An ode to Scot Loeffler

Allow me to wax poetic for a bit before digging into the meat of the surprise coaching move

Former Bowling Green quarterback Hayden Timosciek (16) attempts a pass in a 31-6 loss to Michigan in Ann Arbor, Sept. 16, 2023. Credit: David Wilcomes, MGoBlog on Flickr

Let’s start with the headline: Bowling Green head coach Scot Loeffler has left the program to accept the quarterbacks coach job with the Philadelphia Eagles, the school announced today.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, why am I writing an entire article about the Bowling Green head coaching change?

Well, keen-eyed readers will know exactly why. Especially if you follow my Notes (and you should, by the way. They’re interesting, I promise).

You see, I’m tied into the BGSU athletic department. They contracted stat basketball games. I worked a football game with ESPN+ at Doyt Perry Stadium. And I was caught off guard by this news.

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Inside an ESPN+ production

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So, what’s next for the Falcons? First, before digging into the meat and potatoes of the job, let’s take a look back at the Scot Loeffler era and allow me to wax poetic a bit.

Scot Loeffler: Program Savior

When I got to Bowling Green as a student, the program was in a dire situation. The head coach my freshman year was Mike Jinks, who, for lack of a better term, put the program into the ground. They weren’t winning, they weren’t recruiting and the Doyt laid empty for most Saturdays and midweek MACtion games.

There was a lot said about the hiring process, or lack thereof, when Jinks was tabbed to lead the program in 2015. But one thing is for certain, his tenure was an unmitigated disaster.

Jinks was fired midway through his third season with a 7-26 mark and 1-6 record on the season and the coaching search opened up.

Eventually, BGSU brass landed on Loeffler. The longtime offensive mind and quarterbacks coach who had helped lead players like Tom Brady and Tim Tebow in college was now tasked with resurrecting a program.

The situation when Loeffler stepped in was dire. There were next to no scholarship players on the roster. They didn’t even have backups at some positions. To make matters worse, there weren’t players clamoring to come into the program. Remember, this was right at the onset of the transfer portal’s birth into what we know it as today, so Loeffler couldn’t just portal in an entire new stable of players like Deion Sanders or Curt Cignetti. He had to build the roster. From scratch.

And build it he did. You can poke holes at the Loeffler tenure, where the Falcons never actually achieved their lofty goals of taking the program to the moon with a MAC Championship. But he has measured successes.

Harold Fannin Jr. was brought in as a freshman and the staff was able to retain him for three seasons, building the tight end into a NFL-caliber player.

Defensive end Karl Brooks was a sixth round selection in 2023 and is a rotational contributor for the Green Bay Packers.

The Falcons went into Minnesota and upset the Golden Gophers in 2021. This past season, the Falcons put both Penn State and Texas A&M on upset watch while on the road.

In Loeffler’s seven seasons, the Falcons finished on a streak of three consecutive bowl appearances. Their last before the Loeffler tenure was in 2015.

Bowling Green finished the Loeffler era with two consecutive winning seasons, a far cry from the eternal darkness of the Mike Jinks era.

Loeffler reignited the Battle of I-75 rivalry with Toledo, notching an upset over the Rockets in his first season to snap a nine-game losing streak to Toledo. In the later years, Loeffler’s Falcons marched into the Glass Bowl and upset the Rockets twice, including this past season.

Yes, there was growing concern among the fan base that Loeffler’s program had topped out and maybe a new voice was in order. Even if that’s true, the Falcons would never be in this position without him. It’s hard to dig out of as big a hole as Jinks left the state of the program, but Loeffler did that. It was one of the most unheralded turnarounds in college football and it took time. And Bowling Green almost made the promised land under Loeffler.

The Job

Unlike when Loeffler took over, the Bowling Green program is in good shape right now. The boosters are engaged, attendance has steadily risen and Harold Fannin Jr. really helped put the program on the map. They’ve made three straight bowl games and won the last two Battle of I-75 rivalry games at the Glass Bowl against Toledo.

For all the pluses of the job, there are certainly minuses. For one, Loeffler had a base salary of $580,000, which is one of the lowest in the MAC and in the FBS. For all the support and love the community has for the program, there just isn’t a lot of financial resources there to pull from.

In the announcement release, Bowling Green Athletic Director Derek van der Merwe said that the school was “immediately launching a national search for its next football head coach.”

This is the first head coaching hire that van der Merwe will make for football while at Bowling Green, but looking at his track record of previous hires, there isn’t a lot to go off of.

