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https://twitter.com/BG_Football/status/1324098758972329984
In mid-September, with little to no fanfare, Bowling
Green coach Scot Loeffler approached athletics administration officials at the
school with a proposal.
What
if, Loeffler asked, he reallocated $100,000 – a whopping 20 percent of his full
salary – to cover a portion of the projected budgetary shortfall due to
COVID-19 to assist in feeding the players in the Falcons’ football program?
Not a
gift, with any tax breaks. Not a wink-and-a-nod to shift money now that later
would come into the coach’s pocket.
Loeffler, who hasn’t wanted to comment on his gesture,
focusing instead on Year 2 in his Bowling Green rebuild that begins tonight
against rival Toledo, made this “voluntary salary reallocation that allowed us
to maintain the supplemental nutrition program for players,” BG officials said.
Oh, Loeffler also inspired a gift in
like kind: $100,000 from retired coaching legend and Bowling Green alum, Dean
Pees.
Pees on Wednesday detailed to
FootballScoop.com how Loeffler’s selfless act motivated the longtime college
and professional coach and his wife, Melody, to immediately give back at a
school that has given their family so much through generations.
It all started simply because Pees phoned Loeffler to
thank the Falcons’ coach for sending some Bowling Green items after Pees had
conducted a private instructional clinic for the BG staff.
“I
called to thank him and we got to talking about the situation there and he
mentioned he had donated a pretty good chunk of his salary to the football
program and he really needed some help because they were running short of
money,” said Pees, whose decorated coaching career includes stints on the
staffs of Lou Holtz, Nick Saban and Bill Belichick, as well as head coach at
Kent State, among other stops. “My wife (Melody) and I kind of looked at each
other and said, ‘Maybe we ought to do something to help.’”
He then
explained that his family’s desire to help boiled down to a couple of basic but
fundamental reasons, the list generational of those touched by Bowling Green in
the Pees family.
“It
really just hit me that Coach Loeffler would do that,” Pees said. “It’s one
thing when coaches are making $4 million and donate a little bit, but I know
what it’s like in the MAC and they don’t make those kinds of salaries. It was
really unselfish and a generous thing he did for his program.
“And it
is my alma mater, and football has been great to me and my family in my
lifetime here. I’ve been blessed to be all the places I’ve been. I’ve never had
a bad job. I’ve never had to go seek a job. I was blessed to have an
unbelievable 47-year career. My wife and I have been able to help our family
and do some things that I would not have been able to do had it not been for
football.”
Which
left Pees to ask himself one rhetorical question?
“Who
better to help than our own alma mater and our own school?,” Pees asked.
“(Melody) grew up in the area, 15 minutes from there, her Mom and Dad worked at
Bowling Green, we have a daughter that went to Bowling Green, I’ve got three
sisters who went to Bowling Green, we’ve got a grandson in school now at
Bowling Green. It’s kind of our school.”
The
Pees family made just one stipulation on their six-figure gift: the money had
to be dedicated solely to the football budget.
“Having
coached in the MAC, I know sometimes people donate to a MAC team and it ends up
in the general athletic fund,” Pees said. “Scot felt he needed to use it for
nutrition and to feed the team.”
As
Bowling Green made fiscal cuts across its campus and athletics budgets, 10% was
slashed from the football operating budget.
The Falcons had projected a $200,000
budget this 2020-21 year for supplemental nutrition for their athletes.
Now, that figure has been made whole, and the Falcons’ coaches and players have one less worry as they
return to action tonight against rival Toledo, a team whose nine-game winning
streak in the series was halted last year in Loeffler’s Bowling Green debut.
It all meshes together for Pees,
Bowling Green’s 2019 commencement speaker for the school’s college of
education.
“Work
hard and love the job you have; I use the term rise. That’s been my motto all
along,” Pees, who retired from coaching last January after he helped lead the
Tennessee Titans to the AFC Championship game, said. “I actually played the
piano and wrote a song for the commencement. Too many people nowadays want the
easy way out, and are just looking for the next job when they have a job.
“One of
the reasons I’ve been lucky to be successful in my career, I never looked for
another job. It’s just come. I was happy as a high school coach, a small
college coach, MAC, Big Ten, Notre Dame. I’ve loved every job I have ever had.
I’ve never interviewed for a job and never been fired in 47 years. I attribute
that to loving the job and working hard. If you do that, just enjoy the job you
have, and be loyal and faithful to the people you work for, it will work out.”
