family and some of his hometown friends and played in (the tournament). We were always looking to compete.

Tom Manning: I hate to say it, but he’s pretty good (at basketball). He’s a guy that you don’t want to tell him he’s good at things. But he’s pretty good at it. He’s a natural athlete.

Zac Bruney: He was the dribble-drive, pull-up guy. He had a nice touch. If he was playing in a starting five, he’d probably be the two or the three. I don’t think he played defense all that much though. He was a scorer, you could say that. He had that scorer’s mentality.

Jason Candle: (Did he think defense was optional?) You have a good source on that.

Tom Manning: He was a tremendous leader and teammate and really one of those guys that had the ability to kind of get along with everybody on the team and be a leader to those people while still remaining true to himself and kind of being his own guy. Nick is Nick. He’s funny. He has a different way to lead, and I think he resonates with a lot of different kinds of people.

Jesse Burghardt, Mount Union quarterback, 2000-2003: He was very, very funny. Very serious when we needed to be, but we shared some pretty good laughs. … The faces he would make. He’s got this long face. He would just make some of these faces that could always make me laugh.

Randy Knapp: He just had a very sarcastic humor about himself, and he could never say it with a straight face. He’d always say it and then you’d get this big, super-cheesy smile on his face.

Matt Sotcan: “Oh, those are the shoes you’re gonna wear today? Really? OK, all right.” And then you’d be thinking all day, “Should I be wearing these?”

Zac Bruney: We had a pretty unique rule during the fall. It was a player’s rule that we didn’t go to any bars. It was a player’s rule, kind of passed down over time. … For the most part, if you were a guy that wanted to be respected by your teammates and wanted to play a role, you kind of respected that.

Mike Miller: Mount Union wasn’t really a huge party school. Obviously, we’d go out and have fun.

Matt Caponi: I want to say probably for the three years that we hung out, we were … probably undefeated in beer pong. (Nick and I) were the champions. I don’t think we got beat one time.

Rob Adamson: Nick is good people, man. Everybody loves Nick. He never partied too much. He always had good balance, really in everything except for football. He didn’t have good balance for football, but everything else he had good balance.

(Courtesy of Randy Knapp)

Tom Manning: He would tell you that he was pretty fast. He really wasn’t very fast. But he was the kind of guy that we could rely on to make a big play in a really important, critical game. And I think he took great pride in that. Certainly not the most talented or most skilled, that’s why we were where we were, but I think certainly, just a guy that was trustworthy and willing to compete.

Mike Sirianni: I would say this about both of us: We weren’t gonna be blazers and run by you.

Rob Adamson: I had nothing but slow receivers my entire career. Nick Sirianni. Jason Candle. And then I leave Mount and Pierre Garçon and Cecil Shorts III start showing up. I had to deal with these slackjaws, these no-name guys.

Zac Bruney: That injury probably took away a little bit of his explosiveness from an athleticism standpoint, but he was a really good route runner. He was a technician.

Mike Sirianni: We both had basketball backgrounds. I think both of us could jump, could get off the ground and make catches. But — and I think this is just part of being coach’s sons, the amount of time you spend at practice — I think we both had really good hands, just because the amount of time your dad spent throwing you the ball. … I tell people all the time, “You can tell who played catch with their kids and who didn’t.” Our dad definitely played a lot of catch with us.

Randy Knapp: He was pretty much an impeccable route runner. He wasn’t gonna beat you with just sheer speed or sheer size or sheer strength. He was a super, super skinny kid, you know? Kind of just like tall and lanky, but he knew how to run a route and he knew how to get open and his hands were perfect. He never dropped a pass.

Rob Adamson: There were way more talented guys, faster than him and all that stuff, but he was a technician. You know, it’s the work that he put in behind the scenes and all those times we went out throwing that elevated him to where he was.

Larry Kehres: My memories are, “Could I count on you in tough football games and playoff football games when you were on my team?” And I could always count on Nick. And, you know, Nick’s got the videotape to prove it.

Zac Bruney: We had a really dynamic pair of guys in him and Randell Knapp.

Randy Knapp: People really made a mistake when they played man coverage against us. We were just bigger and faster and we were able to burn them pretty good.

