Mike Jacobs stops to smell the roses.
The 45-year-old Maumee native has lived an improbable football life — a playing career at Ohio State followed by two decades (and counting) as a coach.
Jacobs might say all of it was unforeseen. That’s especially true about being a head coach. It wasn’t something he envisioned or sought out, but Jacobs has been in the top job for nine seasons and has never lost fewer than eight games, leading Notre Dame College, Lenior-Rhyne, and Mercer to playoff berths. He’s 85-20 with four conference championships and four playoff appearances.
Each day, Jacobs — entering his second season at Mercer — pauses to give thanks, recognizing the blessings and good fortune he’s encountered in a life on the gridiron and a supportive family who’s been along for the ride.
“They give up an awful lot. They sacrifice quite a bit for me to be able to pour into other people’s children and to chase my dreams,” Jacobs said. “My dreams have become their dreams, and we try to take a moment as often as we can to just sit back and say, ‘Man, we’re blessed, even in tough times.’ We’re just so appreciative to be on the journey and be on it together.”
Jacobs recently talked to The Blade about growing up in northwest Ohio, playing for his dad at OSU, and how to build a winning culture.
The Blade: Were you born and raised in Maumee?
Jacobs: I was born in Mansfield because my dad had been coaching at Ashland. Shortly after I was born, my dad [also named Mike Jacobs] had already accepted a job at Toledo under Chuck Stobart, so I moved to Toledo when I was an infant. My dad was only there a season. He left and went to West Virginia under Don Nehlen. We moved there until my parents split up. My mom’s originally from Maumee, so when my folks split up in second grade, I left Morgantown and moved back to Maumee.
The Blade: What was your introduction to football?
Jacobs: My introduction was through my dad. I’m the son of a coach, and not only that, my grandfather [Bill Jacobs] was a long-time high school coach. He’s actually in the Ohio High School Hall of Fame as a football coach from the greater Cleveland area. He was at Brunswick and Cuyahoga Heights for a number of years. I was almost indoctrinated at birth, so to say.
I grew up around my dad and his players, and those guys were at our house. I just remember the bond and watching that. He was more than just a coach to them. As I got into it, I never really played youth football. The first time I played padded football was in seventh grade at Gateway Middle School and then transitioned into playing for Hal La Fountaine, who was a brilliant high school coach. Hal’s a guy that did things right. We were really lucky to have some good players, especially early in my career. Matt LaVrar ended up playing at Ohio State with me, Jim Harding, who went on to Toledo.
The Blade: How was the experience of playing at Ohio State? Obviously you were there with your dad. And how much did you learn from and later impart from John Cooper and Jim Tressel?
Jacobs: I was a little bit of a unique recruiting situation because I was an elite long snapper, but I’m kind of a tweener for a Division I offensive lineman. So my offers were all over the map. Ultimately, I chose to go to Ohio State because I wanted to play on the biggest stage and I wanted to play for my father, who was my position coach three of my five years there.
You talk about just a unique situation and how blessed I was to be able to go and spend every day with my dad doing what we both love to do. He’s an Ohio guy, the son of a high school coach himself. To do it at Ohio State and in Ohio Stadium, I knew the road would be hard going in initially as a walk-on. But I finally earned a scholarship and carved my niche. Ended up playing in 38 games over five years and started my last game at center because LeCharles Bentley got hurt. You just wouldn’t have traded that experience and those moments for anything.
I knew right away that I wanted to coach. I immediately sought a coaching graduate assistant job when I got done playing. The things I learned from Cooper are players win, people win. The acquisition of talent, watching all the old greats that came through there in my time, and how they were evaluated and recruited. And then there’s not a better person than Jim Tressel in terms of developing the whole person. I only had one season with him, but coach Tressel’s one of one in how he develops the whole person. His depth of knowledge about the individuals in the organization. I ended up having an opportunity to work for Joe Tiller, who’s a Toledo Rogers and another Hall of Fame guy. So I’ve just been so uniquely blessed to be around some of the best guys in the game, and you take a little bit from each one of those individuals and formulate what you want.
The Blade: How different is it being a head coach than an assistant? I always like getting this perspective from head coaches. Everyone thinks they’re ready, but once you’re actually in that job, it seems like most coaches are like, man, maybe I’m not totally ready.
Jacobs: It’s like becoming a parent. It doesn’t matter how much you think you’re ready, you’re never ready. No two days are ever the same. No two kids are the same. No interaction with staff members or players is ever the same. The ability to develop relationships and bonds and work through adversity and problem solve and inspire people and lead, it’s different every day.
What I found one of the hardest pieces to be is there’s no one else to turn to. The buck stops with you. You have the final say on things and you learn to be ultra-decisive in your decisions, live with them, and keep it moving.
The Blade: You’ve really had nothing but success as a head coach. What’s this ride been like, basically at full momentum each season?
Jacobs: It’s unbelievable. I have unbelievable support from my wife and my family. My family is a football family through and through. The success is really attributed to three things — the ability to hire great staff who are brilliant teachers. Those guys’ ability to teach the basics of football.
Everybody thinks they’re John Madden nowadays because they play video games, and everybody wants to call plays and do this and do that, but teams that are really good are really good at the basics — running, blocking, tackling — have a high dedication.
We’ve been able to attract really good football players. We’ve had the success that we’ve had because we’ve had brilliant players who have bought into doing things with an uncanny consistency and a buy-in to the basics. That’s been the key to our success.
The Blade: You’ve won immediately at three different places. Have you done it the same way at all three places or does it take something different, whether it’s culture, procuring talent, or something else? What has the approach been?
Jacobs: I think we’ve evolved. If you’re not evolving, you’re not getting anywhere. The game I started coaching 23 years ago, it’s changed. I mean, it’s changed since I left Lenoir-Rhyne a year ago. Our approach to practice, our approach to teaching, the beliefs that we’ve had have been consistent across all three places. Our approach with individuals changes every year in terms of how can we utilize the talents that our kids possess, and then how can we get the most out of them.
Every university has its own personality and quirks. We don’t want to just exist in that. We want to be a huge part of the campus community. How do you do that? It looks different at every stop. Notre Dame College was an all-girls school for 80-plus years. It’s closed now. I didn’t start the program, but we were there in the early infant stages. So that looks a lot different than when you go to Lenoir-Rhyne, and they’ve been playing football for 110 years and they’re getting ready to spend $25 million on a football facility. You go from having 30 alumni to having people who have been doing it for 100 years. The buy-in and the commitment from the community were different.
Mercer is really unique. They had football in the early 1900s and played up to wartime, and then they shut the program down in the early 40s when the war came around. They decided to bring it back in 2013, and we were able to do something that they’d never done at all, which was win the SoCon championship.
First Published February 16, 2025, 3:00 p.m.
