During the 1985 season for BGSU football, alum Mark Miller coached the quarterbacks and receivers, a group that served as the foundation for an explosive offense.
Before his stint as a coach, Miller had an athletic career all his own. Taking over startingquarterback duties as a freshman at BG in 1974, Miller led the MAC in passing as a sophomore.After graduation, Miller was selected by the Cleveland Browns, backing up Brian Sipe. He made afew pro football stops, and returned to BGSU to coach in 1982 at the age of 26.
“I was offered a contract for another year in the (semi-pro league) USFL. I was not playing, I was a backup,” Miller said. “But at that point I said, let’s just start our coaching career, and stop chasing this dream of being a player.”
Head coach Dennis Stoltz offered Miller a coaching position that spring. In essence, Miller went straight from being a backup QB for the USFL’s Michigan Panthers to being an assistant coach at his alma mater, just five years after graduating.
“I made that decision in the spring, knowing that when the USFL season ended in July, I wouldgo back to Bowling Green and get ready for the season.” Miller said.
The groundwork for the historic 1985 season was laid a few years earlier, when Miller attendeda high-school basketball game to watch a kid named Brian McClure play.
“Jerry Solomon was our defensive line coach, and he had asked me to come watch a high-school football game,” Miller said. “I had already watched Brian on tape … but at the game I sawhim steal the ball and dribble down the court, passing it to a teammate for an easy layup. And I looked at (Jerry) Solomon, and I said, ‘that’s our guy.’”
Miller’s faith in McClure paid off; the quarterback would go on to be a four-year starter,leading the Falcons to a 34-12 record in that span as well as two
MAC titles and an undefeated regular season, along with placement in the top 20 of the AP Poll in 1985.
As a former quarterback himself, and as someone who had just recently finished his playing career, Miller saw a lot of himself in McClure.
“We both started as freshmen, you know? We both loved to throw the football,” Miller said. “Weboth liked film study, and we both read defenses really well. But he was so accurate, much more accurate than I.”
To fully understand the reasons for BG’s offensive potency in 1985, one must look back to the groundwork that was laid in 1982.
“It was a great recruiting class. It wasn’t just Brian … we had a lot of recruits that played as freshmen,” Miller said. “And we won the league that year.”
The following two years, the Falcons came within a stone’s throw of a MAC title, coming just short each time.
In 1985, however, the offense truly clicked in a way that it never had before.
The Falcons averaged 31.6 points per game, tenth out of 110 qualifying schools. The team finishedwith a plus-176 point differential on the year, averaging 3.8 total touchdowns and 378.1 yards of total offense per game. Running back Bernard White scored nineteen total touchdowns, and wideout StanHunter caught seven TD passes on the year.
“We had some hurdles,” Miller said. “At Kentucky was tough, because they were an SEC team. We won that game at the end.”
Next, the Falcons faced Miami at home. And despite an early injury to McClure, backup Rick Neiman finished the game in what was known as “The Miami Miracle.”
After an early injury to McClure, Neiman took hold of the offense. Down by ten with under four minutes left in the game, Neiman engineered a TD drive.
Following a successful onside kick, the team scored again, this time on a touchdown run by Neiman.The Redskins drove down the field themselves, ready to win it with a TD from the goal line; but on fourth down, the BG defense held their ground and sealed the win.
“(Neiman) brought us back, and scored right at the end. He was phenomenal,” Miller said. “Ialways told him, ‘Rick, you were the second-best QB in the MAC. Unfortunately, the best (McClure) was on your team.’”
After those two nailbiters, the Falcon offense bulldozed the rest of the competition.
“We got through those two close ones, and we really cruised the rest of the way. Nobody really challenged us, not even Toledo. We beat them 21-0.” Miller said.
In fact, the BG offense was so stellar that the team earned a ranking of 20 in the AP poll over back-to-back weeks in December.
Miller credits much of the offense’s performance to the excellence of the offensive line.
“With McClure, we knew we had to throw it to win. He was a pocket passer, so our whole passoffense was built around protecting the quarterback,” Miller said.
“Our offensive line coach was Jan Corliss…he was the very best offensive line coach I have ever been around, including all my NFL stops.”
Moreover, the offense was innovative enough to keep defenses guessing.
Although a typical offensive set in those days involved two wideouts, two running backs, and a tight end, BG often trotted out a three-wide receiver set. The skill players rarely blocked, instead running routes on almost every play. This gave McClure plenty of options in the quick game.
“And so, we never had a play where somebody wasn’t open,” Miller said. “If they surprised us with man, or zone, or blitz, we always had something to counteract that.”
Although the BG offense could best be described as pass-heavy, running back Bernard Whiteran for 949 yards in 1985 and averaged 4.3 yards per carry.
One major factor in the efficacy of the offense was its simplicity.
“We didn’t have very many plays,” Miller said. “We had about five run plays, and maybe 12 or 13 pass plays… we were simple, but we were really good at it.”
On Nov. 23, 1985, the Falcons finished their perfect regular season by drubbing the OhioBobcats, 38-17. But soon, their greatest challenge would arise: a bid in the California Bowl, against the Fresno State Bulldogs.
In 1982, McClure’s freshman year, the Bulldogs had bested the Falcons by one point, 29-28, in that same venue. Now, the Orange and Brown had a chance to settle the score against a team that hadaveraged 39.1 points per game that year and gone 10-0-1 in the regular season.
But just before that game, disaster struck when head coach Denny Stoltz informed his coachingstaff – and later, his team – that he would be departing for a new coaching job in Southern California.
“In the staff meeting before the team left for California, (Stoltz) said that he was going to interview at San Diego State,” Miller said.
And at the staff meeting the following night in California, Stoltz told his staff that he had accepted the job and would be telling the team the next day.
“I, for one, and most of the assistants, begged him not to (tell them),” Miller said. “We thoughtthat it would be devastating to our team. We begged him to wait until after the game to tell them.”
Stoltz said, however, that SDSU would announce his hiring in a press release the following day, and that he wanted to tell the team before they found out by any other means. After informing the team of his decision, Stoltz flew to San Diego to recruit throughout the week, leaving Miller and the rest of the staff to run practice.
“The kids were very emotional. They took it hard, took it as betrayal,” Miller said. “Not because he took another job, but because he left them the week of a bowl game to go back to his new job. That really hurt them.”
During the week, Miller observed that team morale was down. Stoltz returned on Friday night,but by then, the damage had been done; and the results became apparent on the field the next day.
“The first half, we were just getting destroyed. We had turnovers, and penalties,” Miller said. “That was a very unfortunate end to a dream season. I mean, those kids thought they could go 12-0and be ranked in the top 20 in the country, which is unique for a MAC team.”
Despite the heartbreak, Miller is still proud of the ‘85 team, and is glad to have been part of it.
“That’s what set this team above a lot of other teams, is that they kept getting better and better, and they were already really good,” Miller said. “We knew we had something when we had that group of kids.”
