Whitewater: Adventure rafting, helmets strongly encouraged. Or the political probe of real-estate investments made by Bill and Hillary Clinton.
La Crosse: Old Style beer, the Wrigley Field favorite that’s still brewed in western Wisconsin. Or the stick-and-ball team sport invented by Native Americans that has made remarkable inroads across the U.S.
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On fall Saturdays, the universities at Whitewater and La Crosse play football under the NCAA Division III umbrella. They’ve been doing it since 1913 as members of the State Normal Conference, then the Wisconsin State University Conference and now the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Wisconsin-Superior dropped the sport years ago, but eight members all dating to World War I soldier on. Picturesque Carson Park in Eau Claire and venerable Goerke Field in Stevens Point were erected in the mid-1930s, but monolithic Perkins Stadium in Whitewater, with its jumbotron scoreboard and almost 14,000 seats, sets the standard for the WIAC and perhaps all of Division III.
It was at Perkins Stadium that Quinn Meinerz played guard for three seasons. Thirty-five years earlier, Tom Newberry played three seasons as a guard for Wisconsin-La Crosse not far from the Mississippi River at Veterans Memorial Stadium.
In 1986, Newberry was the 50th player selected by the Los Angeles Rams late in the second round. In the 85-year history of the NFL draft, Newberry is the only player from the conference to be selected in the first three rounds. (La Crosse running back Willie Berzinski, the 46th overall pick in 1956, is the earliest choice in conference history, but it was in the fourth round.)
Much like Newberry entered the NFL consciousness with a standout showing at the old Blue-Gray Game in Montgomery, Ala., followed by an exceptional combine workout, Meinerz made a name for himself at the Senior Bowl in January followed by an outstanding pro day.
Tom Newberry was drafted out of UW-La Crosse in the second round and went on to have a successful 10-year NFL career. (Owen C. Shaw / Getty Images)
Newberry, a native of Onalaska, Wis., who now operates a forestry company in Big Sky, Mont., reads alumni newsletters from his alma mater, but other than that doesn’t keep tabs on his old conference. He wasn’t aware of Meinerz, but pledged to follow the NFL Draft to see if predictions of a second-day (second or third round) placement come true.
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“Oh, wow, good for him,” Newberry said. “I hope he does (go before No. 50). For him, I’d say just put your head down and don’t get caught up in any of the activities off the field and study the crap out of your playbook and listen to your coaches. There are no bad coaches in the NFL.”
Meinerz didn’t know much about Newberry but vowed to do his research. He’ll discover that Newberry became an immediate starter at left guard for coach John Robinson’s Rams, for whom he made All-Pro in 1988 and ’89 and started for playoff teams three times in his first four seasons. After eight years at guard and another at center, Newberry started at left guard for the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XXX before calling it a 10-year career.
When Newberry came out, the draft consisted of 12 rounds. It went to eight rounds in 1993, then to the current seven-round format in ’94.
The WIAC hasn’t had anyone drafted since 2007. The last offensive lineman selected was Pete Lucas of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in the 10th round 30 years ago. Terry Strouf of La Crosse, a one-time roommate of Newberry’s, went in the seventh round in 1990. Newberry himself was the first player from the conference drafted in 13 years.
“Yeah, it’s pretty impossible when you sign up to go D-III,” Meinerz said, pausing to reflect on his draft possibilities. “It made it even harder not having a season (in 2020). Where I’m at now is pretty extreme.”
Rich Roberts, the pithy Rams beat reporter for the Los Angeles Times, greeted the choice of Newberry as a player from “Division III, college football’s version of the five and dime store.”
On draft matters, Robinson deferred to the late John Math, the team’s veteran director of player personnel. Ken Herock, one of the Raiders’ lead scouts under owner Al Davis, happened to be traveling with Math when their scouting schedule sent them to see Newberry in La Crosse.
