New coach, same challenges with UNI football

The late Stan Sheriff was not the most successful coach in the rich history of Northern Iowa football.

He wasn’t bad, of course, winning 129 games in his 23-year career. The field inside the UNI-Dome is named in his honor.

But what Sheriff did, as athletics director and coach, was set the table for the decades of success that followed at the Cedar Falls university. It started when he hired the late Darrell Mudra to succeed him as football coach.

Mudra left following the 1987 season after building a consistent winner over five seasons. After a season with legendary Earle Bruce at the helm, a former Panther QB named Terry Allen took over.

All of the sudden, UNI was a major player in what was then called NCAA Division I-AA. Allen’s first team missed the playoffs, but he coached the Panthers to seven straight I-AA playoff appearances after that, including two trips to the semifinals, and won 75 games in eight seasons. UNI also won seven Gateway Conference titles in that span.

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When Allen left for Kansas and the Big 12, the late Mike Dunbar came in and, while never making the playoffs, did win seven games in three of his four seasons, eight in the other.

Mark Farley, the “walk-on from Waukon” who went from playing linebacker for UNI to assisting Allen, returned to his alma mater and proceed to win 183 games in 24 seasons before “retiring” after last season.

I’m not convinced it was his idea to retire.

There’s no doubt Farley’s teams struggled in recent years. Three straight 6-5 regular seasons were followed by a 3-9 record last fall. That’s a rough patch for this once-proud program that hasn’t made the FCS playoffs since 2021.

But like all sports across multiple divisions, the landscape isn’t the same these days. When Allen was winning all those Gateway titles in the 1990s, it was nowhere near as competitive as the Missouri Valley Football Conference is right now.

Today’s MVFC includes North Dakota State, winner of 10 FCS titles since 2011. South Dakota State has two national titles. Youngstown State has four, although it too has been a victim of the changing landscape and hasn’t won a title since 1997.

Then there are the money issues — one UNI has been losing to its MVFC rivals for many years. It’s an unbalanced field when it comes to budgets and resources.

Now UNI has a new football coach leading his first spring practices.

“I’m aware of the expectations of this place, the history that everything that has become of this place,” Todd Stepsis said during his introductory news conference in December. “Yes, we're going to strive to win as many championships as we can and go to the playoffs and take this place to places it's never been before.”

That sounds great and, maybe, Stepsis is the guy to do it. A native of Shelby, Ohio, who played the game at Ashland University, Stepsis definitely appears to be a “football guy.”

After four lackluster seasons at Drake, he found success, directing the Bulldogs to 8-4 and 8-3 campaigns the past two years, including berths in the FCS playoffs.

He did this at a non-scholarship program — albeit against competition unlike he’ll face in the MVFC — but he apparently knows how to operate with nickels and dimes.

That could serve him well at UNI.

“The infrastructure is here, the support is here,” he said during his introduction. “The foundation for the great people is here.”

That, too, sounds great. But in this new world of college football, many teams at the FCS level are going to struggle even more. Those major conference programs not only attract the best players, they have loads more money to spend on those players.

Throughout its history, UNI has never had what Iowa and Iowa State offer and rarely got a recruit who “got away” from their instate siblings.

But the Panthers found enough good players to make it work year after year. They developed players, some of whom went on to do great things in the NFL. You’ve heard of Bryce Paup and Kurt Warner.

The challenges waiting Stepsis are going to be even greater than those Farley faced in his long tenure. Winning is never easy, and in this new landscape, it’s going to get even tougher.

“I'm not a guarantee guy,” Stepsis said that first day. “... I'm not going to guarantee wins or championships or anything like that right away. The one thing I'm going to guarantee is that Panther Nation is going to be really proud of us when they watch us on that field. We're going to do everything we can to make that happen.”

Let’s hope “Panther Nation” — and the administration — make this program proud, too.

Comments: (319) 398-5861; jr.ogden@thegazette.com