Nearly two years have passed since ULM had players from the 1987 national championship team back on campus for a reunion. While there, they each had a chance to purchase a throwback jersey with their name across the back.
“We had 68 of them that actually came to get their jersey,” recalled third-year ULM head football coach Matt Viator, who as a young coach at McNeese State remembered that ULM team from more than three decades past.
The season was a special one. Then known as Northeast Louisiana University while playing at the NCAA Division I-AA level, the season ended with a pair of one-point victories sandwiched around a two-overtime semifinal. In the championship, quarterback Stan Humphries led the school on a pair of late touchdown drives to beat Marshall 43-42 in Pocatello, Idaho.
With college football celebrating 150 years of history this season, the Sun Belt Conference is taking a look back at the history of the conference’s 10 football-playing members.
Long before ULM joined the Sun Belt as a football-only member in 2001, the school first fielded a football team when it was known as Ouachita Parish Junior College in 1931. Twenty years later, the school became a four-year institution and played 20 seasons in the Gulf States Conference. Then came the 1975 move to the NCAA Division I level as an independent.
The next change came with the 1982 move to the Division I-AA level and the Southland Conference. From there, Northeast Louisiana reached the playoffs for the first time in 1987 and went on its memorable playoff run.
“I remember the run,” Viator said at Sun Belt Football Media Day in New Orleans.
At the time, Humphries was a college senior about to be selected in the sixth round of the NFL Draft the following April. In four postseason games for the Monroe, Louisiana- based school, Humphries threw for nearly 1,400 yards and 11 touchdowns.
The four playoff wins came against North Texas, Eastern Kentucky and Northern Iowa in two overtimes before the comeback from two touchdowns down against Marshall. In that game, ULM overcame a 42-28 deficit in the fourth quarter and Humphries finished with three passing touchdowns and one rushing.
ULM reached the playoffs three more times in a span of four seasons before the move up to become a Division I independent.
Remarkably, three quarterbacks from that era of ULM football went on to achieve great success in the NFL, each playing on teams that advanced to the Super Bowl. Before Humphries, Bubby Brister played the 1985 season in Monroe and later joined the Pittsburgh Steelers as a third-round NFL Draft selection in 1986.
Immediately after Humphries, Doug Pederson started for three seasons at the school and played 10 seasons in the NFL, mostly as Brett Favre’s backup with the Green Bay Packers. His more recent success came as the head coach of the Super Bowl-winning Philadelphia Eagles in 2018.
The greatest professional success for Humphries came when he quarterbacked the San Diego Chargers to a Super Bowl appearance in 1995.
According to Viator, all three former quarterbacks have some involvement in the program. Humphries and Brister both live in the area, and Pederson has a son, Josh, who is a redshirt junior tight end on the team this season.
“You don’t win a national championship very often regardless of what level you’re at,” Viator said. “A lot of the players (from that team) are still very involved with what we’re doing.”
Humpries is one of two former ULM players with a jersey number (No. 11) retired. The other is the No. 40 for Joe Profit, the all-time leading rusher (2,818 yards) in the Gulf States Conference.
In recent seasons, one of the more notable victories for ULM came in 2007 at Alabama in Nick Saban’s first season at the school. Another one came in 2012 in overtime at then- No. 8 Arkansas, a 34-31 victory that stands as the highest-ranked win by a team competing in the Sun Belt.
Later that season, ULM made its only bowl game appearance since its move to the Football Bowl Subdivision. The Warhawks have achieved bowl eligibility five times and with incremental improvements over three seasons with Viator, there’s reason to think a postseason appearance could be coming.
“The people of Monroe have been fantastic,” Viator said. “Hopefully we can continue to get better.”