BOWLING GREEN — Before any questions had been asked, and just prior to Bowling Green athletics director Bob Moosbrugger formally introducing the Falcons’ new head football coach on Thursday, he pointed 82 miles north of Doyt Perry Stadium.
The Mid-American Conference championship will be decided Friday at Ford Field in Detroit, and the process that BG concluded this week is aimed north.
With the hiring of Boston College offensive coordinator Scot Loeffler, Bowling Green is hoping for a return trip to MAC contention sooner rather than later.
“There’s a game [Friday] in Detroit: the MAC championship,” Moosbrugger said. “That’s ultimately our goal. We have the man to lead us there one day.”
Bowling Green introduced Loeffler at a news conference Thursday at the Stroh Center, officially unveiling the 20th coach in program history.
WATCH: Loeffler describes vision for BGSU
The two parties agreed to a five-year, $2.6 million contract that runs through 2023. At an annual salary of $525,000, Loeffler’s contract is a 20 percent raise from the deal Bowling Green had with Mike Jinks, whom the program dismissed in October after the Falcons began this season 1-6.
The university must pay Jinks more than $36,000 per month through December, 2020, unless he can mitigate the contract by gaining employment elsewhere.
An Ohio native who played and coached at Michigan, Loeffler has been an assistant coach continuously since 1996, with all but one of those years at the collegiate level. He has made stops at Michigan, Florida, Temple, Auburn, Virginia Tech, and most recently Boston College.
Loeffler has worked under hall of famers Lloyd Carr and Frank Beamer, as well as likely future hall of famer Urban Meyer. In part because of that experience, Loeffler said he believed he was ready to become a head coach for the first time at Bowling Green.
“I’ve had some great experiences with some great head coaches, and I’ve grown,” Loeffler said. “Every year that I was with a particular organization, I got better and better and better. I’ve always been a fairly good X’s and O’s guy, but there’s a heck of a lot more than X’s and O’s that I’ve learned through the great leaders I worked with.”
Bowling Green president Rodney K. Rogers said he believes Loeffler shares the university’s vision for the future of its football program. He said BG hopes to enhance the university’s “national recognition,” add to the student experience, and support its athletes.
“We cannot accomplish those goals without a robust football program,” Rogers said.
The welcome at Bowling Green is a homecoming for the Loeffler family. Amie Loeffler, Scott’s wife, is an Ohio native who completed both her undergraduate and graduate degrees at BGSU.
Pfizer hired Amie Loeffler for a pharmaceutical sales position out of college, and she met Scot through mutual friends while he was an assistant coach at Michigan.
Seven coaching stops later, she’s back at Bowling Green, which the Loefflers see as a good fit for his career and their family at large.
“Wherever we would go, because he went to Michigan, the assumption was, ‘Are you a Michigan grad?’ ” Amie Loeffler said. “I would always say, ‘No, I went to BG, a MAC school in Ohio,’ and a lot of people would say, ‘Oh, that’s a great football school.’
“Everyone knows it, even in Michigan and the big coaching circles, that BG has a great football program, so it’s great.”
Loeffler will be tasked with rebuilding Bowling Green after three consecutive losing seasons during which the Falcons never won more than four games.
The program, however, has won two of the past six MAC championships, and Loeffler said he sees plenty of promise in Bowling Green.
As he concluded his remarks at the podium Thursday, he finished with, “This is awesome.”
“Bowling Green has a wonderful, rich tradition of football along with an incredible academic reputation,” Loeffler said. “I’m honored to be such a part of a great university.
“My family and I look forward to developing a program that will make all the BG faculty members, students, former players, alums, and fans proud.”
First Published November 29, 2018, 9:01 p.m.
