Sometimes God speaks to us through a whisper or a nudge. Other times, He's not to subtle.
Eddie George experienced a divine message that was as subtle as a slap to the back of the head as he drove through Bowling Green, Ky., last month. Four seasons in to an at-first-reluctant (more on that later) tenure at Tennessee State, the 51-year-old had been in a conversation with the man above about what's next in his life when, on a drive back to Nashville from the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis, he received a call from Urban Meyer about the opening at Bowling Green State University.
"I put the phone down and was like, 'Oh boy,'" George remembered on Monday, at the introductory press conference to herald his hiring as the head coach at Bowling Green. "I was like, 'What are you trying to say?'"
At the time, George was focused on finishing the final season of his contract at Tennessee State, where his Tigers had won a co-Big South/OVC championship and reached the FCS playoffs in 2024. "I'm thinking about how we're going to run the ball this spring, Duo Day, all this stuff." George researched the job and found a program that values the same thing he emphasized at Tennessee State.
"We have like minds," George said of AD Derek van der Merwe. "Our vision is in harmony. Where he wants to take take this program holistically and what I envision is our football program on and off the field... within our conversations, we realized there were more similarities (than not). I'm like, 'Man, we can do some great things together.'"
Turns out, Meyer was the connective tissue that brought George to Bowling Green. Both are former Buckeyes, though their times in Columbus did not overlap, Meyer recommended George to Bowling Green and Bowling Green to George.
I said, ‘Give me names. Please give me as many names as you can,'" van der Merwe recalled. "He said, ‘I have one name for you. I want you to talk to Eddie George. I said, ‘the Heisman Trophy winner, right?’ He says yeah. He says, ‘Don't look at anything. Don't read anything on him. Don't read his background. Talk to him. Talk to the human being.’
“After meeting with Eddie George during the search process, it became very clear to me that Eddie checked every aspect of that profile that we created. Eddie is someone who cares about people, values personal growth and development. He defines himself by his ability to adapt, adjust, and have success in every aspect of his life.”
That Eddie George is in this place is a surprise to George himself, who became a coach because Tennessee State approached him about their head coaching job back in 2021, a job he turned down. "I didn't want to," he said. "I was not interested in coaching."
A Heisman Trophy winner and a 9-year pro with the Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans and Dallas Cowboys made nearly $30 million in on-field earnings, and his status and personality opened doors off the field as well. George worked in media and tried his hand at acting before moving into coaching.
But as George turned the idea over in his mind some four years ago, the thought that animated him was the possibility of developing young men for life after football.
"When I thought about it and meditated on the idea of giving back to the game that gave so much to me, all these ideas started flowing through my mind of how I would create a program based on the things I've been through as a student-athlete and a professional athlete.
I really wanted to create a program that could help young men after their playing days are done, setting them up for long-term success," he said. "Football is not the be-all, end-all, it's the conduit to your purpose. That's the process that you have to go through."