Bowling Green Opens 107th Season of Football on Thursday Night Against Lafayette

Thursday, Aug. 28 \| 6 p.m. \| Doyt Perry Stadium \| Bowling Green, Ohio

	BOWLING GREEN FALCONS (0-0, 0-0 MAC)	vs.	LAFAYETTE LEOPARDS (0-0, 0-0 PL)

WATCH : ESPN+ \| LISTEN : WFRO The Eagle 99 \| STATS : View

BGSU Opens 107th Season of Football
• Bowling Green State University opens its 107th season of football on Thursday against Lafayette.
• The Falcons hold a 51-48-7 all-time record in season openers and a 70-31-5 all-time record in home openers.
• Thursday officially marks the start of the Eddie George era. George, hired in March, is the 21st head coach in BGSU program history.
• The game will kick at 6 p.m. and be broadcast live on ESPN+

Bowling Green vs. Lafayette
• Bowling Green and Lafayette are meeting for the first time in football.
• Thursday's matchup is just the second-ever meeting between Bowling Green and a Patriot League school.
• The Falcons also opened the 2024 season against a Patriot League opponent when Fordham visited Doyt Perry Stadium.

Five Top Storylines
• BGSU head coach Eddie George opens his first season at the helm of the Falcons. The 2025 college football season is the 30th anniversary of George winning the Heisman Trophy. The 21st head coach in program history is just the fifth Heisman Trophy winner to be a head coach at the FBS level.
• George aims to be the 11th Falcon head coach to win his debut joining, Scot Loeffler (2019), David Clawson (2009), Gregg Brandon (2003), Urban Meyer (2001), Gary Blackney (1991), Moe Ankney (1986), Denny Stolz (1977), Don Nehlen (1986), Bob Gibson (1965) and Doyt Perry (1955).
• Former BGSU head coach Urban Meyer will be honored during the game as part of his National Football Foundation Campus Salute. Meyer will be officially inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in Las Vegas in December. He joins Doyt Perry (1988) and Don Nehlen (2005) as the former Falcon head coaches enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame.
• The 2025 season features a unique first in FBS history. DE Eriq George, son of head coach Eddie George, and DT Ian van der Merwe, son of Vice President for Athletics Strategy Derek van der Merwe, become the first pair of sons of both a head coach and an athletics director to play on the same FBS team—let alone in the same position group.
• QB Drew Pyne is poised to make a start for the fourth-straight season, having previously started games at Notre Dame (2022), Arizona State (2023) and Missouri (2024). He enters 2025 tied for No. 4 in nationally for the most consecutive seasons starting at least one game.

Opening a season at Doyt Perry Stadium
• The Falcons open a season at home in back-to-back years for the first time since 2002-03, when BGSU hosted Tennessee Tech and Eastern Kentucky. Last year's opener was also against Fordham on a Thursday night. Current BGSU assistant head coach and tight ends coach Dewayne Alexander was Tennessee Tech's offensive line coach for that 2002 matchup, which also marked the final season opener of Urban Meyer's BGSU tenure.

200 Years Later, Lafayette Returns
• Marquis de Lafayette, the namesake of
Lafayette College, visited Ohio during his grand tour of America in 1825. Two centuries later, Lafayette returns to the Buckeye State—this time on the gridiron at Bowling Green.
• Traveling along the Ohio River, Marquis de Lafayette made stops in several Ohio cities in 1825, including Cincinnati, Gallipolis, and Marietta.

Bowling Green - Lafayette Connections
• Lafayette DL Joey Shimko spent the 2024 season at Bowling Green and redshirted.
• Lafayette offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach T.J. Dimuzio was on staff at Bowling Green from 2009-12. From 2009-10 he was a gradute assistant. In 2011, he was elevated to director of player personnel and served as the assistant special teams coordinator, and recruiting coordinator.
• Lafayette defensive coordinator and defensive line coach Mike Saint Germain was a graduate assistant at Virginia in 2012–13, when BGSU assistant AD for strategic communications Vincent Briedis served as the primary football media contact.
• Lafayette cornerbacks coach Jeff Sejour coached at VMI in 2018–19 for then-head coach Scott Wachenheim, while BGSU secondary coach Richard McNutt coached at VMI in 2006 for then-head coach Jim Reid. Both Reid and Wachenheim were on staff at Virginia in 2012 under head coach Mike London. Saint Germain was a graduate assistant on that 2012 Cavalier team.
• Lafayette recruiting coordinator and inside linebackers coach Andrew Seumalo is the son of current Arizona defensive line coach Joe Seumalo, who was on the defensive coaching staff at San Jose State in 2022–23 when BGSU linebacker Justin Eklund was with the Spartans.

George and Company Enter Year Number One
• Eddie George was named the 21st head coach in Bowling Green football history on March 9, 2025.
• George returns to the "Great State of Ohio," where he starred at Ohio State and won the Heisman Trophy 30 years ago (1995). He spent the past four seasons as head coach at Tennessee State, where he was named Big South-OVC Coach of the Year and led the Tigers to the FCS Playoffs in 2024.
• George has assembled a staff that blends talent from both BGSU and TSU—two programs that have undergone impressive rebuilds over the past four years. The group brings experience spanning every level of football, from high school to the NFL.

Returning Production
• BGSU ranks No. 130 out of 136 FBS teams in returning production for 2025, at just 35 percent. That figure places the Falcons 12th out of 13 teams in the MAC.
• In 2024, BGSU led the nation in returning production with a senior-laden roster.
• For 2025, BGSU is one of eight MAC programs ranked in the bottom 18 nationally in returning production—and one of four MAC programs breaking in a new head coach

A Program on the Rise
• BGSU is 16–8 in MAC play since the start of the 2022 season.
• Only Toledo, Ohio, and Miami (OH) have better conference records during that span: Ohio is 20–4, Miami (OH) is 18–6, and Toledo is 17–7.
• In the previous 16-game MAC stretch, BGSU was just 2–14.
• Bowling Green was one of only four FBS programs in 2022 to improve its win total by 4+ games from 2020 to 2021 and by 2+ more games from 2021 to 2022. The others were Kansas State, Oregon State, and Tennessee.
• The Falcons are the only program in the nation to improve their win total by 4+ games from 2020 to 2021, by 2+ games from 2021 to 2022, and by 1+ game from 2022 to 2023. BGSU's win total in 2024 remained +7 from 2020, marking four straight seasons without a decline in victories.

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