With 203 yards rushing Saturday at Kent State, Willie Geter became the tenth BG Falcon to rush for 200 or more yards in a game. Darryl Story holds the record with 225 against Ball State on November 5, 1983, and P.J. Pope was the last when he ran for 205 (on 12 carries) against Western Michigan in 2003.

Since the original goal of BGSUsports.com was/is to bring the history of BGSU athletics to the forefront, here’s the list, chronologically, of the ten 200-yard rushing games since records started being kept in 1941. (According to the BG Media Guide.)

11/17/51 - Fred Durig - 29 carries, 206 yards in a 20-6 win at Bradley
10/28/72 - Paul Miles - 27 carries, 217 yards in a 46-7 win over Marshall
9/27/75 - Dan Saleet - 32 carries, 202 yards in a 21-14 win at Dayton
11/12/77 - Dave Windatt - 28 carries, 200 yards in a 39-27 win at Ohio
10/31/81 - Bryant Jones - 46 carries, 212 yards in a 13-7 win over Kent
11/13/82 - Chip Otten - 32 carries, 205 yards in a 24-7 win over Eastern Michigan
11/5/83 - Darryl Story - 37 carries, 225 yards in a 45-30 win over Ball State
10/24/98 - Steve Holmes - 27 carries, 220 yards in a 42-21 win over Kent
11/6/04 - P.J. Pope - 12 carries, 205 yards in a 52-0 win over Western Michigan
10/20/07 - Willie Geter - 22 carries, 203 yards in a 31-20 win over Kent

With three of the performances now coming against Kent, maybe we should have seen this one coming? (Like the school record for interceptions in a game by a single player, 3, has been achieved three times against Kent State.)

Interesting notes from the “200 Yard Club”:
-Career rushing leader Dave Preston never achieved the feat, coming closest with a 194 yard effort against Marshall on 10/26/74.
-Darryl Story rushed for 100-plus yards in three games over five weeks in 1983, including the record-setting day against Ball State, but only ran for 282 yards the rest of the season and failed to reach 1,000 yards rushing for his career.
-Chip Otten and Steve Holmes join Story with a 200-yard rushing game while not being members of the 1,000 yard club.
-Holmes’ effort in 1998 was the only time he rushed for over 100 yards in a game.

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And I’m back. It’s the stretch drive, and things feel a lot better than they did a week (and a day) ago at this time.

To recap… I get married on the 21st, finally catch the Temple game (impressive win, the defense puts it away) on DVR about six hours after it happened. I leave the country with warm, fuzzy Falcon feelings, a win at Big 10 Minnesota (who, despite a 3OT battle with Miami(OH), hadn’t quite been exposed for the JV team that they apparently are), a solid three quarters at Bigger 10 Michigan State and the home revenge win over Temple. The orange and brown side of life is good.

Fast forward eight days, a horrible sunburn and a pseudo-continent away… we’re rolling into Indianapolis International Airport around 11 pm on a Sunday, I know that the Browns won, but no BG score in sight. Call my dad and he gives me the news of a 41-21 win, only to find later that it was a much wider margin most of the way, over Western Kentucky. Things are still happy.

Then there’s a trip to Boston. Not by me, and I’m not sure how many Falcons made the trip. Not a bad start by any means (offensively, at least, as the “big play bug” bit hard on the first defensive series), it was certainly a game right until the wheels flew off. Obviously, what followed for the next six-and-a-half quarters is not for weak stomachs. A big loss at BC was tough to take, but they look like they could be for real. Fair enough. Miami(OH)? Not so real. But they’ve got a side of the woodshed in Oxford I don’t want to see again.

Everytime I peeked in on the radio stream, something bad was happening. Probably more law of probability than bad timing, because there was A LOT of bad. Tons. We’re talking Amstutz levels here.

So, BG comes to a crossroads at Kent State that they saw the year before. As close to a “must win” as you can have in October, not just for title hopes, but for the fate of the season.

And talk about your “flying colors”! I’ll admit, I only listened to the broadcast, and there are some areas that still need work, but that, my friends, was BG football. From 2001 to 2004, this team won games by throwing their junk on the table and making the other team stop ‘em. Greg Brandon coached like his balls were on fire, and the only water was the back of the endzone. All the stuff that returned the glory to BG football after the Blackney years resurfaced in one afternoon, and it felt (feels, actually) fantastic.

Fake field goals, onside kicks, throwbacks and more all over the damn field. Brandon and the Falcons didn’t miss a beat (aside, perhaps from the sudden disappearance of the Tyler Sheehan we fell in love with through four games…some claim a shoulder injury, others blame Boston College-related shell-shock), and the defense, which got shredded like a sponge on a cheese grater at Miami(OH) bent but didn’t break, stopping more than a couple Kent State drives in the red zone.

The best line of all from the game notes (okay, so Willie Geter’s 203 yards was a nice line, too) had to be the fact that BG now has three players with receiving, rushing and passing touchdowns in their career (Barnes, Sheehan, Turner), and no school in D-1A has more than ONE player with that feat. Those kinds of tidbits used to pop up all the time when BG was winning at the outset of this decade, and I’m damn glad to see them return.

Bring this effort again this Saturday, and Ohio won’t know what hit ‘em.

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