Bowling Green State University football has a storied history — 570 all-time wins, a 1959 United Press International (UPI) Small College National Championship, 17 conference championships, 14 Mid-American Conference (MAC) Offensive/Defensive Player of the Year recipients, five MAC Coach of the Year recipients and over 80 players selected in the NFL Draft.
However, the team’s three-season run from 2013-15 may be the best in program history. 2025 marks the 10-year anniversary of the end of that historic run, during which the Falcons won their 12th and most recent MAC Championship.
Over those three historic seasons, the Falcons made three consecutive MAC Championships, winning two.
The Orange and Brown combined for a 28-14 overall record and a 19-5 conference record, marking the second-most wins in any three-year period in program history.
Quarterback Matt Johnson was one of the primary keys to the team’s success during the dominant run, stamping his mark as one of the best signal callers in school history.
Johnson did not walk into the starting spot at Bowling Green. After attempting just eight passes his freshman year, the two-star recruit replaced the Falcon’s starter, Matt Schilz, after just four pass attempts in the first game of the 2014 season.
“I think Matt Schilz had been a very good quarterback for the Falcons, but also was the quarterback for the team when they weren’t very good. 2010 and 2011, he took a lot of shots and he certainly had taken some beatings back there,” Todd Walker, longtime play-by-play voice of BGSU football for Learfield, said. “So, Matt beat him out, and that seemed to be a real spark for the team.”
Johnson taking the starting job marked the beginning of Bowling Green’s dynasty as the Falcons went 10-4 overall and 7-1 in the MAC, defeating No. 16 Northern Illinois 47-27 in the conference championship game. Johnson finished the season with 25 touchdowns to just seven interceptions and nearly 3,500 passing yards, winning the MAC Championship game MVP honors.
“I think expectations were they could be in the mix to be in the MAC championship game, but certainly weren’t the favorite. But really, what happened was the initial thing: Matt Johnson won the quarterback job,” Walker said. “He got put into the first game of the year, immediately made an impact, supplanted Matt Schilz as the starting quarterback, and things really kind of took off from there, and the offense was very prolific.”
On Dec. 10, 2013, just three days after leading the Falcons to their first MAC title since 1992, Bowling Green head coach Dave Clawson was announced as Wake Forest’s next head coach, the 32nd in program history.
The move sparked a nationwide search, spearheaded by Chris Kingston, who was BG’s Director of Athletics at the time, and TurnkeyZRG, an executive search firm. The two parties settled on one man from Eastern Illinois – Dino Babers.
Babers had taken over an Eastern Illinois program that went 4-18 over the final two years of legendary coach Bob Spoo’s second stint and turned them into a two-time Ohio Valley Conference champion in as many years in the driver’s seat.
With Babers’ hiring came a sweeping wave of changes: a new coaching staff, some new talent, and, most importantly, the ‘Falcon Fast’ system. In Bowling Green’s 2014 Spring Game, the first public showing of Babers’ lightning-quick offensive scheme in his new home, Johnson and the offense ran an absurd 138 plays in 78 minutes, including 69 in the first 15.
The stage was set: Johnson in his second year of starting, with his first full offseason with starter-level preparation. The team was just coming off of its first conference title in more than two decades, with the majority of the talent returning.
On Aug. 29, 2014, the Falcons faced Western Kentucky in their backyard for a brawl between the Bowling Green teams.
The Hilltoppers, under first-year head coach Jeff Brohm and led by future NFL quarterback Brandon Doughty, were up three scores in the second quarter, and the Falcons had only crossed mid-field twice.
With BG trailing by four scores in the fourth quarter, in a situation eerily similar to how Johnson got his start the year prior, redshirt sophomore James Knapke came in at quarterback for the final drive of the Western Kentucky game. Disaster struck for the team when, on the following Wednesday, Babers announced that Johnson’s season was done with a hip injury suffered in that game.
Knapke served as the starting quarterback for the rest of the season, completing 280 of his 484 pass attempts for 3,173 yards, 12 touchdowns and 15 interceptions.
“[Johnson] got hurt in the first game of the year at Western Kentucky, and that’s sort of what short-circuited the offense a bit,” Walker said. “James came in and took over. He was not as suited to running that offense as Matt was, but he did a serviceable job and got them to a bowl game that they won.”
Bowling Green finished the season with an 8-6 record. For the second consecutive year, they squared off against Northern Illinois in the MAC championship game. Knapke tossed for 151 yards, one touchdown and two picks while the Falcons got steamrolled by the Huskies, 51-17.
“We were supposed to three-peat it, but losing [Johnson] early in 2014 kind of set us back a little bit,” Bowling Green running back Travis Greene said.
The road to recovery for Johnson was long, winding and difficult.
“[The recovery] was brutal; 13 weeks on crutches,” Johnson said. “I remember going on the treadmill for the very first time, like literally setting it to like two and literally just learning the mechanics of walking again.”
With the Falcons looking to continue the program’s momentum. Johnson used his rehab as fuel to get back on the field and lead the Orange and Brown.
“Anytime you get an injury, you have to work extremely hard, almost twice as hard as normal, just to get back into a shape where you can go out on the field and trust yourself. That’s a big mental hurdle for a lot of guys that haven’t experienced those type of injuries,” BGSU wide receiver Gehrig Dieter said. “He was definitely a hungry person. When it came to the rehab, he attacked it every single day. He was in the facility every day, just around us every day, and you know, we get inspired by that type of thing, just kind of watching him be around the building, just having the energy about him. That, you can’t necessarily replicate.”
When Johnson returned from injury in 2015, he leveled up to one of the best quarterbacks in the country, propelling Bowling Green’s offense to new heights they only dreamed of.