Jesse Burghardt: I remember it was my first play that I ever started at Mount, and we were backed up in our own end zone. And I threw a post route to him, and he was double-covered, and I thought he came down with it. Well, it turns out I threw an interception. I think we stopped them and we got the ball back. And I remember him in the huddle and he said, “Hey, we’re gonna do this again. Let’s get this.” So I mean, very competitive, always knew where to be, and a very encouraging player to be next to.

Randy Knapp: He was our starting X receiver, and we ran a lot of comeback routes to that position. And he kind of perfected the comeback route. We would throw that four or five times a game. And we also had a comeback-and-go. … He probably scored 90 percent of his touchdowns on that route. He knew how to work the comeback and then he knew how to fake it and go upfield, and it seemed very often that his touchdowns were on that one particular route.

Zac Bruney: In the verbage of our offense, we were a number system. So the first number was our protection call. So, our 90 series was our dropbacks. Our five-step or seven-step from under center, or if we’re in the shotgun, it was a three-step. And then the four and the five were our comebacks, 12 and 14 yards. Nick was really good at running those intermediate comebacks and curls. He ran the comeback-and-go where you stutter that comeback, drop your head and shoulder back, and then burst by that corner as he’s driving on the comeback. Ninety-four, 95 up, that was his cup of tea.

Rob Adamson: I still think that he and I can go out there and run a 15-yard comeback on somebody. He was a route-running specialist and that was our route. That was my best throw, that was his best route. You know, that’s unguardable. You can’t guard a comeback with a good throw and a good route.

Zac Bruney: I’d go back tomorrow if I could just to maybe throw him one more 94-up. He’ll remember that. If you ever see him, say “Bruney said you were really good at running that comeback-and-go.” Ninety-four-up. He beat Muskingum with that his senior year for like a 70-yard touchdown.

Technically, it was a 69-yard touchdown.

Rob Adamson: The national semifinal game in ’02, we were playing against John Carroll. … He caught a skinny post for a touchdown in the second quarter, and I probably shouldn’t have thrown it. The safety was coming over to take his head off, but he caught it, got underneath him and avoided the hit.

The skinny post he was good at, too. The comeback route was good, but he also had a way of finding the gap on those skinny posts, just knowing, if it’s Cover 3, keeping it super skinny, or if it’s Cover 4, finding that middle. He had a good knack for that route, too.

Jesse Burghardt: I thought he was very sharp on all his routes. The thing about him was he wasn’t super fast, but he was very quick in and out of his breaks. He just had a knack for the football. He could always get open. But, the post-corner, I loved the post-corner because he had the height and he had the arms and he had the athleticism to go up and get balls if he needed to. … I always enjoyed throwing post-corner routes to him. He was great at the out. Flex left, 95. That guy could run an out route better than anybody. And 99 percent of the time he would come down with the ball, too. I don’t really remember one drop he ever had.

Rob Adamson: He made a catch in (the 2002) Stagg Bowl, the national championship game against Trinity. Real gusty 40-mile-an-hour wind that we were into, and I let one loose on a post, and it was a good ball but he had to like jump up and then make an unbelievable catch. They tackle him on the half-yard-line so he doesn’t get a touchdown for it, but I mean if you took the time to find that somewhere, that’s probably his best play. He made a lot of plays, but that was probably his best play.

Larry Kehres: Somebody called me this morning and said, “Well, I looked up Nick and he had 13 touchdown catches as a senior. You know, stats get away from us coaches. But Nick’s tall and rangy, so he was an excellent red-zone receiver. I remember that. He could get up and get the ball if we had to. I was watching some film just the other day and we hit Nick on — it was a rebroadcast of the game — he had to go down low and make a catch. He was a good receiver. He was blessed with very good hands. He certainly wasn’t known for drops.

Randy Knapp: There was one time we were talking and he goes, “I never thought you were all that fast or all that good. … But then I started going back through all the film.” And he goes, “I noticed that you were always one step ahead of me on every single route we ran.” And he’s like, “I just don’t understand how you’re so damn fast.” He never admitted it to me until after the senior year, and he said, yeah, he looked back through all the film and you were always one step ahead of me on every route.

