Taylor Sussner anticipated Garret Wilson's pass and picked it off in the end zone, in front of North Central receiver Grant McAtee, helping UW-River Falls stay within four points at the half in Stagg Bowl LII. Photo by Mathieu Starke, d3photography.com

By Keith McMillan 
D3football.com 

CANTON -- By the time the Stagg Bowl concluded with UW-River Falls players dousing head coach Matt Walker with a Powerade bucket full of water on a crisp Ohio night at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium, even the cold-hearted had been heartwarmed by the Falcons.

The way their star quarterback recruited their top receiver by asking his basketball-playing coworker at Tarnation Tavern to come catch passes. The way Walker and offensive coordinator Joe Matheson spent the covid year leaning all the way in to trying to become the fastest offense in football. The way the traditional WIAC also-ran, whose last winning season prior to 2021 was a 6-4 year in 2000, had so quickly risen to Stagg-ering heights. 

• All-time Division III football champions
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• Podcast: Stagg Bowl wrap, players and coach of the year
• More 2025 Division III playoff coverage

Every season ends with new people, if not new programs, tasting the joy of winning. But this triumph felt more delicious than most because of all it taught us and reminded us about why we play the game, and who it helps us become.

Here are six things we learned throughout the 2025 Division III football season:

Be authentically yourself

Behind closed doors pregame, on an ESPN interview at the Stagg Bowl's conclusion, and to reporters postgame, Walker told basically anyone who would listen some variation of "Whether we lose 100-0 or we win, we are going to be unapologetically aggressive." He also trotted out "we aren't going to lose to the logo on the helmet" several times, meaning six-time Stagg Bowl participant North Central might well beat his Falcons, but not just because it is North Central. 

UW-River Falls coach Matt Walker talks with ESPN sideline reporter Madison Fitzpatrick after the game. Photo by Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com

Walker wouldn't allow his players to be psyched out by the team with the championship pedigree. But more importantly, and inspirationally, he never let them entertain the idea that the authentic version of these Falcons wasn't enough. There was no sense in making it to the apex and changing what got you there. The Falcons couldn't even get their minds around playing scared, not when North Central scored 2 minutes and 3 seconds into the game, and not when it led 14-3 (although we'd love to have heard their inner monologues).

The dominant story line all week, if not throughout the Falcons' run in 2025, was how Walker and Matheson decided during the covid year to stop dabbling into tempo and commit to being the fastest team in football. They got there, hatching an offense that snaps the ball in less than 20 seconds, shaving off time in places as minute as how quickly players hand the ball back to the umpire.

But what really got them there? Walker freed the Falcons from the shackles of 2-8 and set the program on the path to a national championship when, he says, "I stopped caring what everyone would think."

What seems crazy doesn't seem so when it works, but to make it work Walker had to release everyone associated with the program from the fear of failing, on fourth downs, or in front of the football world on national TV.

The more we learned about the River Falls story, the more the win felt preordained (even if you'd talked yourself into picking North Central to win). Perhaps it was meant to happen, because of all the beyond-the-football-field lessons it could teach us about perseverance, believing in yourself and being proud of who you are.

Stick with a coach through tough times

Hired in 2011 after a 22-8 run in four years at his alma mater, DePauw, Walker delivered 1-9, 2-8 and 0-10 marks his first three seasons. He told The Athletic he should have been fired three times in his 15-year tenure. 

Just a few seasons ago, in his 20th season, Pedro Arruza guided Randolph-Macon to the national semifinals. Arruza began 3-7, 2-8, 2-8 before a conference title and playoff appearance. The Yellow Jackets have now won eight of the past 10 ODAC titles and have beaten rival Hampden-Sydney 12 in a row.

In Division III, sometimes knowing you've got the right man for the job means more than solely chasing wins. Without the booster and media pressure that comes with the brighter spotlight of FBS football, UW-River Falls administrators were able to stick by Walker until the signs of progress began to manifest themselves in the win column.

“We didn’t look like a college football team when I got here,” Walker said. “Then we weren’t competitive. We had to get competitive. Then we started winning some games. Could we really climb our way up into the best league in the country? That was the next step, and then we did.”

River Falls started 6-9, 318-pound tackle DJ Fox along a line that featured no one smaller than 6-3, 282. Four of the top five wide receivers were at least 6-3, 195. The free safety is 6-5, 215 Riley Ashburn. They darn sure looked like a college football team in the Stagg Bowl.

Play great competition, and buy all the way in

Which brings to this: UW-River Falls' rise wasn't entirely storybook, intangible and abstract theory. The Falcons beat five playoff teams during the regular season, by 12, 12, 10, 34 and 38 points. Then, in the 40-team beast of a playoff bracket, they beat five more in the playoffs, by 51, 28, 25, 7 and 10. 

UW-River Falls also won the consensus No. 1 conference, led Division III in takeaways and all NCAA divisions in total offense. The Falcons' quarterback, Kaleb Blaha, won the Gagliardi Trophy and a rack of other postseason honors.

They played a perhaps unprecedented slate of opponents and walloped most of them. This might have been a Disney ending, but it was no fluke. Top Gun is a Paramount film, and Matheson's offense got much of the credit for the Falcons' flight to the paramount.

Matheson isn't shy about talking about the 6-Back Offense, and wears branded Top Gun Offense merch. He captivates the room when he talks football, and will certainly draw interest as a head coach or as a coordinator at a higher level.

Greg also wrote about how the defense's buy-in to the philosophy helps its players stay in shape, maximize practice reps and focus on the right stats -- turnovers, negative plays, third-down efficiency -- over the wrong ones -- yards allowed and total points.

