Mel Tjeerdsma
Head Coach
Austin College [TX] (1984-93)
Northwest Missouri State University (1994-2010)

• Overall Record: 242-82-4 (74.4%)
• Winningest head coach in both Austin College and Northwest Missouri State history.
• Guided Northwest to three national championships (1998, 1999, 2009) in seven title game appearances, including five consecutive from 2005-09.
• Ranks 10th all-time among Division II coaches with 242 career wins, and he led his teams to 15 conference titles.
• Four-time National Coach of the Year and 12-time conference Coach of the Year.

Mel Tjeerdsma grew up on a farm in South Dakota with four older siblings and one younger sister. This was hardly the typical breeding grounds for what would turn out to be a historic career coaching football, but the profession nonetheless was something that Tjeerdsma always had his eye on.

"For whatever reason, I don't know why, but from the time I was a little kid, all I ever wanted to do was do something with athletics, and I really wanted to be a coach," Tjeerdsma said. "So I didn't fall into it. It was something I dreamt of my whole life."

Making the College Football Hall of Fame is just the latest honor in what has been a historic career for Tjeerdsma. His tenure at Northwest Missouri State is the stuff of legend, as he built off a winless debut campaign to post 16 straight winning seasons, including three Division II national championships, 12 Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association conference titles and four other title-game appearances.

Tjeerdsma, who began as a high school coach in Iowa, credits Larry Korver, the former head coach of NAIA Northwestern (Iowa), for helping him break into the college ranks by making him an offensive coordinator on his staff. That debt of gratitude extends to Bob Mason and Jim Redd, too, as the two athletic directors who hired Tjeerdsma for head-coaching jobs at Austin College and Northwest Missouri State, respectively. Both athletics directors reaped the awards as Tjeerdsma became the winningest coach at each school.
  Tjeerdsma began his head coaching career at Austin in 1984. During the next 10 seasons, the 'Roos would win a school record 59 games while claiming three conference titles and earning trips to the NAIA Division II playoffs in 1988 and 1990. In 1994, Tjeerdsma left for the top job at Northwest Missouri State, subsequently winning 183 games during the next 17 years, including back-to-back Division II national championships in 1998 and 1999 – the university's first national titles in any sport.

Tjeerdsma's Bearcats added a third championship in 2009, capping an unprecedented run of five national championship game appearances that began in 2005. Tjeerdsma went 10 years without making a staff change while with the Bearcats, which he says speaks to the type of people he's been fortunate to be around in his coaching career.

"You go down the line and think of all the people who coached with you," Tjeerdsma said. "Football is so different that way. It's a staff. One person can't come anywhere close to doing it, so I've really been so blessed by the staff that I've worked with.

"And of course obviously the players. You can go through thousands of players that you've had the opportunity to work with, and because they were good players, it helps make you successful."

Tjeerdsma came back to Northwest Missouri State as athletics director in 2013, retiring this past spring. The 72-year-old will enjoy his moment in the sun as one of three coaches in this year's Hall class, and he is grateful that Division II folks like himself can get the same recognition as his more widely-known peers Mack Brown and Frank Beamer.

"The thing about both of them, and so many of those coaches, is when you get to know them, they don't care if you're a Division II coach or a Division III coach," he said. "You're a coach, and they respect you the same and treat you the same. So I'm really thrilled to be in the same class as those two guys, because they're both first-class people more than anything else."

Coach Tjeerdsma will be honored this Saturday, Sept. 22, with an NFF Hall of Fame On-Campus Salute, presented by Fidelity Investments, during Austin College's game against Hendrix. He was honored on Sept. 15 at Northwest Missouri State. He will officially be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame during the 61st NFF Annual Awards Dinner on Dec. 4 in New York City.