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Former Toledo football coach Gary Pinkel.
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Former coach Gary Pinkel reflects on memorable games at Toledo

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Former coach Gary Pinkel reflects on memorable games at Toledo

Former University of Toledo and Missouri head coach Gary Pinkel was recently named to the 2021 College Football Hall of Fame ballot by the National Football Foundation and the College Hall of Fame.

Pinkel, whose 73 wins at Toledo are the most in program history, is one of seven FBS coaches on the 2021 ballot. Pinkel, who spent 10 years (1991-2000) with the Rockets before leaving for the Missouri job, is also the winningest coach in Toledo history with a winning percentage of .659 (73-37-3 overall record). 

“I didn’t know about it and all of the sudden I started getting barraged by text messages and emails from former players,” Pinkel said. “I never had a goal to be honored like that. We’ll see how it unfolds, but certainly it’s just an honor to be thought of that highly in our profession.”

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In light of the nomination for the former Rockets coach, he took some time to reflect on some of his favorite games in his 10-year career at Toledo. Here are his top games in no particular order:

1992: Toledo 33, Purdue 29

Talk about a tone-setting win for a coach early in his tenure with a new program. In just his second season with Toledo, Pinkel led the Rockets into West Lafayette and came away with a narrow win. Purdue was coming off a season-opening win over No. 17 California, but the Rockets stunned the Boilermakers behind a career day from quarterback Kevin Meger, who was 33 of 52 passing for 305 yards. Toledo receiver Marcus Goodwin caught 13 passes for 134 yards.

“Purdue had just gotten back from beating California, and we were having an uphill game, and we found a way to win that football game,” Pinkel said. “That was a huge win for the University of Toledo historically for us. I remember our players played so well, and we found a way to win the game. I remember that as a really, really good football game. They came off a big win, and that made the game even bigger. It was really awesome.”

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1995: Toledo 40, Nevada 37, OT (Las Vegas Bowl)

The 1995 season was a magical one for Toledo, as the Rockets went 11-0-1 and were ranked in the top 25 at the end of the season. It was all capped off by a heart-stopping overtime win over Nevada in the first Division I college game to go to overtime.

Wasean Tait had 238 total yards and four touchdowns in the game. Toledo won the coin toss in overtime and chose to go on defense. Pinkel remembered his family and a lot of fans in the stands going crazy that the Rockets chose defense, because they were used to NFL overtime rules when a team always takes the ball. Pinkel said he and his staff did their homework prior to the game and knew going on defense was the right play under the new rules. After a Nevada field goal on the opening overtime possession, Tait carried the ball into the end zone for a Toledo win.

“In 1995, we just started winning and winning,” Pinkel said. “We had a great group of kids, and they were starting to get the way we wanted to do things. We stayed healthy. I remember us and Nebraska were the only unbeaten teams.

“...It’s the only undefeated season I had, and it’s really hard to get one. That will go down as one of the biggest games ever at Toledo.”

2000: Toledo, 24, Penn State 6

In what ended up being Pinkel’s final season at Toledo, he and the Rockets notched one of the biggest victories in program history by going to Happy Valley and beating Joe Paterno and Penn State.

Chester Taylor led the way for Toledo with 141 rushing yards and two scores, while the defense kept the Nittany Lions in check.

Pinkel recalled he wasn’t even fond of scheduling the game in the first place, but it ended up being a huge upset. 

“The game that I didn’t even want to play, we play them and we are playing really well in that stadium with 85,000 or 90,000 people,” Pinkel said. “We played well on offense, on defense, on kicking. We were sitting there with three or four minutes left in the game,  and we are up by 10 points or so, and I just can’t believe it. The game that I did everything I could not to play, we end up getting probably the biggest victory in the history of the University of Toledo. It was one of the great, great wins. That was pretty incredible.”

1997: Toledo 36, Purdue 22

Toledo earned its second win over Purdue in Pinkel’s tenure with this one at the Glass Bowl in front of 26,248 fans. Chris Wallace passed for 254 yards and two touchdowns, and Dwayne Harris rushed for 162 yards and a score.

Purdue quarterback Drew Brees split time with Billy Dicken and was 11 of 21 passing for 97 yards. 

“It was a huge, huge win for us, and we had a really good year that year,” Pinkel said. “They came in with a really good football team. Everyone said, ‘Well, they’re not going to lose two in a row to Toledo, it’s not going to happen.’ To get a team like Purdue to come to the Glass Bowl was really incredible.”

1999: Final three games of the season

The 1999 season was not one of the finest of Pinkel’s tenure at Toledo. The Rockets were struggling at 3-5 overall with three games left to play in the season. Toledo regrouped and finish strong winning all three games — a 32-13 win at Central Michigan, a 44-14 home win over Northern Illinois, and a 45-21 home win over Western Michigan.

A seemingly routine three-game stretch to end a somewhat disappointing season turned into meaningful momentum for the program.

That three-game winning streak set the tone for a 10-1 season in Pinkel’s final year at Toledo in 2000 and a 10-2 season the following year in 2001 under new coach Tom Amstutz.

“In 1999, we were struggling,” Pinkel said. “...We were young, but I knew we had a good football team. We were young and immature, and we were just not playing the best we could. We went up to go beat Central Michigan and back then that was hard to do. We came home and won two games and finished the season 6-5 with a winning season. That was hugely important for our program.

“..If someone had come up to me and said when we had three games left, ‘You are going to win 13 of your next 14 games that you coach,’ I would have punched them right in the mouth. But that’s what happened. Next year we were 10-1 with a really, really good football team. It was a great lesson that you never know when greatness is around the corner.”

First Published June 22, 2020, 6:46 p.m.

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