Mount Mercy football program ‘here to compete’ in first official action in fall of 2026

For years, the campus bookstore sold T-shirts emblazoned with the phrase “Mount Mercy Football — Undefeated Since 1928.”

The slogan was purely satirical. While 1928 marks the year Mount Mercy was founded, the university had never fielded a football team.

This fall, that once-tongue-in-cheek claim will be put to the test as the MMU football program prepares for its first official season of competition in September.

Sure, it’s a new team with a young roster, but the Mustangs have no intention of being any opponent’s “freebie” in year one.

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“I want our program to be successful. I want it to be respected,” head coach MD Daniels said. “I’ve done research on startup programs and talked to a few head coaches who won eight or nine games in their first year. Yes, it’s a brand-new football program, but we’re going to do everything we can to make sure our team is fully prepared, fundamentally, to compete at a high level.”

In MMU’s foundational season last fall, the team took part in two scrimmages against Grinnell and Simpson, hosted a Homecoming intrasquad scrimmage and focused on growth.

“Fall was a big development piece as far as getting guys acclimated to our schemes and our standards — on the football field, in the community and the classroom,” Daniels said. “Pretty much our whole team is freshmen, so it was good to see our guys in action against other teams’ freshmen and sophomores — and to see that we have some legitimate talent.

“We only had two guys leave the program, so we’ll pretty much have the same team back this spring.”

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One player returning is former Solon quarterback Ty Bell, who is competing for QB1.

“It was good to get the experience from this fall season and to learn how important film and playbook study are in college,” Bell said. “But I miss being hit. I think everybody on this roster is ready to get after it.”

Mount Mercy’s roster count currently sits just below 70 players. That number will jump this fall, according to Daniels.

“We want to get to 110,” Daniels said. “That gives us quality depth.”

An important piece of Daniels’ roster development plan is recruiting local talent — a lesson he took from his time as head coach at Iowa Wesleyan.

“We didn’t have many kids from Iowa on our roster in my three years there,” Daniels said. “About 98 percent of our roster was from out of state, so every year we would lose a significant number of players for financial reasons or being too far from home — whatever the case may have been. If there’s one thing I could have done differently, it would have been really investing into Iowa high school football players.”

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Homegrown talent is important not only for Daniels’ roster construction but also for building a fan base.

“It’s super important because when our kids commit to Mount Mercy, it’s not just the student-athletes who are committing, their families are committing too,” Daniels said. “At Iowa Wesleyan, we had turned the corner and were really having some good success, but without many kids from the state we didn’t really have tailgating, a booster club or the fan support.”

Another key local piece for the Mustangs is offensive tackle Carter Holmes, a 2025 Benton Community graduate.

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Holmes committed to the University of South Dakota, an NCAA Division I (FCS) program, out of high school. After spending the summer in Vermillion, he realized it wasn’t the right fit.

“I had (NCAA) Division II offers when I left South Dakota, but after talking to Coach Daniels and Coach O (Kyle Otineru), I felt connections were the most important thing to me and that I could be successful here,” Holmes said. “I was a little uneasy coming in the first couple weeks of practice, but once I got around the guys, I honestly felt like I was more at home than I was anywhere else.”

The Mustangs will open at Grinnell on Sept. 5, marking the program’s inaugural game.

“Some teams might call us the freebie on their schedule, but we need to make sure when we come out in this year one, everybody’s ready to go,” Bell said. “We’re not going to lay down and die for anyone. We’re here to compete. We want to put Mount Mercy on the map.”