Bowling Green State University (BGSU) has organized crowd-drawing events this academic year, but this has been going on for decades.
In fact, one of the largest events held in Bowling Green occurred over 50 years ago.
The 1975 Poe Ditch Music Festival—Bowling Green’s last large-scale music festival—featured the rock ’n‘ roll acts of Johnny Winter, Golden Earring, Montrose, Pure Prairie Legend, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Richie Havens, Styx and the Outlaws. ZZ Top, Hall and Oates and Marshal Tucker were also on the line-up but dropped last minute.
The Poe Ditch Music Festival was mostly coordinated by student planners, as part of the Undergraduate Student Government Cultural Boost committee.
In advertisements and statements leading up to the event, Mario Sansotta, a member of the Cultural Boost committee, urged ticket sales: “Do you want more big concerts of this type, or do you want to keep on saying you go to Boring Green?”
According to attendees, Poe Ditch Music Festival was far from boring.
On June 1, 1975, Bowling Green swelled with an estimated audience of 45,000 concert-goers—despite only 25,000 presale tickets and less than 3,000 student tickets sold. The Doyt Perry Stadium, where the event was hosted, was built for a capacity of 23,232 people.
According to the June 4, 1975 edition of the BG News, the infrastructure of the event was not meant to accommodate such large attendee sizes—from a broken public address (PA) system to an overwhelmed security check-in line.
The archive article detailed the destructive discombobulation of the event, as “someone tossed a Molotov cocktail into the press box.” The “riots” continued into the streets, and “by midnight a Wooster St. bar called the Gigolo was set on fire and a hurricane of debris circled the stadium and the surrounding area.”
According to the BG News Alumni Society, Sansotta had previously implied further large-scale events. “[If] the student response is good for this concert, we will be allowed to have at least two more stadium concerts, with groups such as Bachman-Turner Overdrive and the Doobie Brothers,” Sansotta said.
However, then-President of BGSU Hollis Moore Jr. assured that “the large-scale rock concert experiment will not be repeated.”
While large outdoor concerts have not been duplicated since, BGSU continues to host exciting and captivating events on campus.
This school year, Brittany Broski, a viral internet personality and comedian, shared insights in a humorous Q&A in Sept. 2025. Rainn Wilson, famed for his role as Dwight Schrute in “The Office,” hosted just a few weeks ago. Students and community members also attended the Leadership Luncheon with Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on April 14.
Current programs are far less experimental, organized through the Office of Student Engagement with tried-and-true measures to assure student safety and enjoyment.
Brian Heilmeier, assistant vice president of student engagement and residence life, explains how BGSU works with the city, community and campus to create events for all.
“We’re always starting from a 50,000-foot meta perspective. What’s the vibe? What’s the goal? From there, we’re working our way down. If you put it in class terms, what are the learning outcomes?… From there, you might have a ton of great ideas, but now, logistics kick in. We don’t have the space. We don’t have the technology. We don’t have the people, whatever it may be,” Heilmeier shared.
Large events—such as Rally BG, Family Weekend and Homecoming—present logistical challenges, as BGSU plans for different audience dynamics. As a public campus, events are rarely “exclusive.”
Heilmeier then walked through the different campus operations involved. From booking buildings with event services, providing food through catering, managing safety with the BGSU Police Department or bringing in community sponsors based on availability and best prices.
Outside acts themselves—such as Brittany Broski and Rainn Wilson—are booked through different practices.
“All of those types of folks are usually represented by an agency,” Heilmeier said. “Depending on the size of the act, we would then sometimes work with what’s called a middle agent. A middle agent is an individual that is hired by the university who then is working with the agency that represents the person… Obviously, we’re not booking shows every day… so, a university will oftentimes use a middle agent to help facilitate those meetings.”
The agents look at the available dates and the university’s budget to best coordinate acts.
“They [the agents] would bring all those [talents] back to us, and then, we would sit down and say ‘we like this one,’ ” Heilmeier continued. “I can count on one hand the number of times I actually talked to the talent before they got to the venue… It’s not that they’re rude. It’s just that you let all the people who know what they’re doing do it, so when they [the talent] walk in the door, it’s a smooth day.”
As Bowling Green State University continues to grow—from over 16,000 students in 1975 to over 19,000 students in 2026–events and engagement grow too.
According to the Office of Student Engagement, the university prioritizes student safety and enjoyment while balancing community inclusion, with “meaningful opportunities that connect students and families” and “enhanc[e] the overall student experience.”
Discover ways to stay involved in the BGSU community through the Events Calendar: https://www.bgsu.edu/students.html