“I was never there before in my life,” Herock said recently. “I forget where the hell we flew into. Went to the school. I think we were doing some stuff in a gymnasium if I remember.
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“Naïve kid. Just a raw piece of material is what he was. This kid was an extremely gifted athlete. You were taking an athlete to see if you could mold him into a real player in the NFL. He turned into a hell of a player. Later, I said to John, ‘Great pick.’ I didn’t like taking chances on those small schools like that until the third or fourth round.”
Shortly before departing for the Rams’ training camp at Cal State Fullerton, Newberry met with Roger Harring, the coach at La Crosse from 1969 through ’99 and for whom the field there is now named.
“He just said, ‘Hey, don’t let anybody push you around,’” remembered Newberry. “’Don’t be scared to act like you act here.’”
A 190-pound running back in high school, Newberry’s first love was track and field. Although he didn’t play football as a collegiate freshman, that’s when he became an avid weightlifter. Mike Sanders coached the La Crosse weightmen as well as the offensive line for the football team. Newberry credited Sanders for convincing him the NFL could be in his future if he joined the football team, which Newberry did as a sophom*ore.
Besides winning the Division III championship in both shot put and discus in 1984 and ’85 — his 63-foot, 4-inch throw in the shot ranked eighth in the world in 1985 — Newberry also found a way to earn a few extra bucks. In March 1985, he won four straight bouts to win a Toughest Man contest at an auditorium in downtown La Crosse.
Perhaps then it shouldn’t come as a surprise what happened at training camp.
“Maybe two weeks in, I got called up out of my room to John Robinson’s office,” Newberry said. “I went up there and he said, ‘All right, Tom, you have to make a deal with me. One fight a day in training camp, not three or four.’
“If somebody pushed me in the back or something, I was quick to come to blows. Just silly stuff, but I had to make a stand. I got thrown out of a game my second year in preseason for the same thing. Coach said, ‘Great uppercut, but don’t do it during the regular season.’”
Newberry started 143 games in the NFL and was named first-team All-Pro twice. (Paul Spinelli / Associated Press)
Newberry’s ability to pull and run “probably was the reason they won that national championship (NAIA Division II in 1985),” Green Bay Packers scout Red Cochran said not long before the draft. He added: “He’s strong as an ox. He’s already pumped up. Runs well.”
Jerry Reichow, director of football operations for the Minnesota Vikings, was mildly disappointed that Newberry blew out the combine with a stunning time of 4.66 seconds in the 40-yard dash and 29 reps on the bench press.
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“We were hoping no one knew about him,” Reichow said semi-jokingly in April 1986. “Everybody knows about him now. He will probably go much earlier than all of us expect. Second round? I’m talking at a minimum. His only negative, if it’s a negative, is you don’t get to see him play against major competition.”
Unlike Newberry, Meinerz already was at his near-optimal weight of 300 pounds as a high school right tackle and nose guard at Hartford Union in a rural area just northwest of Milwaukee. Like Newberry, he competed in other sports, placing fifth at the state wrestling tournament as a senior and surpassing 55 feet in the shot put. Although recruiting has become far more sophisticated now than it was in the mid-1980s, Meinerz attracted zero interest from big schools.
“No Division I, not even a piece of mail, not a text message, not a call,” he said. “One D-II offer from St. Cloud State. Other than that, it was only D-III in Wisconsin.”
By committing to Whitewater, Meinerz joined a football dynasty that had won seven Division III national championships in the span of eight years from 2007 to 2014. In their past 15 seasons, the Warhawks are 193-17.
Meinerz played sparingly as a freshman before becoming a starter in 2018. Even as dominant as Whitewater is, not every team sends a scout to its campus every year. What helped Meinerz get on the NFL radar was the presence of center Nate Trewyn, an undrafted NFL free agent in 2019 who was good enough to spend four games on the Buccaneers’ 53-man roster as a rookie. In 2019, Meinerz was voted most valuable player on a 13-1 team that lost in the national finals.
