For the past quarter-century, football at Thiel College amounted to a giant low-light reel.

Andy Starnes, Post-Gazette Thiel head coach Jack Leipheimer exhorts his team from the sidelines yesterday. Click photo for larger image. Related coverage Chamber's catch gives Thiel thrilling 50-48 triple OT win at CMU

Fans still wince over the 1992 team, which did not score a point in any of four home games. The opposition piled up 121.

Then there was Thiel's 63-0 drubbing by Washington & Jefferson College in 1994. As the rout unfolded, W&J fourth-stringers who came to the game in street clothes were suited up to face Thiel's starters.

"W&J did everything they could to keep the score under 100," said Robert Olson, a former Thiel vice president and emeritus professor of history, who has followed the football team since 1956.

Even the occasional Thiel victory could be embarrassing. The Tomcats received a mention on ESPN after defeating Oberlin 26-6 in 1996, but only because the game matched the teams with the longest losing streaks in college football. Thiel had dropped 22 games in a row before that victory.

None of the painful history mattered yesterday after Thiel rallied from a 14-point deficit in the fourth quarter to defeat Carnegie Mellon 50-48 in triple overtime. With their heart-pounding victory, Thiel's Tomcats finished the regular season 10-0 and almost assuredly will be invited today to the NCAA Division III playoffs for the first time in school history.

"I think we'll be in. We didn't lose a game, so we've done all we can do," said senior wide receiver Brandon Chambers, who scorched Carnegie Mellon's defenders by catching 15 passes and scoring four touchdowns.

His diving snag of a two-point conversion in the third overtime ended Carnegie Mellon's hopes of an upset. That play also completed Thiel's transformation from laughingstock to national contender.

Thiel is undefeated for the first time since its 1950 team went 7-0. Only three Thiel teams in the last 25 years posted winning records, and none had a prayer of making the national playoffs until now.

In victory yesterday, Thiel Coach Jack Leipheimer felt both elated and sheepish. His decision to fake a punt at his own 40-yard line with his team trailing by seven in the third quarter failed spectacularly. Carnegie Mellon capitalized on the turnover with a quick touchdown, putting Thiel behind 28-14 in the fourth quarter.

"I'm an idiot," Mr. Leipheimer said. "The kids won in spite of me."

Contrary to Mr. Leipheimer's assessment, just about everybody on the Thiel campus in Greenville, Mercer County, considers him a genius. Mr. Leipheimer, in his fifth season at Thiel, revived the football program by demanding that his players be students first.

Division III schools cannot offer athletic scholarships, but their football coaches nonetheless are fierce recruiters. They try to land the players who are too small or too slow to play in major programs.

Going against the conventional thinking that recruits must be coddled, Mr. Leipheimer laid down an ironclad rule: He will not play freshmen unless they have at least a 2.5 grade average, a standard higher than that of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Mr. Leipheimer said Thiel's football program had declined because too many players did not care about academics.

"I don't think they were recruiting the right kids," he said.

Those who came to Thiel for football and nothing else tended to wash out quickly, leaving the team with a perennial glut of freshmen and sophomores trying to compete against upperclassmen at strong programs such as Allegheny College and W&J.

Now the motto of the Thiel team is what Mr. Leipheimer calls "RYFP" -- Reach Your Full Potential.

"I want to bring in the best-quality young men I can, have them graduate in four years, then go out and make an impact in the world," Mr. Leipheimer said. "If we do that, we're going to win some games, too."

Mr. Leipheimer, 52, played at Thiel in the early 1970s, when the school had winning football teams. After graduating, he spent nine years as a high school coach and then 17 as an assistant at Allegheny College, a school that won a Division III national championship in 1990 and regularly shellacked Thiel.

Thiel tried three times to hire Mr. Leipheimer as its head coach. But Mr. Leipheimer said he was inspired to return to his old school by Thiel President Lance Masters, who arrived in 1999 and started improving a campus that had fallen into disrepair. Dr. Masters even raised the $2.6 million needed to build Thiel's first on-campus football stadium.

It seats 1,400 and has been filled beyond capacity this season, when the Tomcats won the Presidents' Athletic Conference championship.

Thiel is home to 1,315 students, 106 of whom are on the football roster. Mr. Leipheimer says credit for recruiting and coaching the players goes to his assistants, five of whom played for him.

The players, though, say Mr. Leipheimer, the man they call Coach Leap, has made them winners by demanding dedication in the classroom and on the field.

"I find what I really sacrifice is a social life. Our focus is on school and football," said quarterback Darrell Satterfield, a straight-A student who threw six touchdown passes against Carnegie Mellon.

Mr. Satterfield, of Orwell, Ohio, began his college career at Capital University in suburban Columbus. He injured his left shoulder and never played a down of football there. After visiting Thiel, he liked the campus and the tuition rate.

Even though tuition and living expenses run $25,200 a year at Thiel, Mr. Satterfield says the price appealed to him because it is considerably less than most private colleges in the region.

Mr. Leipheimer has built his team with a mix of homegrown talent and exotic imports.

Thiel has nine players from Florida, a state rich in football talent but without any Division III colleges.

The bulk of Thiel's players, though, come from within two hours of the campus.

Nose tackle Logan Malie, of Sharon in Mercer County, weighs 180 pounds, tiny even for a Division III player. But he routinely beats 300-pound offensive linemen by being faster off the snap, defensive coordinator Joe Rossi says.

Thiel's best offensive player might be sophomore tailback Stephen Minton, from Seneca Valley High in Butler County. He became Thiel's first 1,000-yard rusher this year, but was sidelined yesterday because of a tender left ankle.

Freshman Dan Hess, a 5-foot-6, 180-pound freshman from Apollo in Armstrong County, started in his place. He barreled for 175 yards on 32 carries. Despite his sterling statistics, Mr. Hess did not crack a smile all day. He lost a fumble in the game, and said he felt so badly he could not bear to look at his senior teammates.

Don Achenbach, an associate vice president of the college and a 1977 Thiel graduate, said the school had developed an inferiority complex. Other private colleges in northwestern Pennsylvania, such as Westminster, Allegheny and Grove City, had prettier campuses, richer endowments and football teams that slammed Thiel on Saturdays.

This season, Thiel's upstarts shut out Westminster and Grove City, 34-0 and 30-0. A winning football team might not fatten the endowment, but it has worked wonders in restoring pride on campus, Mr. Achenbach said.

"I remember we were happy if we kept an opposing team under 50," he said. "Times have changed."