.png&type=webp)
Bowling Green State University Athletics
Former Falcon Gives Back to University
April 13, 2006 | General
April 11, 2006
By JACK CARLE, Sentinel Sports Editor - Although many things in life have a funny way of happening, Mike Weger doesn't believe in fate.
A 1967 Bowling Green State University graduate, Weger was a three-sport standout at Bowling Green High School and a football All-American for the Falcons.
An 11-year performer in the National Football League, Weger had been tossing around the idea of creating a scholarship fund at BGSU in his father's and his own name.
His father, Dr. Roy Weger, left his mark on BGSU as a faculty member in the music department and the director of bands from 1953-65.
Then information on the Sebo Athletic Center arrived in the mail.
"There are no coincidences in life," Weger said Monday. "It was very timely, it just kind of popped into existence with me."
In just more than a month Mike Weger changed gears, deciding to make a major gift to the Sebo Athletic Center. It's a new multi-million dollar complex currently under construction at the north end of Perry Stadium for use by all intercollegiate athletes at BGSU.
The gift was officially announced Monday. A total of $300,000 is going to the sports medicine and rehabilitation portion of the building which will be named for Mike Weger. And $250,000 is earmarked for construction of bleachers for the band which will be named in honor of his father.
"This gift is a very important step toward accomplishing a significant goal for this university," said Dr. Sidney Ribeau, BGSU's President. "The Sebo Center ... is a place that represents academic achievement and athletic excellence.
"When you bring those two together that's when you have a lasting athletic program."
The band bleachers will be located on the south side of the Sebo Center.
"I am most happy and proud to be able to do something in my dad's name, because he had a tremendous impact on this university," Weger said. "He actually scored the marching band's 'Ay Ziggy Zoomba' song."
'Ay Ziggy Zoomba' is BGSU's unofficial fight song. Mike Weger introduced a national audience to the song when he sang it in a training camp scene in "Paper Lion," the film version of writer George Plimpton's book about Plimpton,s brief foray into pro football.
Weger ended his formal remarks Monday by singing 'Ay Ziggy Zoomba.'
"I became more and more proud of him once I had learned more and more about what he had done and what he had meant to so many people here at the university," Weger said about his father.
"The student body used to not want the band to stop at halftime."
Weger said performers such as Al Hirt, Gene Krupa and Pete Fountain played with the BGSU band at football halftime shows.
"It got to the point where Doyt Perry and the ballplayers were over in the corner of the stadium wanting to get back on the field and the crowd didn't want the band to stop," Weger said.
At Bowling Green High School, Weger lasted about three days in football as a freshman, before quitting. He played basketball and ran track for the Bobcats, but returned to football for his junior year.
He played well enough his last two seasons at BGHS to be recruited by, among others, Oklahoma, where the Weger family lived before moving to Bowling Green, and Florida State.
Instead Weger decided on Bowling Green, earning second-team All-American honors as a junior. He was a first-team all-conference selection and the team's MVP in both his junior and senior years. He played in the Senior Bowl and Blue-Gray all-star games.
Inducted into the BGSU Athletic Hall of Fame in 1972, Weger owns the Willow Creek Golf and Sports Center in Lake Orion, Mich., north of Detroit.
The Weger gift lifts the total raised for the Sebo Athletic Center to more than $6 million, said Marcia Sloan Latta, associate vice president for university advancement and campaign director, in a press release from BGSU.
The Sebo Center is on schedule for completion next February.
"It's a great facility, it's a need," Weger said. "But in reality, it comes down to what you do with what you have and that's what I tried to impart on the football team before I got over here."
Weger spoke to the current BGSU football players before the donation was announced Monday.
"Doyt Perry can be an influence on you; other people can be an influence on you. But only you can make that effort happen and that existence happen. And that's true with every one of us ... It's in your heart, how much you want it," he said.