Zac Bruney: He was confident but he wasn’t cocky. He had a good confidence about him. I think that was probably based on him having two older brothers that beat the crap out of him growing up and got him tougher.

Mike Sirianni: We just beat the snot out of him a little bit. I think it made him tougher, more resilient. He didn’t like to get picked on and didn’t like failure. I think that all helped get him to where he is.

Jason Candle: I think the mental piece of it, trying to gain an advantage, was definitely a piece of his game. Now, I don’t know if anybody ever listened to him, but he was certainly talking. I’ll put it that way.

Zac Bruney: Our toughest opponents were always ourselves in practice. We had good players on both sides of the ball, so the one-on-ones, the seven-on-sevens, and the good-on-good periods, you wanna win those. You wanna compete like crazy and beat up on the defense a little bit. Yeah, he had a good talk game.

Matt Caponi: He was probably one of the best of them. He would let you know. He had a pretty — not short temper, but attitude. Never got frustrated, not a bad thing, but when he caught a pass or made a play, he would let his own teammates know and especially the opposing team, for sure. Probably something that you can’t print, to say the least, but just some little actions, maybe a slight spin of the ball, a point for the first down.

Chris Kern: Practice was a different ballgame, but he never talked in practice, not to me at least. I don’t know if he talked to other people. I guess somebody said maybe he talked some smack on occasion, but he wouldn’t have talked to me. I could play back then.

Jesse Burghardt: He had a way about him to fire people up and get under people’s skin.

Rob Adamson: He’d say, “What happened? You knew it was a comeback route.” Or he’d apologize to them. “Oh, my bad. I didn’t mean to do that.” Just needling stuff like that. The kind of thing a real smart guy would do.

Mike Sirianni: He could talk a little bit. I don’t think that’s anything to be ashamed of. He played with a little bit of swagger and a little giddy-up to his step. …. I’ve always been a believer that you earned the right to play that way because you worked hard. I think he worked hard and I think the program at Mount worked hard and we earned the right to play that way. So even if he did that, it was because he earned the right because he prepared. But yeah, he is known for that a little bit. Jay (Sirianni) is the quiet one.

Larry Kehres: I would use, I like the (phrase) “earned confidence.” You know, you play well and you earn the right to be confident. And I would say he had that. That’s different than maybe false swagger, you know what I mean? He made big plays. He earned the right to be confident and proud of what he did.

Matt Caponi: He always felt like he had to look good. You know, “You look good, you play good.” I didn’t ever understand the earrings, but whatever. Whatever made him catch touchdowns.

Mike Miller: It’s funny, the two games I probably remember most are that last game when we lost and my freshman year, we played Rowan in the semi-finals and lost at home. (Because of injuries), I played five years and Nick played five years and we only lost two games. Those are the ones you really remember. It’s almost kind of comical.

Matt Caponi: I still think about it. I’m sure everybody on that team still thinks about it. I don’t know, just kind of disappointment. Disappointment to be that senior class that — we had a chance to win four straight and we had just broken Oklahoma’s record for most consecutive victories and obviously would have loved to go out on top and get that last victory. It was just one of those days where, you know, kind of everything went wrong. And credit to St John’s. They were more prepared and played harder. But you know, when I think about it, it’s still kind of a disappointment.

Randy Knapp: It was kind of a weird ending to the career, because we had set the national record for most wins in a row with a 55th win in a row against Bridgewater, which was the national semifinal game. And we had never lost a game in our career. We went 55-0. Crazy and surprisingly, well not surprisingly, but Nick and I both had three touchdowns in that game, that 55th win in a row. We both had excellent games. We won the game 66-0. And we were pretty much anointed as national champions. We were the overwhelming favorite to go into that national championship game against St John’s and win.

And we lost. The only loss of our entire career at Mount. And it just … changed. There was just not a lot of joy around Mount Union for a long time. Because, like I said, everyone expected to win. We kind of got hosed a little bit by the weather that game. You know, we were a very pass-happy offense that year and the weather in Salem, (Va.), for that game was low 30s and gusts of 40 mile-an-hour wind. I mean there were some balls that they threw up in the air that just completely got shot down, looked like it was going perfect through mid-air and then boom, it just fell straight down like a duck. And we just got outphysicaled that game. St John’s kind of took it to us and gut-punched us.

