BOWLING GREEN, Ohio -- Resting against the wall in Eddie George's still sparsely furnished office at Bowling Green is a framed poster of the Heisman Trophy, signed by every winner of the award from its inaugural season in 1935 (Jay Berwanger) through 1990 (Ty Detmer).
The unique bit of college football memorabilia belongs to tight ends coach Dewayne Alexander, who procured it from a fan years ago, but he figured it would look better in the head coach's office. After all, if the poster's history extended another five years, George's signature would be there, too.
This is, invariably, the first thing anyone notes about Bowling Green's new head coach, the first Heisman winner hired to lead an FBS program since Steve Spurrier, and George isn't trying to hide from the label.
"People see it as me being a Heisman Trophy winner, and I embrace that," George said. "I'm going to use that celebrity to attract people to me. But then it's time for them to know who I am."
If the Heisman makes him something of a unicorn in the coaching ranks, the uniqueness of his journey puts him in the middle of one of college football's most visible trends: head coaches with ample celebrity cachet, but minimal coaching experience.
Call it the Coach Prime Effect.
Deion Sanders was hired at Jackson State in 2020, landed elite recruits at the HBCU, won a bunch of games, was hired at Colorado, turned around that program and saw his prized pupil, Travis Hunter, win a Heisman. Suddenly, a subset of schools wanted in on the action.
North Carolina hired Bill Belichick -- a six-time Super Bowl champion with no college experience -- this offseason. Norfolk State hired College Football Hall of Famer Michael Vick, and Delaware State hired former NFL great DeSean Jackson this year, too. Ray Lewis and Ed Reed have both been tied to college coaching jobs. And then there's George, who landed the Bowling Green job after four seasons of resurrecting Tennessee State, where he had been seen as a direct response to Sanders' success at Jackson State.
"We were looking at a way to give our program a jolt," Tennessee State AD Dr. Mikki Allen said. "We felt like we needed to get back into the national picture and be relevant and on the minds of top talented recruits in the country."
George and Sanders are proof that the gamble can work -- even if George doesn't consider them to be carbon copies of each other.
"We have similar philosophies," said George, who said he speaks with Sanders a few times a year. "He does things his way in terms of media and shows, and that's not what I do. But in terms of discipline and work ethic and expectations and the nonnegotiables, we're very much similar."
Still, questions linger about the notion of superstar coaches. Sanders has reshaped Colorado, but he has also engendered his share of criticism -- including Oregon coach Dan Lanning suggesting in 2023 that Coach Prime is more about clicks than wins.
Belichick's offseason was covered as breathlessly by TMZ as it was by traditional sports media. Vick and Jackson have taken over programs with little resources while hardly commanding the same national cachet that Sanders did at Jackson State.
The job is hard, the expectations high, and reputation, George said, takes a coach only so far.
"If I was going to delve into this," George said, "it wasn't going to be about seeing how many likes I could get on Twitter or my Instagram account. I'm not here for a show. I'm here to be a head coach."
TRUTH BE TOLD, George never wanted to do this job.
When the vacancy opened at Tennessee State in 2021, he got a call from then-president Glenda Glover, asking if he'd be interested in coaching the team. At the time, George was focused on a burgeoning acting career and running a financial services company, where Glover was a client. He offered "a soft no," which he said would've been far more definitive if he wasn't eager to protect their professional relationship.
Still, Glover and Allen persisted, and over the next two weeks, an idea began to crystallize for George.
His career arc -- from Heisman to a distinguished NFL career to investing to acting -- seemed to be the perfect preparation for the job in the modern era of college sports. He had success at the highest level. He knew how to talk dollars and sense. And acting -- well, who better to make a recruiting pitch than someone with the talent to woo an entire audience on Broadway?
There's a standard criticism of this new group of celebrity coaches, one espoused most eagerly by the others who've paid their dues, sleeping in their office and working second jobs to make ends meet before rising up the ranks as a position coach and coordinator. The criticism is not entirely unfair, George said. It just lacks imagination.
"I'm not coming into it from the traditional way of coaching," George said. "I'm coming from the top down. But I've done everything in this game -- player, coach, commentator. And now, I believe this time in where college football is, my life's experiences have allowed me to be prepared for this. I don't balk at that. Everyone's blueprint starts with a blank sheet."
