DOVER — Chip Knapp jokes that he and Mike Drass didn’t know what they were doing.

Not back then anyway.

In 1993, the two young football coaches were just trying to get their feet underneath them after Drass was named Wesley College’s head coach.

“We were like, ‘We’ve got to come up with a philosophy,’” said Knapp. “Me and him, we’re down in the basement, down in our old offices. We’re like, ‘We’ve got to talk to the parents about something.’ Let’s really figure out what we’re all about.”

What the two men came up with was pretty simple.

They’d try to do things the right way, not cut any corners, and success would follow.

On Monday night, at the end of arguably the saddest day in Wesley College football history, came the proof that Drass was right.

In the growing dusk, a few hundred former Wolverine football players and coaches and friends stood on the turf in the center of Miller Stadium.

They cried, they laughed, they told stories, they shook hands and they hugged — all because of Mike Drass.

The impromptu vigil was put together to remember Drass, the longtime Wesley coach who died suddenly on Monday morning at the age of only 57.

There were undoubtedly hundreds — if not thousands more people — who have liked to have been there to show much Drass meant to them.

When the gregarious Drass passed away, his Facebook page listed 2,541 friends. On Monday, it seemed like every one of them wanted to write something about him after they heard the stunning news.

They were all floored by it, of course, gut-wrenchingly shocked to hear that Drass was gone.

“I love this man please don’t let it b true,” wrote one.

“My friend, Mike Drass, died today,” posted Charlisa Holloway Edelin. “I really don’t know what else to say.”