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- Best Season of All Time For Schools Who Stopped Having A Football Team aka the BSOATFSWSHAFT - Part 9 of ??? - The Fairfield Stags
Best Season of All Time For Schools Who Stopped Having A Football Team aka the BSOATFSWSHAFT - Part 9 of ??? - The Fairfield Stags
One of the projects the Sickos Committee on Substack will explore during this off-season is one where we will do a dive into the internet archives to find out the seemingly lost history of College Football teams who we used to have playing on Saturdays in the fall. We will explore universities and colleges who used to have football but then decided for whatever reason to end their football program. Then we will highlight their Best Season of all time in our however many part series called the Best Season of All Time for Schools Who Stopped Having A Football Team also known as the BSOATFSWSHAFT (hope you can dig it)
I’ll give you some background on the program if I can find it, then give you some basic history about the team, including when they started playing, when/why they stopped playing, and, of course, their best season in my opinion. Also, I’ll see if I can find a football helmet with the logo to show it to you here.
Now for the next team I wish to explore in this series.
The Fairfield Stags
Why did I choose this team?
I saw a tweet from the Fairfield Women’s Basketball account applying for the AP Top 25 rankings. They made the AP Poll. Then I noticed that they were on my list of Defunct Division I Football teams. Also, they’re known as the Stags. That was enough for me.
History of the team
The program was started in 1996. Yes, I said 1996.
However, Fairfield had a Club Football team that competed in the National Club Football Association, which started in 1966. Fairfield’s club team finished their first season off with an 0-5-1 record.
In 1979, the club team reached its furthest point at the club national championship game, losing to the University of Lowell 60-40 in the title game.
During the mid-80s, the club's success was slim to none. This proved true throughout one season, when the team ended with a record of 0-8, only scoring a total of 14 points all season. The club team was officially cut around 1986 or 1987, I think. I couldn’t confirm it, and I could only find a poorly worded WordPress article on it.
Nine years later, on March 28, 1995, after a long-awaited revival, the team was officially inducted as the 20th varsity sport at Fairfield University in hopes of increasing the male population.
Under then-President Aloysius P. Kelley, Fairfield reinstated the football program in 1996 for several reasons, including to increase the male student population of the school as well as boosting school spirit. The team was placed in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference at the NCAA Division I-AA level.
President Aloysius P. Kelley: "We need more dudes at our school, so let’s start a football team.” - A totally fake quote I made up.
The Fairfield Stags football team competed in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) of NCAA Division I-AA between 1996 and 2003.
Following the team's inaugural 1996 season finishing at 1-8, the 1997 team recorded the second-best single-season turnaround in Division I-AA history, posting a 7-3 mark.
The 1999 team went 9-2 and ranked fifth among the nation's Division I-AA non-scholarship teams. The defense was ranked second for scoring defense (13.4 points per game) and for total defense (237.7 yards per game). They should have won the conference this year but the conference has ruled Fairfield University ineligible for the MAAC title. They were cited in this press release for violations of the league's financial aid policy, which bans preferential financial aid packages to student-athletes. Well that is lame, didn’t they know the school needed more dudes!
The 2000 team compiled an 8-2 record and ranked as high as seventh in the country. They finished second in the conference but didn’t make the FCS playoffs. In total, seven Fairfield players earned All-American honors, and one player received Academic All-American honors. During the 2000 season, senior Steve Dogmanits was Fairfield's all-time leader in interceptions with 21. Dogmanits also set a school-season record of 11 interceptions in a season. This was enough to lead all of Division I-AA, just missing the national record (12) set in 1987 by Dean Cain of Princeton University and "Lois & Clark" fame.
In their short lived stint they had a record of 44–28–0 (.611) and look I know it’s only seven years of football but that winning percentage would put them in very solid company.
Also, the Stags won one MAAC Conference Title in their history and you guessed it, we will be talking about that team.
*Smiles*
But first…
Why did the Team get shut down?
