It is only BGSU Football Head Coach Scot Loeffler’s second season, but he is already taking sacrifices to help his program succeed.
Nick Piotrowicz broke the story that Loeffler agreed to a $100,000 pay cut in a Toledo Blade article on Wednesday.
Loeffler agreed to a five-year $2.6 million contract in the summer of 2018, making him the highest paid school employee. That contract entailed he would be making $525,000 per season as a base salary. With this pay cut, Loeffler will now be making $425,000 in the 2020-2021 football season.
BGSU Athletics Director Bob Moosbrugger and BGSU President Rodney Rogers both agreed to pay cuts of their own earlier in the year.
But Loeffler has specific aspirations for where he wants the money to go. According to Moosbrugger, it will go to helping the football budget, and more specifically player nutrition.
“Scot knew the budget cuts that we did to his program, how it would affect his student-athletes. So he came to me with an idea of reducing his salary and to put it into the football program’s budget so that he could use it for football players’ nutrition and help them through this time,” Moosbrugger said.
This is a BGSU football program that Loeffler is looking to rebuild. In the three years before Loeffler left Boston College and arrived on campus, the Falcons had a 9-27 record. They were 3-9 in Loeffler’s first season, but made a huge step when they ended their nine-game losing streak to Toledo.
“Yeah I think Scot comes from a program where they obviously have larger resources than we do … he paid attention to his first year here, watching the weight fluctuations of our football players and knew that we had to continue to work on nutrition and have them eat better and make smarter choices,” Moosbrugger said.
Moosbrugger and Loeffler both know that gaining trust from players early can go a long way to helping achieve that goal.
“You could be the greatest coach in the world, but if you don’t have the student-athletes fueled and ready to go to compete, and the student-athletes don’t believe that you will do everything in your power to provide them a great student-athlete experience, you’re not going to be as successful as you possibly can be,” Moosbrugger said.
In a development soon after the announcement that Loeffler would be taking a pay cut, BGSU football alumnus and two-time Superbowl champion Dean Pees announced that he would be making his own $100,000 donation to help out the football nutrition program.
Pees, who has spoken to the current BGSU coaching staff about what it takes to be a superbowl champion, wanted to help Loeffler in his restructuring of the football program.
That, along with his ties to the university, all went into his decision to make the donation.
“It was an unbelievably generous gift … coach Pees obviously spoke at commencement a few years ago and he has family still here in Bowling Green, still has ties to Northwest Ohio and he loves his alma mater,” Moosbrugger said.
All of this is in response to multiple budget cuts that have plagued the sports department following the outbreak of COVID-19. With the donations made by both Loeffler and and Pees, there is hope that the program can continue to function at a healthy level despite having the smallest budget of any program in the MAC.
