Wittenberg Magazine Online

Fifty years ago, Wittenberg’s athletic landscape changed forever with the hiring of “Big” Bill Edwards ’31 as Wittenberg’s new athletic director and head football coach.

Edwards’ hiring on April 3, 1955 set a series of events into motion, which helped create the small college athletic powerhouse that continues today at Wittenberg.

“We feel fortunate in the coming of Bill Edwards, because, in addition to his outstanding record as a football coach, he is interested in helping to build a strong department of athletics and physical education on the Wittenberg campus,” said Clarence C. Stoughton, Wittenberg president in 1955.

“Bill Edwards will contribute greatly to Wittenberg’s three-fold program of vigorous intramurals, intensive physical education teacher-preparation and wholesome participation in intercollegiate athletics.”

Little did Stoughton know how prophetic that statement would turn out to be. As Edwards later noted, “I was 50 years old, and I thought Wittenberg was the place I could make a contribution.”

That he did. The football and men’s basketball programs have since ascended to the No. 1 position among all NCAA Division III programs in total victories and have won seven national titles between them. Edwards, who had high school, college and professional coaching experience before taking a pay cut to return to his alma mater, patrolled the sidelines for three national titles in the 1960s while compiling a 98-20-4 record in 14 years as Wittenberg’s head football coach. He was later inducted into the National College Football Hall of Fame, one of four Wittenberg athletes or coaches to gain such acclaim, and he was in the inaugural class of the university’s Athletic Hall of Honor in 1985.

Edwards, who passed away in 1987, inherited a football program that had been mostly mired in mediocrity, with nine losing seasons in the previous 11 years (not counting 1943 and 1944, when the football program was suspended as a results of World War II). He turned things around immediately, eventually leading Wittenberg to a 69-9-1 record in the 1960s, the most wins in small college football during the decade.

All of that winning – including hundreds of conference championships across almost every sport on the program’s landscape – can be traced back to Edwards’ hiring. Upon his retirement, however, it wasn’t the wins and losses, the accolades from such college football notables as Woody Hayes, Paul “Bear” Bryant and John McKay or the championship trophies that made him most proud.

“The best thing is to see the players when they come back after graduation as successful men in their careers, and as successful husbands, fathers and citizens of their communities,” Edwards said upon his retirement in 1973. “When you see those things, you feel deep down that maybe you made a contribution.”

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