We Had A Hall Of Fame #MACtion Game Today In The Battle Of I-75 (Bowling Green vs Toledo)

Lots of great football was played across the country today. Bowling Green, Ohio was not the location of one of those games. Sorry Bowling Green, that might a little unfair. I shouldn't say anything to discredit my alma mater's legitimately insane victory over our arch rival Toledo Rockets, who have a rocket on campus that's allegedly "calibrated" to land on our 50-yard line... which is literally terrorism... 

But I certainly wouldn't call today's Battle of I-75 a picture perfect game of football. I would, however, call it a low-key Hall of Fame caliber piece of #MACtion. If you prefer to skip my narration, here is the condensed highlight.

If you're still reading, allow me to set the stage a bit. Bowling Green hired Eddie George to be their head coach this off-season. Everybody in town is fired up about it. We're selling out The Doyt and everything. 

Bowling Green's team this year isn't especially great, but they're a serviceable MAC team. They've got some "dudes". We just don't really have anybody who can get them the ball. You might be familiar with resume of one Drew Pyne. 

He's our starting quarterback this year. He's… a quarterback. But he's hurt right now. And unfortunately our backup QB doesn't have working arms. He's got a decent set of legs. But he's not out there slinging the rock around the field. To be frank, for the first half of the game, Bowling Green made getting a first down look like climbing Mount Everest. For reference, here was our QB's final stat line. This is not the amount of yards a team should have at the end of a game in which they score 28 points. 

Keep in mind half of his passing yards came on a screen pass touchdown. 

Toledo, on the other hand, is good (for a MAC school). They statistically have one of the best defenses in college football. Their quarterback Tucker Gleason has been playing at Toledo since 2021. Toledo was an 10.5 point favorite. They started the game up 21-0. It was all but over. There was zero reason to believe anything favorable was about to happen to the Bowling Green Falcons today. Then #MACtion took over.

You ever watch a game where you're completely hopeless, have all but turned it off completely, then out of fucking nowhere literally everything possible starts going right? Me neither. Until today. Our quarterback has no arms? Well maybe our best wide receiver does.

But if you were watching this game, you still knew there's no way Bowling Green was putting together another drive. All Toledo had to do was not back themselves up to their own end zone after the kickoff then call a play action pass and take a strip 5 seconds later.

Madness in Bowling Green. The Doyt was rocking. Jeff Fisher was losing his mind.

And to seal the deal, right when you think Toledo is about to drive down the field to tie up the game, Bowling Green had one more ridiculous play left in them.

After that… what better way to top off an all time afternoon of Saturday #MACtion than with an intentional game-ending safety.

G.U.T.S. indeed. Told you he had a decent set of legs. Make that 1-75 in games Bowling Green has trailed by 21 points or more.

Honestly when I type it all out, it doesn't seem quite as crazy as it felt in real time. I'm almost regretting writing this blog. But trust me… it was… a football game. And if you watched that football game, at no point up until that trick play touchdown (or even before the strip sack) did you think Bowling Green had a punchers chance at winning. It was truly one of the most improbably comebacks I've ever witnessed. Although… in hindsight… I should have known we were in for something special when ESPN's Jeremy Schapp made a trip to Bowling Green this week to interview a cat.

As much as Eddie George as done for Bowling Green, our longs napper's cat might be doing more. They did a whole ass Pudge The Cat segment on Gameday this morning. 

That's MAC Football for ya. Eddie George is making Bowling Green fun. Despite only being a 3-3 football team, they're just about as fun as they've ever been. I haven't seen this type of buzz around Bowling Green football in years. Fun times in northwest Ohio. Fun times in the MAC.