At UAB, Trent Dilfer has been under fire after a 7-17 record in his first two years. It's deserved, Dilfer said, and he has learned plenty from the struggle. But what he won't concede is that his path -- Super Bowl winner to TV analyst to small-school head coach at Lipscomb before arriving at UAB -- meant he took the easy road to the job.
"My football life did prepare me for this challenge," Dilfer said. "I was very ready. It's been a slower turnaround to success than I would've liked, but I do think I was prepared for the challenge."
George was in a swimming pool when it finally clicked that he was ready, too. He was in the midst of an hourlong workout, and his mind raced with ideas for what could be accomplished at Tennessee State. He could picture the uniforms, the daily schedule, running onto the field. He started thinking about what he'd tell the players in their first meeting.
"I got so excited," George said. "It was starting to come to life."
George talked to friends in the business -- NFL coaches Mike Tomlin and Mike Vrabel, Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell, and former Ohio State coach Jim Tressel. George even reached out to his old high school coach. They all told him the same thing: You're meant for this.
And so he called back Allen and made a counteroffer. He needed a promise of investment from the school. He wanted a chance to build.
"I'm not coming to be a pawn," he told Allen. "I'm not the ring leader of a circus."
George set about revamping the infrastructure of Tennessee State's program. He earned conference coach of the year honors in 2024 and led Tennessee State to its first FCS playoff berth in more than a decade, all while pushing donors to the program to open their wallets to help fund an increasingly expensive enterprise. He parlayed that success into a reportedly impressive interview with the Chicago Bears before landing the head coaching job at Bowling Green.
Falcons athletics director Derek van der Merwe had worked with successful coaches -- Brian Kelly, Jedd Fisch, basketball's Sean Miller -- and he insisted on finding similar attributes in his next hire at Bowling Green. George fit the bill.
"Coaching's not just about football, like playing EA College Football and just calling plays," Van der Merwe said. "It's about inspiring and motivating young people to want to achieve more on and off the field. Eddie George, with his background, it's more than just the Heisman. It's a person who's evolved throughout his career. This is more than just a celebrity hire. This weighed all the great contributions he can make in impacting the lives of these young people."
GEORGE HAS AN acronym he likes to share with players: G.U.T.S. It stands for gumption, understanding, tenacity and sacrifice, and in the world of celebrity coaches, that last one is particularly relevant.
George is legitimately famous in Ohio, where he won the Heisman with Ohio State in 1995. George has starred in a viral TikTok with Pro Football Hall of Famer and former teammate Ray Lewis. He's married to a '90s pop star (SWV vocalist Taj Johnson). He has acted on Broadway in the musical "Chicago." He runs multiple businesses. George jokes that in this job -- on a campus just a half hour from the state line with Michigan -- even Michigan residents are pulling for him.
When news broke that he had taken the Bowling Green job, the news generated more than 4 billion worldwide social media engagements, according to the school, and the Falcons' social media channels surpassed last year's engagement numbers by July. Bowling Green ticket sales are up 157% year over year since George's hiring.
In March, George was invited to deliver the game ball to the pitcher's mound before the Toledo Mudhens' season opener. He got a standing ovation, then needed police escorts through the crowd to maneuver past the hordes of autograph and picture seekers.
And yet, this is not the life of a superstar. For the first three months he was on the job, George left his wife and beloved bulldogs behind and lived out of a nearby Best Western, eating a sizable percentage of his meals at the Waffle House across from campus.
"I'm simple," he said. "Give me a comfortable bed, a room that has the temperature set at 68 degrees and a clean bathroom. I'm good."
George is all about the grind, he said. That's the secret to this job. That's why he believes Vick and Jackson are cut out for it, too.
"You can't achieve that level of greatness without wanting to grind," he said. "There's no way in hell. You don't just wake up in the morning like Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Walter Payton or Jerry Rice. It's really a want-to. It's a calling. It has nothing to do with being a great player. I think that's B.S."
It's undoubtedly true that, given all of George's success away from the game, the $600,000 salary he earns at Bowling Green isn't what pushes him to work each morning. But whether coaches who've already enjoyed the highest levels of success as players really want to endure this grind -- the recruiting trips, donor luncheons, bus rides to games and long nights at budget motels -- isn't the same answer for everyone else.
Norfolk State's athletics budget in 2024 was about $21 million, a fraction of Vick's last big contract in the NFL. Delaware State lauded a new $20 million investment by the state in athletics facilities, but its annual budget in 2024 was just more than $16 million. It's a far cry from the perks Vick and Jackson enjoyed in the NFL.
