Why Buffalo coach Lance Leipold's leap to FBS was inevitable

Zolan V Kanno-Youngs | USA TODAY

Before he became the fastest college football coach at any level to reach 100 wins, before he made the jump from Division III to FBS, Lance Leipold pondered selling peanuts. Or maybe cleaning football stadiums.

The University at Buffalo's new head coach didn't always have an 109-6 career record at Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater. In 1994, when his chances of becoming a football coach looked slim, he considered accepting a part-time offer from an old high school rival.

"I called Lance up and offered him that job of basically working with peanuts and cleaning toilets and the locker room," said Brian Borland, then an assistant coach at Baker (Kan.) University. "Luckily something else came up and he didn't have to do that, but that's just kind of funny how it goes."

Thirteen years later in 2007, Leipold led Wisconsin-Whitewater to the NCAA Division III National Championship with Borland as his defensive coordinator. The Warhawks won their sixth national championship this past season, with Leipold winning his sixth American Football Coaches Association Division III Coach of the Year Award in the process. That gave him more coach of the year awards than any active football coach at any NCAA division and second all time.

"It's kind of who I am," Leipold said. "I don't like to lose."

The coach is bringing his winning ways to the Mid-American Conference, taking over an offensively talented Buffalo team. With a quarterback like Joe Licata, who led the MAC with 29 passing touchdowns last season, Buffalo should scare some teams.

But Leipold's competitive edge was ingrained long ago back in Wisconsin in a small town called Jefferson.

"I don't think there's anyone in Jefferson that's shocked that Lance Leipold is involved in sports in some aspect of his life," Leipold said. "And I won't apologize for it either."

Ken Leipold, a former Jefferson High School basketball coach, saw the first sign of a coach in the making when his son was just 9 years old.

Lance Leipold's knowledge of multiple sports — baseball, basketball and football — stood out even then.

"There are people that play the game and there are people that play and know the games," Ken Leipold said. "He knew the games."

He saw the second sign when Lance began to excel as a three-sport athlete at Jefferson High. He was the starting quarterback, but it was in basketball where his competitiveness matured.

Ken can remember Jefferson losing a game against a much weaker team just before Christmas, and Jefferson's new coach downplaying the result because it was against a team from outside its league. A certain 6-1 point guard wasn't having it.

"It was a non-conference game and he said it was okay and I said, probably in a disrespectful way, no, that's not okay," Lance Leipold said. " … We underachieved and I didn't feel that was acceptable."

Borland, who also played under his father in the nearby Fort Atkinson High, can remember Leipold's "humble confidence" from when they matched up in football and basketball.

"He was good, but he wasn't telling you about it," Borland said. "I think he's the same way as a coach; He's very good, but he's anything but a self-promoter."

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After turning down the concessions job, Leipold's first full-time position was as an assistant coach at Nebraska-Omaha under Pat Behrns in 1994. Success didn't exactly come early: in his first two seasons, the Mavericks had a combined record of 3-18.

"There was attitude issues and culture issues," Leipold said. "I think that's one of the things I learned from Pat Behrns was that you're going to stick to your plan of doing things and your expectations and don't compromise those.

"It may not always show up in the win loss column, but you got to keep pounding away."

The early years were trying, but the coach relished the bigger picture.

"There were times I sat in the parking lot and said, 'I can't believe I'm getting paid to do this,' " Leipold said.

In his third season, Nebraska-Omaha went 10-2. Leipold became a skilled recruiter, which would be crucial at Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater, where athletic scholarships are not offered.

During Leipold's eight-year run, 37 Warhawks earned 58 All-America honors. In Leipold's first season — when he reunited with Borland — they went 14-1 and dethroned defending champion Mount Union in the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl.

They fell short in the national championship in his second year, but over the following three seasons, Wisconsin-Whitewater won 46 consecutive games, the third-best streak in Division III history and fourth-best in NCAA history. The Warhawks have won six of the past eight Division III national championships and played for the title nine of the past 10 years.

Winning has long been the norm in Whitewater, a town of about 8,000. "I had a booster once jokingly say to me that if we didn't win games by 28, we should count it as a loss," Leipold said.

Last season Leipold won his 100th game as a head coach, reaching that mark faster than any other college coach (106 games).

"You would think he was 6-109," Ken Leipold said. "He was always so just so calm."

Calm, yet never satisfied.

"It's about competing and playing to your fullest," Lance Leipold said. "At the same time, while I don't like losing, it's about not underachieving."

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Leipold's success might have come outside Division I, but Buffalo athletic director Danny White is confident in saying the experiences of the Bulls' new coach matter much more than the level where they occurred.

"The learning curve is a lot greater to that person who's never been a head coach before," White said. "… Lance is not trying to figure it out, he knows what he's doing."

Nothing will come easy in a conference that has been dominated by Northern Illinois and Bowling Green for the past four season. There likely will be times when Leipold will have respond to something he's not used to — losing.

"I've never been at this level as a head coach," Leipold said. "I don't think that's something hidden or something we need to be embarrassed about, we just need our team to play our best every week, whether it's Week 1 against Albany or against a Big Ten school."

But he's already gotten over the hardest part — leaving Whitewater. The school is his, his sister's and both of his parents' alma mater. Its football team had become a point of pride for the surrounding communities.

Ken Leipold still has people asking him why he let his son go.

"He had nothing else to accomplish in (Wisconsin-Whitewater)," Ken says. "This is a dream of his to coach Division I and knowing him, if he makes it, great. If he doesn't, well he gave it his best shot."

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