“Matty J, can’t give him enough credit,” Greene said. “Getting Matty J back definitely was a big deal…That hip injury, having surgery the year before, definitely put him back. But he put the work in, and he didn’t miss a beat. I’m talking day one, we were back out there throwing. It was the same Matty J.”
The players sensed that something special was brewing before the first snap of the historic campaign.
“You started to get the feeling before the season started, especially since it was year two with coach Babers,” Johnson said. “Everybody kind of understood what all the coaches wanted.”
The Falcons started the season by falling 59-30 to Tennessee in a competitive contest against the No. 25 team in the country.
“Even though we lost to Tennessee, once we took the field, it was like, alright, we can do this. You never want to lose, but it kind of gave us the feeling, at least offensively, we just played with the No. 25 team in the country, we can do this,” Johnson said.
The game against the Volunteers also gave Johnson reassurance that he could still play at a high level after recovering from a severe injury.
“As much as you prepare mentally to get ready for that moment of getting out on the field again, you still have these doubts that are running through your head, like, ‘Alright, I just took a whole year off, can I still do this?’ We felt it offensively after the game against Tennessee that we got something special here,” Johnson said. “But personally, it reassured me that I can still do this, I can still put the ball where it needs to go…So it definitely meant a lot, though, to be able to look back on something and say, ‘Yeah, that was a major adversity that I was able to overcome personally in my career.'”
Over the next few weeks, Bowling Green defeated two Big Ten opponents on the road in Maryland and Purdue, marking two of the best and most memorable moments of the season.
“I keep going back to that Tennessee game. Once you go out there and feel that we can play with these guys, and then you carry that into Purdue, Memphis, and Maryland. Once you did it against those guys [Tennessee], it’s like, ‘Alright, I don’t care who’s in front of me.’ Maryland played us like we thought they were going to. Purdue came out and completely changed everything about who they were. So, on the sideline, we were kind of like, ‘Alright, we earned their respect,'” Johnson said. Those wins felt really good because you’re playing up, and you got this chip on your shoulder as a Group of Five school, and you go to their house and you beat them. Every Group of Five kid that beats a Power Four team now feels that way we felt, too; it gives you a shot of life that we belong on this field.”
The electric offense would propel Bowling Green to another MAC Championship, as they defeated Northern Illinois 34-14 to conclude the trilogy between the mid-major heavyweights.
“That was a tight-knit senior class. So, that’s what made it special. A lot of those guys were three-year and four-year starters,” Johnson said. “We’d been through a lot together, and to finish it off the right way was special.”
After the Purdue win, the Falcons won nine of their last 11 games of the season, with the two losses coming against Toledo and Georgia Southern in the GoDaddy Bowl.
One of the only blemishes of the historic three-year run is BGSU’s record against their rivals, Toledo: 0-3.
“I mean, we were all pretty devastated; I was crying,” Johnson said. “I’m just sitting in the locker room, my pads still on, and I think I think the coaches did an excellent job of like letting it sting for a minute. They knew the magnitude of that game, too, and I think that they did a good job of kind of letting it sting for 24 hours.”
The Toledo loss represents the biggest challenge for the 2015 squad.
“I think the biggest challenge for us was staying mentally locked in week to week. Don’t get me wrong, we had a lot of talent on that team, and I’m not naive to the fact that talent wins ball games. But when you look at the Toledo game, there were so many self-inflicted wounds. When you play a team that’s equally as talented as you, you get your ass handed to you,” Johnson said. “So, I think the challenge for us was, even though we might have gone into games like on paper a more talented team than everybody, it was a challenge for us to stay locked in and not just take games for granted.”
Johnson’s 2015 campaign is one of the best single seasons in program history.
“Matt Johnson was clearly the catalyst for the offense’s revival or explosion in 2013 and 2015,” Walker said.
He set the program single-season record for passing yards (4,946), completions (383), passing touchdowns (46), completion percentage (67.3%) and total yards of offense (5,105).
“Matty J was one of those guys who’s been there for a long time. So, he was an automatic leader for the team. During my time, a lot of guys looked up to him, obviously, with the amount of success that he had,” Dieter said. “He was one of the better quarterbacks in the country that season [2015], which was a lot of fun for us. I think we were all rooting for him to get some Heisman votes, at least get some looks into that.”
In 2015, Johnson earned MAC Offensive Player of the Year, First Team All-MAC honors, the MAC’s Vern Smith Leadership Award, the Sammy Baugh Award, which was given to the nation’s top passer, and an Honorable Mention All-America honor by Sports Illustrated.
While Johnson endured great success in his final season with the Falcons, finishing it with a MAC Championship as his crown jewel.
“I look at these rings every day in my office because it’s something that we did as a team. The personal stuff, it’s a really cool cherry on top,” Johnson said. “It was all about finishing our senior year off the right way. That senior class was extremely tight-knit ever since we got to BG as freshmen in 2011. A lot of those guys were in my wedding; it’s something we took a lot of pride in, going out on top. So, the personal stuff was cool, and it was self-gratification and all of that. But to be able to finish on top like that was way more important to me.”
Johnson holds his head high, knowing he was one of the centerpieces for the program’s dominant three-year run.
“You just take pride in what you did there,” Johnson said. “You go through a lot together. For three years, we kind of held on to the MAC. Felt pretty good.”
Johnson believes the legacy of the team is their immense collection of talent and ability to finish the job they started.
“The legacy of that team, I mean the fact that we’ve the fact that we finished what we started, I think is something. It probably hits a little different for me now, especially college football with the portal. If you look at that team, you can’t tell me that guys couldn’t have played on Power Four teams,” Johnson said. “In 2013, we were [in the MAC Championship game], in 2014 and then did it again in 2015. My senior class, we put a stamp on there and we finished what we started…I hope that BG wins a MAC championship soon, because I don’t want to be the last.”
