The club is complete.

The WPIAL's Northern Six, which, with the addition of Erie McDowell, will become the Northern Seven this fall, has been known for its veteran football coaches.

With Seneca Valley adding Don Holl to the group last year and Butler hiring Jim Rankin, that group now has no exceptions.

It all starts at North Hills, where Jack McCurry has won more than 260 games, including WPIAL championships, PIAA titles and even a fictitious national crown at one point.

Slide over to Shaler where Neil Gordon is at the controls. The Titans inherited him from Penn Hills, where he won 156 games in 21 years, along with finding consistent success at the WPIAL and PIAA levels.

Let's not leave out Clair Altemus at Pine-Richland. He's got 32 years of coaching experience, has won more than 100 games with the Rams and has led that program to a WPIAL title and a state runner-up finish.

North Allegheny has Art Walker Jr., who's been there for five years and picked up where Rankin left off in keeping the Tigers on top of the section mountain. He guided Central Catholic to a WPIAL title and state runner-up finish in 2003.

Holl came to Seneca Valley fresh off three successive District 10 Quad-A titles and a 36-14 record at Erie Cathedral Prep. Before that, Holl was offensive coordinator for a Gannon University team that ranked among NCAA Division II's top 20 in offensive productivity.

So what does this all mean?

It means Butler is trying to keep up with its neighbors by bringing in a legendary coach of its own.

With the possible exception of Bill Bohren, who had an impressive resume at Boardman (Ohio) before coming to Butler for a year, Rankin will be the first coaching legend to patrol the home sidelines at Art Bernardi Stadium since Art Bernardi himself.

The man's record speaks for itself. He turned around an Ellwood City program that was a perennial loser for a decade before moving on to North Allegheny, where he reached the WPIAL playoffs 17 times.

He doesn't know what it's like to lose.

For more than a decade, Butler football hasn't known what it's like to win.

Something has to give somewhere.

Rankin says he still has the passion to coach. That's apparent, since he never gave it up, even after retiring from North Allegheny five years ago.

Now he's back in charge of his own program, inheriting the bottom feeder of a conference filled with the aforementioned coaching legends.

Rankin does have an edge in that he's coached in this league before and knows what the competition is all about. He went up against McCurry four times in playoff games during his tenure at NA.

Rankin knows what he's up against. He already has a step-by-step plan in place to turn Butler's program around.

His reputation precedes him and will buy him time.

And time is what he needs.

John Enrietto is sports editor of the Butler Eagle.