Their first Head Coach Kevin Kiesel’s resignation in 2001 seemed to foreshadow the imminent end of Fairfield’s participation in the sport. Kiesel left Fairfield to be a coach at Division II Millersville. Then their next Head Coach, Joe Bernard, also resigned at the end of the 2002 season to become the Defensive Coordinator for fellow conference member Duquesne.
By January 2003, the Football program, along with Ice Hockey, was disbanded and players were left with the difficult decision of either transferring to pursue a chance at competitive play or finishing out their time here.
Fairfield’s Athletic Director Eugene P. Doris stated, “Fairfield University’s football team enjoyed a short but sweet seven-year history, including one MAAC championship.” He went on to say that it was an unfortunate event to drop the team; however, “finances and funding got in the way.”
A total of $570,000 was expected to be saved because of the cuts that were made to these two varsity teams. These funds went on to be used toward the support of the University’s student financial aid program.
The 1998 Fairfield Stags
They were coached by the aforementioned Kevin Kiesel. I really couldn’t find much about him and the Wikipedia just started he was a football coach. He was 34–17 overall and 26–13 in the MAAC. Very good record with the Stags.
Also, this time frame of the late 1990s and early 2000s makes it so difficult to find things buried on the internet. Either they are on old links that don’t work anymore, or they haven’t been digitized yet, so I don’t have much for this team’s history.
The 1998 Stags were led by Fairfield Quarterback Jim Lopusznick accounted for 33 TDs and was the MAAC player of the year.
This picture comes from the archives of the Fairfield Manor student paper.
Check out the uniforms for Fairfield. The helmet said STAGS in some weird font that I could not identify.
Their season started on the road against Holy Cross where the Stags fell behind 26-0 in a little more than a quarter.
The Stags fought back to make it 26-22. They got down to the Holy Cross 12 with a little over 2 minutes left in the game, but a costly penalty backed them up late to stop the comeback. The Stags started 0-1 but showed a lot of heart. Coach Kiesel felt they should have won the game too.
Wow Coach Kiesel calling his shot after a loss stating they would win the MAAC. Hmm, I wonder if he would be proven right.
The Stags next game was against Iona.
The Stags rolled 42-21. Also, Iona is on my list of football teams to explore.
The next game they battled conference mate the Marist Red Foxes. Marist ranking among the best in the nation defensively. The Red Foxes ranked second in the nation in pass efficiency at 78.3, and total defense, allowing just 219.6 yards per game. Marist also ranked third in the nation in rushing defense at 73.8 yards per game, and was the sixth-best in the country in points allowed, giving up just 12.9 a game.
Marist built a 13-0 halftime lead but Fairfield fought all the way back to make it 20-17 but couldn’t recover the onside kick. Coach Kiesel’s MAAC Championship prediction took a huge hit as the Stags fell to 1-2 (1-1) in the MAAC.
Next week a pivotal matchup against conference rival Georgetown.
Marvin Royal rewrote the Stags record book with 224 yards and a 66 yarder to win the game 24-17. Fairfield was alive again for the MAAC Title.
Another MAAC crucial matchup for the Stags was next week against the Dukes of Duquesne in Pittsburgh.
A drama filled game saw the Stags with a win in an overtime thriller. The Stags were now in control of their own MAAC Destiny.
The Stags romped through the rest of their schedule.
Took down San Diego 24-7.
Crushed Canisius 42-0.
Shutout the Saints of Siena 38-0.
Stormed St. John’s 40–13.
Pulverized the Peacocks of St. Peters 48-0.
Finally, they clobbered Central Connecticut State 26-6.
Coach Kevin Kiesel was right after all. The Stags were MAAC Champions*! (*with Georgetown but this is not about them)
Here are some of the players from a recent reunion holding up the Conference Championship banner.
The Stags didn’t make the FCS Playoffs since the field was only 16 teams, but this year was their one and only MAAC Conference Title. Honestly, looking at it, the MAAC Champion was snubbed by the FCS Playoff Committee for many years, but alas, let’s celebrate the 1998 Stags!
Any Chance of the Program Returning?
I don't really see it. A small school in Fairfield, Connecticut, to bring back football? I highly doubt it. Well, maybe if their next President needed to add more dudes to the student population and their was only one way to do it…
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