Men’s Football (1:00 class)

The game of football is the most popular sport in the United States of America, and it could be argued that college football is the most popular level of the game. This is why we chose Bowling Green State Univesity Football for the Sport Centennial project, as well as all of our interests in this sport. Since last semester’s classes covered the complete history of the sport, we were asked to choose a specific time in history to cover. As a group we decided to research the most recent history of the program which can be dated from 1990-present. The reason we chose this time period is because of the amount of information that is available from these years. As we progressed through the project we found it difficult to contact former players who played at Bowling Green prior to 1990.

While researching football here at BGSU, we found out that there have been many firsts for the program from 1990 to present day. A few of the more interesting ones are: first bowl game win (1991), first and only visit by ESPN’s College Gameday (2003) (Below), and first Big Ten School to play at Doyt Perry Stadium when Minnesota visited BG in 2008. Some other interesting facts that we found were that since 1990 the BG Football team has participated in six bowl games (four wins), had eight All-Americans in the program, and had nine players drafted in the National Football League. These statistics show that BG has been successful in developing great teams, but also great players.

Although this past season was not as successful as recent years, the Bowling Green State University football program has experienced many other great campaigns. Even in the twenty years in which we have focused, the amount of success BG has obtained is quite remarkable for a Mid-American Conference school. We think it is reasonable to say that if the future of BG football is any representation of the past, we are in for many great seasons to come.

Group Members: Tina Byrd, Katie Brown, Andrew Downing