Year of the Coach: Mount Union's Kehres is football's 'Larry Legend'

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Our Year of the Coach series kicked off in August and winds to the NCAA Division III national championship game — the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl pitting North Central against Wisconsin-River Falls — at 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 4, in Canton. The subject of this week’s articles piloted Mount Union to 17 appearances in the D3 finals.This is Part 1 in the Larry Kehres story.

Basketball has its Larry Legend, Bird.

Football has its Larry Legend, Kehres.

We’re talking pro vs. small college, basketballs vs. footballs and apples vs. oranges here, but let’s humor ourselves with a few juicy facts.

During Larry Bird’s 12 seasons in Boston, the Celtics built a regular-season record of 660-237, a winning percentage of .735. They won three NBA championships.

Larry Kehres was football head coach of the Mount Union Purple Raiders for 27 years. His record was 332-24-3, a winning percentage of .929.

The legends piggy-backed. Larry Legend I hung up his sneakers 1992. Larry Legend II won the first of his 11 NCAA Division III national championships in 1993.

Kehres’ astonishing .929 win percentage came out over time.

He was a mere .750 (30-10) in his first four seasons, 1986-89.

He was a monstrous .974 (189-5, nine national championships) from 1996 through 2008. Across his final four seasons, he went 57-3 (.950), losing in the finals in 2009, 2010 and 2011, but going out batting a thousand, 15-0 and the king of small-college football, in 2012.

Over 27 seasons, his winning percentage was that eminently estimable .929.

Comparing .929 to other notables.

• .909: Massillon legend Paul Brown’s number in going 80-8-2 with the high school Tigers from 1932-40.
• .860:Nick Saban’s number in going 222-36 at Alabama from 2007-23.  
• .854: Ryan Day’s number in going 82-11 (though the Big Ten championship game loss to Indiana) at Ohio State, starting in 2018 when he worked three games as interim head coach.
• .689:Bill Belichick’s number in going 297-134 with the Patriots from 2000-23, including postseasons in which he won six Super Bowls.

Another perspective on .929:

• These are the top 10 wins leaders in college football coaching history, regardless of division:
• 1, John Gagliardi, 489; 2, Joe Paterno, 409; 3, Eddie Robinson, 408; 4, Bobby Bowden, 377; 5, Kevin Donley, 356; 6, Len Sparks, 338; 7, Kehres, 332; 8, Bear Bryant, 323; 9, Pop Warner, 319; 10 (tie), Roy Kidd and Amos Alonzo Stagg, 314.
• Ranking those luminaries in winning percentage:
• 1, Kehres, .929; 2, Bryant, .780; 3, Gagliardi, .775; 4, Sparks, .772; 5, Paterno, .749; 6, Bowden, .743;  7, Warner, .730; 8, Kidd, .713; 9, Robinson, .707; 10, Donley, .694; 11, Stagg, .605.

Legend enough for you?

The Larry Legend stuff is not for Kehres, though. He actually answers to the nickname “LK.”

He seems content to have tried hard and done well for a long time in a place not far from his boyhood home that became a blessed home … and still is.

Still more fun facts about .929:

Larry’s son, Vince, followed him as Mount Union’s head coach and went 95-6 from 2013-19. His winning percentage was .941.

Larry’s son-in-law, Geoff Dartt, has been Mount Union’s head coach since Vince left. Dartt had a chance to improve to 68-4 (.950) with a playoff win over John Carroll. The Purple Raiders lost, dropping Dartt to 67-5 (.930).

It’s crazy, but at .929, the old man ranks third in the family behind his son’s .941 and his son-in-law’s .930.

Larry’s 11 national championships rule the roost, though. Vince won two, in 2015 and 2017. Dartt has two national runner-up finishes, in 2022 and 2024.

This would have been a nice year for Mount Union to return to the finals, since the game is being played at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, 18 miles from the Purple Raiders’ Kehres Stadium.

The 2025 spoiler, John Carroll, is an old rival. Larry Kehres’ last game as a Mount Union quarterback was a win over John Carroll in 1970. As head coach, Larry lost to the Blue Streaks in 1989 and tied them in 1991. After that, he beat them 23 times in a row.

In that stretch, Larry piloted Mount Union to the 11 national titles and six other appearances in the finals. The NCAA Division III championship game easily could be named after him. Since its inception in 1973, though, it has been called the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl.

Stagg died at age 102 in 1965, when Kehres was in high school.

Stagg played football at Yale in the 1880s. He became head coach at the University of Chicago in 1892 and was fired after 41 years basically for being “too old.” He didn’t think so, spending the next 14 years as head coach at University of the Pacific.

Kehres is alive and well, living near the Mount Union campus. He is a husband, father and grandfather who checks in on the current team, plays golf, reads, stays in touch with the numerous current coaches who are part of his coaching tree, and sighs over the era of transfer portal and NIL.

He still prefers football weather. During our interview, he thought it warm inside and asked to sit on the patio, where the temperature was in the 50s.

His influence shows up all over football.

Nick Sirianni, who was a Mount Union receiver on three of Kehres’ national championship teams, is head coach of the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles.

Matt Campbell, who was a Mount Union teammate of Sirianni and later was Kehres’ offensive coordinator, recently left Iowa State for Penn State for a contract with that includes $70.5 million in guaranteed money.

Mike Elder, who played for Kehres in the early 1990s, coached Avon to its second straight OHSAA Division II state championship on Dec. 5.

With the national championship game stopping in Canton, and our Year of the Coach series nearing an end, it seemed a perfect time for telling the story of football’s perhaps underappreciated Larry Legend. Look for it in multiple parts.

NEXT UP: Larry Kehres was in grade school when his buddies met on Sundays to play no-pads tackle football. He was always the quarterback. He enjoyed pulling plays straight out of his head.

Reach Steve at steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com

The Canton Repository sports department can be contacted via email at sports@cantonrep.com. 

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Larry Kehres’ win percentage blows the football field out of the water

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