Matt Burgbacher returned to Tippecanoe as head coach in 2019 and has guided the Red Devils to Division III regional championships in 2022 and 2025. (Press Pros Feature Photos by Jeff Gilbert)
Matt Burgbacher’s seven years as the Red Devils’ head coach has led to the unprecedented success of two regional championships. Now his team is embracing the challenge of doing the hard things necessary to be a state champion.
Tipp City, OH – Matt Burgbacher’s locker-room office suits everything about him. To serve his football players, he carved out a simple space that couldn’t be less pretentious.
Between the upperclassmen lockers and the freshmen lockers, Burgbacher’s logistical nerve center exists on two tables covered with stacks of important papers, a computer, a printer and other tools of the trade.
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The only luxury is a black, padded office chair on four good wheels. A comfortable seat is a must after a hot and sweaty practice.
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His open floor plan, surrounded by concrete block walls and red lockers, also serves as the in-season equipment room: stacks of shoulder pads, extra helmets, and T-shirts in two boxes, waiting to be distributed, sit by unused lockers. After a July morning workout, a player stops by and Burgbacher finds a screwdriver and tightens a facemask.
His haven is hardly the image of a successful high school football coach working to lead his program to a state championship. Awards and such are kept in other places.
The makeshift office creates proximity between Burgbacher and his Tippecanoe High School football players. That’s by design. If you want to talk to the coach, there’s no door to knock. In Burgbacher’s de facto open-door policy, just walk over from your locker. The coach is always in.
“When you’re able to build that relationship with them, and they know you care, they’ll do anything for you,” Burgbacher said. “And that’s what these kids do.”
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Burgbacher didn’t learn about the importance of relationships at a coaching clinic. He experienced it when he worked on a loading dock for five years right out of Marietta College where he played baseball for four years and football in his fifth year while earning a business degree.
He put that degree to work at a Cincinnati trucking company in an operations management training program for six months. Then for the rest of his five years there he managed on the dock, supervising men a lot older and more experienced in the industry.
Burgbacher learned many skills he uses to operate his football program efficiently. But his most important lessons were about people.
“What I learned is it’s never been about me against them…it’s about what we can accomplish together.”
“It wasn’t me against them,” he said. “‘Hey, let’s work together. Granted, I got a different title than you. You got a different title than me. That’s OK.’ We could work together and be the best we could be. That was the biggest thing I took away from that.”
Intentional relationships – plus talented players, great assistants, and good Xs and Os – changed a culture and lifted Tipp football to its greatest heights, strengthening relationships inside the locker room and outside it with a supportive community and alumni.
Burgbacher is 69-17 in seven seasons at his alma mater. The Red Devils won Division III regional titles in 2022 and 2025, have reached at least the regional semifinals in five of the past six seasons and have won or shared the past four Miami Valley League titles.
But don’t think at Tipp – a place where they threw a party in 2002 for making the playoffs for the first time – that state semifinals are enough anymore.
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“The expectation here has risen,” Burgbacher said. “Two years ago when we lost in the second round of the playoffs to St. Mary’s, wasn’t too many people happy here at Tipp.
“At Tipp we’ve been very, very fortunate over the last five, six years with state titles in team sports and individual state titles. Now we believe it’s our turn to do that with football. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s going to be worth it.”
Used to be at Tipp you only talked about one game at a time. To be sure, Burgbacher and his staff have that focus every week. But this time of year, the era of not talking about expectations is over, especially this season. Led by senior first-team all-state quarterback Larkin Thomas, the Red Devils can’t hide from the attention, nor do they want to.
The goal to get over the state semifinal hump, play for and win a state title, is clearly stated, managed and embraced inside the locker room. The relationships, as Burgbacher sees it, are in place to set a lofty team goal, assimilate personal goals and embrace the internal and external expectations.
When the team gathered for its first summer workout, Burgbacher took an hour to talk about many things his players needed to hear. The elephant on everyone’s mind was state championship. Burgbacher addressed it with the aim of taking his players’ eyes off the elephant and focusing them on the little things required to win the big trophy in Canton.
“You talk to any of our kids, ask them what their goals are, they’re going to tell you to win a state championship,” Burgbacher said. “But more importantly, the next question needs to be, ‘Well, how are you going to do that?’”
No longer a ‘Wing-T’ mentality, Tipp’s ability to stretch the field makes them a threat on any down, from any spot on the field.
Three weeks ago Ben Sauls was in town. He kicked and punted for Burgbacher in his first season when the Red Devils finished 4-6. Sauls made his NFL debut last season with the New York Giants and will be in training camp in August.
“We were down at the stadium, and he asked me, ‘Coach, did you really believe when you took this job that that you could get Tipp where it’s at now?’ And I answered him honestly. I said, ‘I hoped to, but I wasn’t sure we could do it, honestly.’”
Yet, somehow the 2022 team found a way to “believe it” in what was supposed to be a rebuilding season. Three returning starters – led by quarterback Liam Poronsky – meshed with a bunch of first-year starters and the Red Devils won the program’s first regional championship.
In the state semifinals, they ran into big and physically dominating Bloom-Carroll and lost 35-12. They came back and reached the region final again in 2023 and lost to Celina 30-21.
Lessons were learned. Burgbacher and his staff continued to identify the weaknesses and worked to strengthen them.
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In 2024, the Red Devils rolled through a perfect regular season, challenged only by Troy and Xenia. Surely, this team, even with a sophomore quarterback, would make it back to state.