“Even when Nate was getting looked at in 2018, almost every scout asked us about Quinn,” Whitewater coach Kevin Bullis said. “We ask ourselves every day how we got him. Heck of a story. During the summer, he goes up to an island in Canada and trains up in the woods all by himself. He is a grinding maniac.”
Finally got around to showing my Dad the Quinn Meinerz workout video. Safe to say he has a new favorite player in the NFL draft.
Now time to solidify yourself as a legit Day 2 prospect at today’s Pro Day!
LETSGOO @QMeinerz @WarhawkFootball #D3FB pic.twitter.com/UUwS9kuM4j— Hogg (@HoggNFL) March 9, 2021
With the 2020 season canceled because of COVID-19, Meinerz decided immediately to declare for the draft in 2021. Having admittedly become a “little sloppy-looking” late in the 2019 season at 335 pounds, he has spent the last six months improving his diet, sleep patterns and workout routines.
His break came when center Landon Dickerson of Alabama blew out his knee in the SEC Championship Game. Senior Bowl scouts had Meinerz on their list all season, but it wasn’t until they examined one of his workout videos with offensive line coach Duke Manyweather in Dallas that they could see the changes in his body definition. Meinerz gained the invaluable invitation less than a week before the reporting date.
A left guard at Whitewater, Meinerz practiced at both guard and center in Mobile. After Zoom calls or interviews at the Senior Bowl, he has had contact with all 32 teams. Meinerz said 75 percent of the clubs rank him as a center and 25 percent as a guard.
Meinerz had an impressive week but couldn’t play in the game because of a broken right hand that he suffered early in the week’s final practice in pads.
“If I didn’t get into the Senior Bowl (workouts), I’m probably still looking at being undrafted or maybe sixth/seventh round,” said Meinerz. “A lot of things have changed since then. Any team that gets me, I’m going to be a long-time player.”
Top-5 clips from @seniorbowl week🔥
5. DIII Quinn Meinerz vs a power five DL
— PFF Draft (@PFF_College) January 30, 2021
Newberry measured 6-foot-1½ and weighed 281 pounds at the combine. At pro day, Meinerz was 6-foot-3 and 320 pounds. Their vertical jumps and broad jumps were comparable, as were their scores on the 12-minute, 50-second Wonderlic test (34 for Newberry, 25 for Meinerz). Newberry’s 4.66 40 was one of the best of all time by a guard. Meinerz clocked in at 4.99.
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In 1986, Hudson Houck was entering his fourth season as the Rams’ offensive line coach when Newberry arrived. He remained on Robinson’s staff through 1991 before going on to coach lines for four more teams in an NFL career that lasted 29 seasons.
Retired in Palm Springs, Calif., Houck agreed to watch tape of Meinerz, a player he had no previous knowledge of, while harkening back to his six seasons as Newberry’s position coach. The football staff at Whitewater sent him highlight tapes of Meinerz from the 2018 and ’19 campaigns (obviously that presents a somewhat different picture than watching full game tapes).
“Guy looks like a heck of a player to me,” Houck said. “I don’t know the conference very well, but even if it was not a very good conference, he did a lot of things like Larry Allen did (at D-II Sonoma State) when he came out against teams that weren’t up to the caliber that he played.
“(Meinerz) had great balance. He could run. Looked like he could strike people. He’s very aggressive, which I liked a lot. He’s a fine prospect, in my opinion.”
Allen, the Hall of Fame guard, played under Houck during his first eight seasons for the Dallas Cowboys.
“His effort level is outstanding … very similar to Allen,” said Houck. “Larry Allen would hit a guy and knock him down, then go get another guy. This guy will hit a guy down and make sure he’s down. Really, if a guy’s got a good effort level, he’ll react to what he has to do, I think. All of a sudden the effort level doesn’t stop. You can measure toughness and ability to run and balance. I don’t care who you play against.”