"I think the lesson I learned is a lot of the things that work in other places or other circumstances may not work in the situations you're in," Dilfer said. "If you're Michael Vick, and you knew all these great people in Philly, it may not work in the place you're in now. You need to do things that are appropriate to the place you're at."
ESPN made multiple unsuccessful requests to Norfolk State athletics to speak with Vick over a period of months. Delaware State did not reply to multiple requests to speak with Jackson or the school's athletics director, Tony Tucker.
Belichick's résumé commanded big money from UNC -- a salary double what former coach Mack Brown made, sizable investments in his coaching staff and promises of at least $13 million in revenue share money for player acquisition -- but the schism between his fame and the school's more modest standing in the sports ecosystem was on display throughout a spring in which his 24-year-old girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, garnered far more headlines than the football team.
Even Sanders, the archetype for the new mold of celebrity head coach, has been a lightning rod for criticism. He has famously said he doesn't need to visit recruits, sparred with reporters who criticized his approach, and for all the bluster and attention, has just one win over a ranked foe in his two seasons at Colorado -- his first game against a TCU team that finished 5-7.
But what's clear for everyone from Belichick to Prime to Jackson, Vick and George is, the name recognition translates to more money, more attention and more ticket sales for the school. In a landscape that's less collegial and more big business than ever, that's a risk some schools are eager to take.
Inside the locker room, none of that matters. That, George said, is where the real work begins.
"The players know who I am, but I don't rest on that, and say, 'Hey, here's my Heisman,'" George said. "It's, 'What are you doing to help me? How are you going to help me be a better man, player, person, student?' I can't just live off my past successes. That just gets me in the door."
GEORGE WAS LATE for his first meeting with his offensive line. He had been on the job for less than a week, and keeping the big men from hitting the transfer portal was a priority, so he booked a dinner reservation at a popular burger place near campus.
He arrived 15 minutes behind schedule.
"And the first thing he did was 15 pushups as punishment," senior Nate Pabst said.
A few days into summer workouts, George found the Falcons' locker room disheveled, so he gathered the team for up-downs under the scorching July sun.
Whether it's the head coach or the players, accountability is everything for George.
"I see things from a business perspective," George said. "I'm building a Fortune 500 company, that's how I look at this. I'm meticulous that everything we do needs to reflect excellence."
The pushups at dinner aren't what Pabst remembers most about his first meeting with George, however. It was the conversation. His new coach hardly mentioned football.
"He talked about life," Pabst said.
It's one of the great ironies of George's perspective on coaching. He landed the job because his success as a player garnered him so much acclaim, but the thing he most wants his players to understand is that he has failed -- and they will, too.
"You must become experts at failure," George said. "Losing is just information about how to get better. It's emotional intelligence. Everything I've accomplished, I've had failure to some degree."
It's an ethos he believes in, but it's also a way of breaking down that barrier that his celebrity can create. Because here's the biggest truth George believes about the coaching profession: "The best thing you can be is vulnerable."
Inside the locker room, George cannot be a celebrity, set apart from everyone else. He needs his players' trust, and that means showing them his weaknesses.
"Coaching, to me, is not having a whistle around your neck and showing how powerful I am," George said. "It's being vulnerable. It's being relatable. We're all in this together."
Cornerback Jalen McClendon considers George a father figure, he said. George recruited him to Tennessee State, and he thrived there. When George announced his departure for Bowling Green, McClendon said he planned to enter the transfer portal, too.
George's advice: "Take a shot on yourself."
George assured McClendon he'd have a place on Bowling Green's roster, but he also said that the veteran corner would have offers elsewhere, too. He should listen. He had earned a chance to maximize his value.
So, McClendon took visits, and sure enough, he had offers -- offers that exceeded what Bowling Green could pay by a sizable amount. But what he didn't find on any other campus was the same type of culture, the same devotion from a head coach, that he had found with George.
"I took a pay cut, but I didn't care about that," McClendon said. "I cared about knowing the coaches are in it for the right reasons."
A common refrain among coaches is to "know your why" -- to have a clear mission statement for the job. But George sees it differently. He wants to know his "where." Where can he take this program? How far can this team go in 2025? Where will his players be in 10 years?
What doesn't make the list is a desire to prove himself.
"I'm not worried about how people perceive me," he said. "Y'all decide how you want to look at that. I am a celebrity. I'm a head coach, an actor and a businessman. I'm all of that. I've done it all."