BOWLING GREEN — On May 15, Bowling Green State University's baseball alumni base had one giant issue, no playbook, and precious little time to act.
Citing financial issues inflamed by the coronavirus pandemic, the university cut the baseball team — but for the Save BGSU Baseball campaign, that was only the starting point.
In the span of 18 days, the program went from not existing to being reinstated, an improbable success story for the former Falcons baseball players who turned passion into rapid, coordinated action.
The news of the program being cut quickly turned into a flurry of calls and text messages, which turned into Zoom calls, social media posts, and an email account, which turned into significant fund-raising in a matter of days, which earned critically important meetings with BGSU administrators — a snowball that turned into a program-saving avalanche.
"We worked together and tried to find solutions, and it happened," Bowling Green director of athletics Bob Moosbrugger said Wednesday in a virtual press conference. "It had to happen quickly or it wasn't going to happen."
The fund-raising group drew more than 200 donors from alumni, BGSU baseball families, and friends of the program. It raised $1.5 million for the next three years — and plans to continue raising capital in the years to come — which covers the program's non-scholarship operating costs of about $500,000 per season.
The university committed to providing continued student-aid for baseball players, which amounted to $272,150 in the 2018-19 school year, the most recent for which data is available.
While the agreed-upon details between BGSU and the campaign are straightforward, the process of coming to them was anything but.
The first task was to stitch together eras of Bowling Green baseball. A group of roughly 25 mid-1990s graduates have a text thread. The 1972 Mid-American Conference championship team has kept in touch over the years, the 2000s teams are intertwined through social media, and a collection of early-1980s grads reconnected earlier this year.
The first few days were about connecting the groups into one concerted effort. The campaign started with a partially outdated email list from the program's annual golf outing, spread to Facebook and Twitter, and had a Zoom call of more than 80 interested players just days after the program was cut.
"We just had to get everybody on the same page and pull the rope in the same direction — not splintered groups, but a united front," said Andy Tracy, a 1996 graduate who manages the Columbus Clippers, the Cleveland Indians' Triple-A affiliate.
Knowing they had to act quickly, the effort became like a second job for many former Falcons.
Tracy, a baseball lifer, became a key outreach figure. Former teammate Bob Reichow kept open late-night lines of communication to interested parties through calls, texts, and a newly created Facebook page for BGSU baseball alumni. Pro Falcons such as Jon Berti and Burke Badenhop donated and spread the word.
Dave Litzenberg, a 1981 graduate, is a financial advisor who was crunching numbers, updating spreadsheets, and operating the email address at the center of fund-raising.
Before the group engaged with BGSU, it knew its success was reliant upon raising a significant amount of money, and doing so quickly.
“It's been a rollercoaster,” Litzenberg said. “As positive and as optimistic as I'd like to think I am, it looked like a big hill to climb. The reason that we put such a rapid timeframe on it was we knew the current players and coaches had a very short shelf-life if we wanted to keep them engaged in the program.”
John Mitchell, 1978 graduate and a partner at executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, and Dana Dowers, a '79 grad who founded DLD Insurance Brokers, were instrumental behind-the-scenes forces who helped the campaign earn meetings with Moosbrugger and BGSU president Rodney Rogers.
To the campaign's delight, the Bowling Green administration proved willing to listen and to work with them on a solution.
"Those guys were able to get the attention of the administration, and the administration was cordial to have dialogue with us and see where we were as a group," Tracy said. "The administration was awesome during this whole process. We're happy that they were able to listen to us and come to a conclusion."
After a key meeting on Friday where the campaign outlined its plan, they received a hopeful sign from BGSU: a counteroffer. By the end of the weekend, they had the terms for a reinstatement, and the campaign met its self-imposed Tuesday deadline.
Tuesday afternoon, Bowling Green formally announced that its baseball program was revived on an immediate basis.
"To go through what we did in a two-week timeframe goes to show that the tradition of this program is built around family," Reichow said. "When there's a family crisis, obviously you work through it as family and you make sacrifices individually for the family. That's how this all came together."
Later Wednesday, BGSU announced that longtime coach Danny Schmitz would move to an advisory role and assistant coach Kyle Hallock would be the program’s interim head coach.
Scholarships, however, will be unchanged. Baseball teams are allowed 11.7 scholarships per NCAA rules, and Moosbrugger said Bowling Green committed to them because it wants its baseball team to be competitive. One MAC school, Akron, eliminated baseball and brought it back on a non-scholarship basis.
"We know that's not what we want for BGSU," Moosbrugger said. "We wanted to provide a great student-athlete experience, and we want to be competitive. We talked a lot during this conversation [that] we just don't want it to come back just to participate."
Though the fund-raising effort cleared an important first hurdle by gaining reinstatement, it saw the announcement as the beginning, not the end.
Tuesday’s news allowed for a breath, but more work is needed in the future.
"It's somewhat like a graduation: It's a milestone, but in and of itself can't be the final answer," Litzenberg said. "We're incredibly excited with today, but we can't stop with today. Now it's all about making sure what's in place is successful going forward."
First Published June 3, 2020, 9:02 p.m.
