[1] Niles McKinley's rival was Massillon Washington High School where coach Paul Brown (later inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame) ran a single-wing offense.
"[4] After graduating from high school, Piper attended Baldwin-Wallace College, in Berea, Ohio, but his education was interrupted by four years of military service in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II era, rising to the rank of staff sergeant.
"[2] When Piper instituted the single-wing at Denison in 1962, he was viewed as "bucking the tides and trends of an evolutionary sport.
[4][8] Piper's single-wing was "predicated on deception, with the backs crossing paths, the linemen executing traps and the center disguising the target of his snap.
"[4] With the criss-crossing backs and fake handoffs, one reporter noted that "the football sometimes is as hard to find as a hockey puck.
"[2] With the single-wing offense back in use, Denison went 7–2 in 1979 and won consecutive North Coast Athletic Conference championships in 1985 and 1986.
[4][9][10] In 1982, Sports Illustrated ran a feature story on Piper which opened with an imaginary exchange between single-wing legends Knute Rockne and Glenn Warner:"Hiya Rock, thanks for accepting the call.
Denison University, 2,200 students, nice wooded place up on a hill in a little town called Granville, 30 miles east of Columbus.
You have to find a place with a sense of history and a certain broad-mindedness, and a coach old enough to have been schooled in the single wing who possesses the courage of convictions others consider long outdated.
"[7] The Houston Chronicle also visited Granville for a feature story on Piper that opened as follows: "The preference in this leafy little village is for things that are old.
... Piper, a Civil War buff who lives in an 1810 house furnished with antiques, has done his bit for historic preservation by outfitting the Big Red in the single wing, a pre-World War II offense that features an unbalanced line and, in the Denison version, a quarterback who never touches the ball.
There, coming out of the huddle, are his heroes, the red-jersied Red Dragons of Niles McKinley High School, and they are lining up in the Single Wing formation.
When Piper opens his eyes, he can see the red-jersied team he coaches, the Denison University Big Red, coming out of the huddle.
... And so the Single Wing, the formation-of-choice during football's leather-helmet era, lives on at Denison ..."[3] The Boston Globe ran a story on Piper's offense in 1991, noting:"In this era of MTV and fax machines, Keith Piper is an anachronism, ... a man who lines his team up each week to play single-wing football, a formation used by Rockne, Stagg and Warner rather than Paterno, Bowden and Osborne.