Stories from a storied rivalry

By Duane Schroeder, Wartburg Sports Information Director (retired)

Wartburg will put its 5-0 record and No. 9 ranking in the latest NCAA Division III poll by the American Football Coaches' Association on the line this Saturday when it hosts arch-rival Luther College, which is hoping to play "giant killer" for a second-straight week after upsetting 20th-ranked Coe, 17-7, Saturday to improve to 2-3. That should add some excitement to one of Division III's top football rivalries, which has never been lacking in intensity.  

These two arch-rivals enter Saturday's game with the series record appropriately knotted at 28-28-1, following Wartburg's thrilling 20-17 win last year, also in Waverly.

The series wasn't always that close. When Don Canfield became the Knights' head coach in 1973, the Norse were a dominant football power, not only in the Iowa Conference but throughout the Midwest, and led the series 20-9-1.

At a point in time when most college football squads were made up of 60 to 70 players, legendary Norse coach Edsel Schweizer, who also doubled as a psychology professor, was frequently able to dress more than a hundred. 

"The field seemed to tilt," opponents said when Luther took the field, which then was located on the upper level of the Decorah campus. Retired Wartburg sports information director Duane Schroeder recalls phoning Warren Berg, Luther's sports information director at the time, after he had received a Luther roster for a game program and telling him, "I asked for a roster, not a student directory."  Schweizer, behind such marquee players as Kent Finanger, Brad Hustad, John Pake and Gerry Anderson, compiled a 150-78-6 record from 1952 until his retirement in 1977.

But Wartburg's football fortunes turned around in the '80s and '90s, and the Knights have been able to claw their way back to even. At the moment, they are riding a seven-game win streak over the Norse.

Last year's 20-17 win over the Norse typifies the series. Records, indeed, go out the window. Wartburg was en route to its seventh Iowa Conference football championship and its first perfect regular season record ever, while Luther was struggling to a 2-8 record, yet it took a last minute pass break-up by cornerback Bo Harris to preserve the Knights' win. In 1961, Wartburg's Eldon Ott intercepted a pitch early in the first quarter and ran it in for a touchdown on a rainy night in Decorah. The Norse ran up and down the field the rest of the night, piling up 14 first downs to the Knights' four while outgaining Wartburg 224 to 54 yards, yet the Knights hung on for a 7-6 win, their last of the season in a 2-7 year. The Norse, on the other hand, finished in the thick of the IIAC race with a 6-2 record.

The off-field antics have almost outshone some of the in-game heroics. There was a point in time when the hijinks were more destructive and juvenile than the series deserved -- the painting of campus landmarks, disfiguring the opponent's field with herbicides and burnings of "Ls" and "Ws," shaved heads and general vandalism. 

Mercifully, the off-field antics have taken a more creative turn. In fact, the notorious fly-over challenge before the 1996 Wartburg-Luther football game by the Wartburg cross country team was picked by "Rolling Stone" magazine as one of the Top 10 college pranks of the year. Two years ago, KWAR-FM, the Wartburg campus radio station, posed as an environmentalist interest group and was allowed to participate in Luther's Homecoming Parade. As the KWAR float passed the parade reviewing stand, strings were pulled, clothes were changed and the environmental float became obviously a Wartburg float.

Oddly enough, there never has been a trophy that would be the hallmark of the football rivalry. In the '50s and '60s, there was a "Battle Axe" that was passed between the two schools, but that encompassed all sports plus sportsmanship as the criteria for possession by each school. In the '70s and into the '80s, the student body president of the losing school was to give his or her counterpart their pants at mid-field at the conclusion of the game, but that tradition also has died.

"Bragging rights" fuels this rivalry, just as it does every other rivalry. Not only are the two schools located within 70 miles of each other, they are sister schools of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and their student bodies are similar in backgrounds. The students frequently come from the same communities, the same churches, even the same families. This makes "bragging rights" a priority and the Wartburg-Luther rivalry an experience for anyone who is touched by it.

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