So that was a really, really hard way to end our career. With so much success, you’d expect, “Oh, you can look back and be happy.” But most people, I would say, ended it on a very, very sad note and it kind of took the wind out of our class’ sails for a while. We never had a banquet thrown for us. We didn’t have any closure to that. I still refuse to watch the game film. I can’t even bring myself to watch that game. … I don’t know how Nick kind of looks back on it. I’m thinking that it was a good character-builder for all of us. I’ve never actually talked to many people about that game. Just because of how hard it was for all of us.

Mike Sirianni: I just remember how disappointed he was that they lost that football game. I remember the look in his eyes, and I think that probably has driven him a little bit in his career.

In his final season, Sirianni caught 52 passes for 998 yards and 13 touchdowns. Then, in 2004, with his playing career over, Sirianni began his coaching career with a two-year stint at Mount Union as the defensive backs coach.

Tom Manning: I think the unique thing for us as players that were in a huddle with him was now Nick was competing against us on a day-to-day basis. I play offensive line. Now, all of a sudden, you got to practice and he’s the one now coaching the DBs and he’s running his mouth about what they’re going to do. I’m like, “Nick, last year (you were on our side).”

Larry Kehres: There were some pretty good coaches on the team. Matt Campbell was on those teams and Matt’s the head coach at Iowa State who’s doing real well. Alex Grinch was a safety on a couple of those teams. Alex is the defensive coordinator at Oklahoma. Tom Manning, who coached with (Sirianni) on the Colts, but has since went back to Iowa State, was on those teams.

Tom Manning: There’s a lot of us. But that’s kind of a place that attracts people that already have an interest in getting in our line of work. There’s a bunch of us out there, man.

Matt Caponi: I think it was 2005, Coach Campbell was the offensive coordinator, Nick coached the corners, I coached the linebackers and Manning was still playing. You just look at the framed picture that Matt (Campbell) has in his office in his house, just go through that. Vince (Kehres) is the defensive coordinator at Toledo. Ross Watson’s a coach at Toledo. Just looking at that and seeing the guys that were on the team or on the staff, it’s pretty amazing and astounding to see what the football program has done and how it’s impacted the lives of the guys coming through there.

(Courtesy of Mount Union)

Chris Kern: It doesn’t even make sense. These are all guys I played with and graduated with.

Matt Sotcan: I always joke with some of the people I know. We had an intramural basketball team that I think consisted of all the guys. It was Matt Campbell, Jason Candle … Alex Grinch … and Nick. It makes Saturdays and Sundays extremely fun, that’s for sure, to watch these guys

Mike Sirianni: The amount of coaches (Kehres) has produced. Honest to God, when we recruit in Ohio, I tell my guys at W&J, like, “Listen, if you’re in Northeast Ohio or getting to Columbus, there’s a pretty good chance there’s a Mount Union grad on that staff.” Mention my name and then see if that can get you some status and pull. It’s amazing the college and pro coaches, but if you look in the state of Ohio, the amount of high school coaches that are Mount Union grads, it’s almost amazing to look at that because it’s unbelievable.

The Mount Union coaching pipeline extends before and after Nick Sirianni’s time in Alliance. The school’s official website has a page dedicated solely to its “coaching legacy,” which includes the names of 135 football coaches who came through the school, including luminaries like former NFL head coach and defensive coordinator Dom Capers and Princeton wide receivers coach Brian Flinn.

Jason Candle: I think you’re always, as a young man, looking for success in doing whatever it is that you love. Football was what we loved. For all of us, an NFL career wasn’t an option. It was: Can you stay connected to the game in any way possible? And this was a way for us to do so. I think you’re never ready to be done playing football. No matter how old you are when the game’s taken from you. You could play in the NFL for 10 years or be done after high school. You’re never ready to be done. I don’t think any of us were ready to be done. So we were able to get a start in coaching and here we are, 20 years later and it’s still going.

