Bowling Green

Bowling Green's football identity is built less on what it has won than on the careers it has launched. Doyt Perry's name is on the stadium for a reason: a 77-11-5 run from 1955 to 1964, a 1959 team that finished No. 20 in the AP poll, and a standard that still defines what 'good' means in northwest Ohio. Then Urban Meyer arrived in 2001 for his first head-coaching job, went 17-6 across two seasons, and departed for Utah, Florida, and Ohio State. The Falcons gave the sport one of its most consequential careers, absorbed none of the trophies, and kept playing MAC football.

Eddie George — the 1995 Heisman winner from Ohio State — is now the head coach, which is either the best story in the MAC or a marquee name attached to a 4-8 debut. George's first season in Bowling Green went exactly as transition seasons go: a transfer-heavy roster, a 2-6 conference record, and a missed bowl. The bet the program is making entering year two is that a Heisman winner changes recruiting gravity — that players who'd never have taken the Bowling Green call now do, because the man on the other end won the sport's most famous individual award and played at the highest level.

The 2026 season will reveal whether the George hire is a real lever or a marquee name without traction. The Doyt standard is a MAC championship and bowl relevance — Bowling Green last won the conference in 2015 under Dino Babers before he left for Syracuse. Year two is when Falcon fans start to judge whether the name translates, or whether the transition year stretches into a tenure.