Pregame in Canton, defensive coordinator Jake Wissing talked about dialing up pressure looks the Falcons hadn't shown in a game in two years. Either they'd work, or they'd allow North Central to score quickly and get the ball back for the offense. That's not crazy, that's buy-in.

Use the science

Both North Central and UW-River Falls use player monitoring equipment on a portion of their rosters to collect data about player health and performance. They then use that information to make decisions about how soon injured players can return and how quickly they ramp up. But they also use it in other ways -- for instance, we learned in pregame conversations that players must hit 90 percent of their top speed every three or four days to maintain it.

The teams are literally at institutions of higher learning, and synthesizing information has been incorporated for years into everything from weight training to punt, field goal and fourth-down decisions. Letting data drive football decisions isn't completely new, nor is Division III teams being on the vanguard of new ideas. (Look up where the Pistol was developed, for instance.)

But the science directly impacted the success of the teams who made it to Canton. North Central was healthier than it had been in previous seasons by a significant percentage, especially compared to 2023, and Walker said UW-River Falls essentially started the same 22 players in the Stagg Bowl who started in Week 1. The bye weeks built into the season -- one during the 11-week regular season, another for all but eight of the teams who qualified for the playoffs, and a 15-day break between the semifinals and championship game certainly helped. But so does science. We will certainly learn more about teams' use of the monitoring equipment in the coming years.

Take your chances in a wide-open era in Division III

The most important thing we learned by UW-River Falls ending the 2025 season as Stagg Bowl winners is yes, it could happen to your school too.

Through the 1990s and early 2000s, we've tried to tell ourselves that Rowan, or Wesley, or St. John's would crash the purple party, only to be proven wrong. In 2016, new Stagg Bowl participant UW-Oshkosh joined Mary Hardin-Baylor in Salem; turned out that was less ushering in a new era of Division III football, and more ushering in a third purple power alongside Mount Union and UW-Whitewater, which met in nine Stagg Bowls from 2005 to 2014. When North Central broke through in 2019, that was the coronation of a new champion, in red, and turned out to be the beginning of a fourth dynasty.

How could any upstart, pretty good, maybe-we-win-our-conference-or-host-a-playoff-game program compete with mighty Mount Union, UW-Whitewater, UMHB or North Central? The four programs have accounted for 46 of the 80 semifinalists (57.5%), 35 of the 40 Stagg Bowl participants, and 18 of the 20 champions since the playoffs expanded past 16 teams in 1999. Teams could push them to the fourth quarter -- a Wartburg here, a Muhlenberg there -- but couldn't get over the hump.

Then 2023 Cortland came out of nowhere on behalf of all the really-good-but-never-great teams and kicked the door off the hinges. North Central boarded it up and rebuilt it on behalf of the dynasties in 2024, beating Mount Union in the Stagg Bowl. And then UW-River Falls went and kicked the door off the hinges again.

I'm not saying Luther, Manchester, Morrisville State or Maine Maritime (all 0-10 in 2025) are going to make their way to Salem to play for the 2026 championship. But if a Bethel, a Johns Hopkins, a John Carroll, a Wheaton, or maybe a Linfield finds its way there, you can no longer assume one of the Dynastic Four will take home the Walnut and Bronze. UW-River Falls won nine games in 2021, and seven in each of the next three seasons. Those type of programs can dare to dream now.

Don't make losses out to be a disaster

Brad Spencer, 58-2 after the loss in Canton, has the numbers to justify a win-at-all-costs, hard-ass mentality. But he isn't that guy, much to his credit.

In his postgame remarks, Spencer seemed legitimately happy for Walker and UW-River Falls, though disappointed for his players. In defeat, he took time to express his pride in the way Division III exemplifies the best of college football.

Walker and Spencer talked by phone once they found out they'd meet in the Stagg Bowl, partially about logistics. Spencer has been to six Stagg Bowls as a coordinator or head coach, in five locations: Shenandoah, Tex., Canton, Annapolis, Salem, Houston and Canton. Walker's program hadn't even been to the playoffs since 1996, though it did play in two Isthmus Bowls.

Taking the time to share logistics with the guy who can prevent you from achieving your goals? That's sportsmanship. It's the flipside of what coaches often tell players: Be your best, even when no one is watching.

And when everyone was watching, after his team had come up short as it so rarely does, Spencer showed up as a leader of men, not a sore sport. Nobody should feel sorry for the Cardinals, he said, knowing nobody does. They've had more than their share of good days, and it turns out you actually can't win them all. 

North Central's players stood on the field and watched UW-River Falls celebrate its Stagg Bowl victory. I don't know if they did that on their own or their coach made them, and I don't remember whether they did in 2023 against Cortland. But I know that when a player feels like skipping a lift in March, feels like dogging a route or a rush or a coverage in an August practice, he can go back to that moment. Games are won 62-0 and 76-14 and starters don't even play in many fourth quarters, yet players can remind themselves that somewhere along the journey will come a challenge, and when it shows up, they can know they've prepared themselves for the moment the best they possibly could. And if the opponent has done the same, then the chips fall where they may.

North Central won it all in 2019, and lost in 2021. Won in 2022, lost in 2023. Won in 2024, lost in 2025. Frankly, the game plan, the mindset, the roster ... it was all good enough to win another Stagg Bowl. UW-River Falls generated three huge turnovers, and that more than anything did the Cardinals in. 

Losses upon losses weren't the end of the River Falls story. Nor was an early-season loss to UW-Oshkosh. Those defeats set the stage. 

A single loss might do the same for North Central in 2026.