But St. Mary’s.
Tipp led 14-7 at halftime. However, St. Mary’s scored a touchdown with four minutes left and kicked a field goal with 11 seconds left to take the lead and crush Tipp’s dreams.
The sting of that loss still exists for Thomas and his fellow seniors. And it brought about change.
Last year the final score of 16-14 was printed in big letters and taped to the wall above a white board in the middle of the locker room. A constant reminder of the defeat and to not let it happen again. It’s still there.
The coaching staff, of course, felt something amiss in the relationship vibes as that season ended with a resounding thud.
“One thing that I saw in 2024 that could have been our downfall was a little bit of selfishness creeping in to the program,” Burgbacher said. “So last year our big focus was mudita, enjoying the success of others.”
Mudita?
“I don’t know if Watterson was the best team in the state because there were seven teams that won a state title. But we know we can compete. We can compete. We proved that in the first half. Now we got to do it for 48 minutes.”
A concept Burgbacher picked up from a softball coach at a coaching clinic. To enjoy your teammates’ successes is an antidote to jealousy, envy and resentment.
“We had guys that they wanted to score the touchdown, they wanted to make the tackle, they wanted this and that,” Burgbacher said. “‘Hey, you can’t score every touchdown, you can’t make every tackle. You can’t.’ There’s 11 guys out there, and we had a roster of 90, 95 kids last year. Only 11 can play. The kids really bought into that.”
The result was another regional championship by winning season-long expected playoff showdowns against Hamilton Badin (23-16) and London (33-16). The state run ended again in the semifinals against defending champion Columbus Bishop Watterson, 41-9. Watterson then completed a second straight unbeaten season with a second straight state title and a 30-game winning streak.
The entire state expected the Watterson repeat. No one shamed Tipp over that loss. If anything, the Red Devils get some credit for trailing only 14-7 at halftime after Watterson scored twice in the first few minutes.
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And Burgbacher’s takeaway?
“It all comes down to little things,” Burgbacher said. “I don’t know if Watterson was the best team in the state because there were seven teams that won a state title. But we know we can compete. We can compete. We proved that in the first half. Now we got to do it for 48 minutes.”
To understand how, Burgbacher’s mind covers a lot of ground.
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He often sits in his in-season office or his offseason office in another part of the school or anywhere else football comes to mind and reflects on a program he’s known most of his life, looking for insight and another edge to get better. The past matters.
He moved to Tipp City as a seventh grader in 1989 when his dad Charlie Burgbacher began a 26-year tenure as head football coach. Charlie won 185 games at Tipp and concluded his long career with a record of 258-136.
Burgbacher also remembers what it took to leave the trucking industry, earn a teaching certificate through an online program at Georgetown College and start his teaching career at Newton. He has fond memories of his first head coaching job at Fort Loramie, reaching the regional final his first year, and his head coaching success at Troy.
Mostly, though, Burgbacher reflects on the present and the only job he says he would have left Troy for. What can we do to, he constantly examines, to experience what Watterson did?
The “Believe It” slogan never goes away. Mudita, however it is expressed, will continue to be part of the culture. The new word in the motivational lexicon this year is gratitude.
Why? Because some of the team’s best players will be third-year starters. They have their positions secured. Everyone knows it.
“You know that entitlement piece? You don’t want that creeping into your program,” Burgbacher said. “So we’re using the slogan gratitude because when you’re grateful for what you got, you’re not going to be entitled.”
Tippecanoe’s Matt Burbacher celebrates last year’s win over Badin in the region semi-finals.
So far, Burgbacher sees an unentitled team. He sees the amount of camaraderie and discipline he knows is necessary for his team to have a chance to play in Canton the first weekend in December.
About two weeks ago on a Tuesday evening, he got a text from former lineman Jeffrey Martin. He’s about to begin his freshman season for Long Island University. Martin asked if Burgbacher could open the stadium so he could get some work in.
Burgbacher, never wavering from an opportunity to strengthen the player-coach relationship, says yes whenever possible, which is almost always. He was exhausted from Monday and Tuesday camp sessions, a lifting session and a Monday night 7-on-7 event. He opened the field for Martin, got out some mats and reclined.
“By the time I look up, there’s 10 kids out there on the field,” he said. “One college player and nine of our offensive linemen. I didn’t say one word. I just sat there and watched, and those guys are out there doing stuff. They didn’t have to come. But through the relationships that Jeffrey built with those guys, and him wanting to get some work in, those guys thought, ‘Hey, I got an opportunity to go get better.’”
Burgbacher told Thomas if he organizes his teammates, he will open the field for them. Thomas often asks so he and his receivers can work on routes. Defensive players come, too, so they can run 7-on-7. Burgbacher’s seen as many as 30 kids on the field on their own time.
“The love doing 7-on-7,” he said.
Sometimes, though, the coach just wants a night off. But if the kids are on the field, a coach is required to be there. And guess who they text?
“There was one time that I came home, and I complained to my wife, ‘I just want a night where I can come home and sit on the couch and not do anything,’” Burgbacher said. “And she looked at me, and I literally thought she’s going to come off the couch and punch me in the face. She goes, ‘Would you rather it be the other way, where you can’t get kids there?’”
That statement hit him harder than any punch. He’d built these relationships for exactly this reason. The answer, after he apologized for complaining, was obviously, “No.”
Because how else could Tippecanoe expect to win a state championship.
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