Newberry, continued Houck, was “shorter but very, very explosive and very fast. Tom was a great runner. He was a perfect guard because he could run. Extremely strong. Great leg strength. He also was one of the smarter players that I ever coached.
“He could finish blocks because he had such great speed. He would stay on a block for a long period of time. His height, or lack thereof, probably was an advantage in some instances because he could get under the defender.”
Meinerz, shown here at his pro day, has been training hard to impress NFL scouts. (Morry Gash / Associated Press)
Barring injury, what are the chances that Meinerz might have an NFL career approximating Newberry’s?
“I would think he’d play like Newberry or even better,” replied Houck. “I would just guess, off-hand, this guy won’t go past the second round. He may be a first-rounder, I don’t know. The only thing that would bring him down was the conference he played in.”
Which brings us back to the state conference in Wisconsin, where Wisconsin-Eau Claire hasn’t had a player drafted since 1966, Wisconsin-River Falls since ’68, Wisconsin-Oshkosh and Wisconsin-Platteville since ’71, Wisconsin-La Crosse since ’94, Wisconsin-Stevens Point since ’99, Wisconsin-Stout since ’02 and Wisconsin-Whitewater since ’07.
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A total of 41 conference players have been selected since the draft began in 1936. Newberry easily enjoyed the best career, followed by defensive tackle Doug Sutherland of Superior, wide receiver Bill Schroeder of La Crosse and linebacker Clint Kriewaldt of Stevens Point.
Ryan Ramczyk, the top-notch right tackle for the Saints, started for two seasons at Stevens Point before transferring to Wisconsin. He played one season for the Badgers before becoming a first-round draft choice in 2017. Guard Joe Panos spent a year at Whitewater and then four at Wisconsin, was drafted in the third round in 1994 and became a four-year starter in the NFL.
NFL free agent Mike Reinfeldt was an all-pro safety for the Oilers after a career at Wisconsin-Milwaukee. During Reinfeldt’s collegiate career in the early 1970s, however, the school played an independent schedule after leaving the conference for football in 1964.
Some of the WIAC players that had the most success as pros weren’t drafted. The free-agent list includes punter Matt Turk of Whitewater, linebacker Joel Williams of La Crosse, fullback Ted Fritsch of Stevens Point and tight end Dan Arnold of Platteville.
Matt Turk, who also played at UW-Whitewater in college, punted in the NFL from 1995-2011. (Focus on Sport / Getty Images)
Last year, just one player from Division III was drafted. That was tackle Ben Bartch of St. John’s (Minn.), who started one game for the Jaguars while logging 220 snaps.
How did Berzinski’s career play out? A four-year letterman, he helped La Crosse tie Missouri Valley, 12-12, in the 1954 Cigar Bowl in Tampa. Life Magazine featured him as one of five small-college players sought by the pros. After being drafted and then cut by the Rams, he started three of four games for the Eagles in 1956, rushing 15 times for 72 yards, before ending his career playing one game in the CFL.
A generation ago, players weren’t as familiar with one another because they weren’t working out together in the offseason. When the clock struck :00 on game day, more times than not those traditional greetings at midfield were between players from the same school.
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Williams, the speedy linebacker from La Crosse who started 102 of 137 NFL games from 1979-89, spent the final four seasons of his career with the Falcons. Because the Falcons were aligned with the Rams in the NFC West at the time, Williams and Newberry battled each other twice a year, then always warmly greeted each other afterward as proud products of the state conference.
“That was the only time I got to do that,” Newberry said amusedly. “That was the only guy I had to talk to after the game.”
It can be a lonely assignment, to be sure, attempting to secure a spot in the NFL for a player from the ranks of NCAA Division III. Quinn Meinerz, with so many parallels to the trail-blazing Tom Newberry, might have the talent, determination and confidence to follow in his footsteps.
(Photo of Meinerz: Vasha Hunt / USA Today)
