8 eras · 22 head coaches · 1900–2025

Program Eras

The history of Wheaton football divided at the places where the head coach changed — the founding years, the Chrouser conference titles, the rebuilding years, Bishop’s turnaround and the two long tenures that followed.

Eras
8
1900–2025
Head coaches
22
Seasons played
112
All-time record
607-362-29
.623
The Founding Years 1900–1928 39-56-5 · .415 · 16 seasons Jasper Turnbull · Bob Robinson · Rex Gary · Robert Woodruff · Jack Conley · Dave Gillespie · Ed Coray Seven head coaches in the fourteen seasons Wheaton played between 1914 and 1928, none of them for more than three years running. The record opens with two isolated games — a loss in 1900 and another in 1912 — before Jasper Turnbull put a standing team on the field in 1914. There was no season at all in 1918, and the 1917 squad played without a head coach. Robert Woodruff's 6–2 in 1921 and Jack Conley's 6–2 the year after were the high water marks of a program still deciding whether it was one. The Gustafson Years 1929–1939 27-46-10 · .386 · 11 seasons Vic Gustafson · Wendel Smith · Fred Walker The leanest decade in the record. Vic Gustafson coached six seasons through the worst of the Depression and finished above .500 once; Wendel Smith lasted a single year, and Fred Walker four more without a winning record among them. Ten ties in eleven seasons say as much about the era's football as the losses do — these were low-scoring, mud-bound afternoons decided by a single score or not decided at all. The Chrouser Era 1940–1960 120-42-12 · .724 · 21 seasons · 9 CCIW titles Harve Chrouser · Albert Graf · Carl DeVries Harve Chrouser came back to his own campus in 1940 and turned a program that had never won anything into a conference power. Nine league titles in eleven seasons from 1949 through 1959, an 8–0 season in 1958, and a run of seventeen winning years in the twenty-one the era covers. Albert Graf and Carl DeVries held the job during the war while Chrouser served; DeVries went unbeaten at 3–0–3 in 1943. The Swartz Era 1961–1968 41-30 · .577 · 8 seasons Jack Swartz Jack Swartz had caught touchdown passes for Chrouser in each of his four years as a player. He opened his head-coaching career in 1961 by going 8–0 and finishing seventh in the country in the NCAA's small-college poll — the last undefeated team Wheaton has fielded. The seven seasons after it never matched it, but six of the eight were winning ones. The Rebuilding Years 1969–1981 39-77-1 · .338 · 13 seasons Mal Pearson · Gary Taylor · Dewey King · Cliff Schimmels · Jim Rexilius Thirteen seasons, five head coaches, four winning records. Mal Pearson and Gary Taylor won six games between them in four years. Dewey King steadied it in the middle of the decade — 6–3 in 1976 and again in 1978 — and then fell to 1–8 in 1979. Cliff Schimmels and Jim Rexilius each went 2–7 in the single season they were given. By 1981 Wheaton had won five games in three years. The Bishop Era 1982–1995 84-47-1 · .640 · 14 seasons · 1 CCIW title · 1 playoff berth J.R. Bishop J.R. Bishop inherited a program that had won five games in three years and left it holding a conference championship. Fourteen seasons, eleven of them winning, and a finish that could hardly have been scripted: 10–1 in 1995, Wheaton's first conference title since 1959 and its first NCAA playoff berth ever, with a playoff win over Wittenberg, after which he stepped down. The Swider Era 1996–2019 209-52 · .801 · 24 seasons · 9 CCIW titles · 10 playoff berths Mike Swider Twenty-four seasons, twenty-three of them winning, nine conference championships and ten NCAA playoff berths. Mike Swider took what Bishop had rebuilt and made it permanent: the winningest tenure in Wheaton football by every measure there is, and the only stretch in which a losing season became genuinely unusual. The Scott Era 2021–2025 48-12 · .800 · 5 seasons · 4 playoff berths Jesse Scott Jesse Scott took the job into a canceled season — the 2020 schedule was lost to the COVID-19 pandemic — and has not had a losing year since play resumed. Five seasons, five winning records, four NCAA playoff appearances, and a winning percentage that sits within a point of Swider's across a much shorter sample.
Choose Your Era
Crusader Era c. 1930–2000 Thunder Era 2000–Present

Era records are summed from the season-by-season results on the season pages and may differ by a game or two from the coach-by-coach totals printed in the official record book; where they do, the discrepancy is in the source and is described on the Coaches page.