His two most high-profile hires come from the hardwood in men’s and women’s basketball. There, the programs were in different trajectories. The men’s team was on a downswing in the Michael Huger era, while the women’s team was rattling off deep WNIT and MAC Tournament runs under Robyn Fralick. Huger was fired and Fralick was poached.

For both hires, van der Merwe went outside the BGSU sphere. On the men’s side he tabbed Southern Utah’s Todd Simon. For the women, he gave the first head coaching opportunity to South Carolina - a recent powerhouse under Dawn Staley - assistant coach Fred Chmeil.

He also navigated an ice hockey head coaching hire ahead of this season after firing head coach and alumnus Ty Eigner following another record free fall. And trust me, ice hockey is a big deal in northwest Ohio and in Bowling Green, where the Falcons boast a national championship, two active NHL general managers as alumni, and members of the 1980 Miracle on Ice team. To replace Eigner, van der Merwe signed Dennis Williams from the Western Hockey League and Canadian Junior Hockey Championships head coach.

Of those three major hires, only Williams had previous ties to the program as an assistant and interim head coach in 2009-10.

The pattern we can glean from this? Van der Merwe is going to look to give someone a step up. Simon was the head coach at Southern Utah, but the Thunderbirds competed in the WAC, a conference not known for much of anything in basketball. Competing in the MAC was a clear step up and Simon has done well in his two years at the helm.

Chmiel had no Division I head coaching experience, but assistant coaching stops at Penn State, Minnesota and the powerhouse South Carolina. The BGSU women’s team hasn’t skipped a beat since Chmiel took over the program.

The Candidates

With our pattern identified, who will van der Merwe and the Falcons consider? Bear in mind, I have not talked about candidate lists or anything else with folks in the Bowling Green athletic department, so these are just my best guesses. The list is sorted alphabetically based on the candidate’s last name.

Dino Babers, former Arizona offensive coordinator: Let’s kick the list off with a familiar name. You know Babers can succeed in Bowling Green because he did it already, posting an 18-8 record at the helm of the program from 2014-15 with a MAC Championship appearance and Camilia Bowl win. He was poached after that 2015 MAC Championship appearance by Syracuse, where he led the Orange for eight seasons before his firing. He spent 2024 with Arizona, but was cast aside midseason. Without a job right now, Babers is available for any interviews he can get. Maybe a reunion is in order?

Geoff Dartt, Mount Union head coach: Going down a division or two to grab a head coach isn’t too bad of an idea, right? Dartt is the latest in a long line of great Mount Union coaches, leading the Purple Raiders to four consecutive undefeated regular seasons and a Stagg Bowl DIII National Championship appearance in 2022. Overall Dartt holds a 56-4 record at Mount Union. But, would handing the program over to a Division III coach work? Sure, he may be a great coach, but how can he transition from the land of no athletic scholarships into the big leagues of NIL, revenue sharing and scholarship management? It worked when Lance Leipold jumped from Wisconsin-Whitewater to Buffalo, but the landscape has change considerably since then.

Matt Johnson, San Diego State quarterbacks coach: This is a name that many Bowling Green fans know well in former quarterback Matt Johnson. If van der Merwe wants someone connected to the program, he’s worth a consideration. Johnson has plenty of experience within the fast-tempo offense that is run by Sean Lewis, who Johnson worked under at Kent State and now San Diego State, and Babers, Johnson’s coach at BGSU. The main knock is that Johnson doesn’t have any coordinator or playcalling experience, which makes this a wild card.

Deland McCullough, Las Vegas Raiders running backs coach: Yes, McCullough just signed onto the Raiders staff a few weeks ago, but he’s been banging the drum for a head coaching opportunity this cycle. He has a wealth of midwest experience as running backs coach with Notre Dame and Indiana and was the primary recruiter for Jeremiyah Love. He was named associate head coach with the Fighting Irish for the 2024 season and was associate head coach for Indiana in 2021. A former Miami of Ohio tailback, McCullough is no stranger to MAC football in Ohio and could be an interesting fit.

Mike Yurcich, Youngstown State offensive coordinator: Okay, hear me out on this one. Sure, the shine for Yurcich has worn off after he was dumped by Penn State and took a job at Youngstown State. But the guy can coach, you can’t doubt that. His offenses across Penn State, Texas, Ohio State and Oklahoma State speak for themselves. He was Justin Fields’ quarterback coach during his great 2019 season. At Texas, he crafted Sam Ehlinger into an all-conference gunslinger. Those Mason Rudolph explosive Oklahoma State offenses? Yurcich. His name came up when BGSU was searching for a head coach in 2019, but that was a different administration.

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