Tom Manning: I think there’s a blend of kids who go there because they have a passion for the game of football. And I think they’re going there for an environment around like-minded people that’s really important to them. At the same time, I think Coach Kehres is the best in the business, and I think under him, learning and watching the way that he moved around and how he handled things from a day-to-day basis, I certainly think the culture he’s created there kind of breeds success. I think certainly it has drawn a lot of people that want to go into our line of work.

Zac Bruney: Before we talked about greatness and before you can achieve that, you have to be consistently good.

Mike Sirianni: The consistency. We would be playing a 14-0 team in the national championship or we could be playing an 0-8 team in the ninth week of the season and it was the same. Practices were the same. We didn’t watch film any longer. We didn’t practice any less. There were no major pregame speeches. It was business. It was the same. He treated everyone with consistency and everyone with respect and it was kind of like “Win the day.” You want to win every day. And, to me, as a player, you don’t really think about it too much. But, as a coach … I really, really recognized the greatness.

Matt Sotcan: (All the coaches from Mount) have taken that same kind of mentality. Respect your opponent. Do the same thing that got you to where you were going. And there was never a falloff from that because the guy behind you was probably just as good as you. If you slacked off, you might not get back out there.

Matt Caponi: I think just the way that they cared about the players. I think sometimes you can get lost in the shuffle, especially in a program, the D-III programs where a lot of the kids are paying to go to school, some of the teams have 150, 250 players on the roster. It didn’t matter how many guys were in your position group, how many guys were on the roster. Those coaches really cared about you more than just football. They were on track and keeping up to date and making sure you were excelling just even outside of football, in life in general because they knew eventually the football was going to end for a lot of the guys. … That was an impact that they had on me, just always being there for me, and I felt like that was something that I wanted to try to do with my career is to make an impact on 18- to 22-year-olds.

Mike Sirianni: Listen, I really, really like all of Nick Saban’s beliefs and philosophies. I really enjoy reading his stuff. I mean, I think he’s terrific. But I’m claiming Larry Kehres as the greatest college football coach of all time. And I know it’s Division III and I know it’s different. I get it. I understand the players are different, the time commitment’s different, the money’s different. But no one would ever convince me otherwise that Larry Kehres isn’t the best football coach. I mean, just look at his record. It’s unbelievable.

Kehres’ .929 winning percentage (332-24-3) is the highest in college football history. He won 11 national championships and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2017.

Larry Kehres won his 11th national title with Mount Union in 2012. (Don Petersen / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)

Rob Adamson: Every Purple Raider is automatically an Eagles fan now. We were already Colts fans. Now we’re Eagles fans. We’re Iowa State fans. We’re Toledo fans. We’re Princeton fans.

Mike Miller: Typically, Nick and I would send videos back and forth of our kids either running routes or doing pro agility ladders or catching footballs. So, we’re always rooting for whoever he’s with, and now we’ll definitely be Eagles fans. Unless they play the Browns.

Jesse Burghardt: I actually got goosebumps (when Sirianni was named Eagles head coach). I just couldn’t believe that one of my receivers from Mount made it to the point where he’s at.

Chris Kern: It’s just a tremendous accomplishment. We’re all proud of it.

Jason Candle: I’m getting so many calls, they’re gonna make me Nick Sirianni’s publicist.

Mike Sirianni: It’s neat. I would say our whole family is excited.

Larry Kehres: What I remember mostly about (the Sirianni) brothers is teasing. You know, “I had more playoff touchdown catches than you did.” A little bit of that thing back and forth, but in good fun. They’re a very close-knit family.

Mike Sirianni: That’s a very famous family argument. Every time we get together, I mean, every single time that comes up. I will say this: He had a great senior year, probably should have been an All-American. … But I win the career. I had a better career. He was injured a lot though. That’s the only thing I will say, he was injured a lot. So I had the more productive career, but I’ll give him the senior year.

Larry Kehres: I think everybody associated with our football family (takes joy in Sirianni becoming the Eagles’ head coach) because they are buzzing. We have a football alumni Facebook (group) that we share with and they are just alive with how proud they are of Nick. I think they all (take pride in it), quite honestly, This is a proud (time). At least until he loses.

(Top photo: Nick Sirianni, who was a student-teacher during his time at Mount Union, poses with some of his students before a game. Courtesy of Sheryl Mason)

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