Urban Meyer still remembers the trip to Missouri in his first year at Bowling Green in 2001. The setting didn’t mirror a program that had won only one game the year before. More than 70,000 fans filled the stadium. Missouri had the size, the depth, and the reputation. Bowling Green arrived with barely enough healthy bodies and almost no expectations from the outside world. Yet Meyer told his players not to chase the scoreboard. The goal was smaller.

Get first downs. Gain four yards. Make tackles. Repeat it again and again until the game changes shape. By the fourth quarter, Bowling Green was one drive away from an upset victory. And they finally won it, 20-13. That night became the first public sign that Meyer believed culture could beat talent gaps. Even when the team had deep-seated problems and a hopeless culture.

“When I went to Bowling Green, they were one and 10, two and nine. Just a dismal place. And a lot of kids got kicked out,” Meyer said on the Breaking Sales Podcast on June 15. “They really didn’t get kicked off; they just quit. And they should have quit. It was a team that was full of dr-gs and full of cr-p, and it was kind of a joke to be honest with you. But the ones who stayed were the most resilient, the greatest kids I have ever been around.”

At 36, Meyer had never been a head coach; his résumé was assistant roles at Notre Dame, Colorado State, and Utah, where he built a reputation as a creative receivers coach and offensive mind. Bowling Green became his first chance to run an entire program. The pressure was immediate.

Bowling Green had gone 1-10 in 1999 and then 2-9 in 2000 before Meyer’s arrival. He later said players were leaving the program instead of fighting through hard times. Some quit. Others disappeared from the roster for disciplinary reasons. He remembered the roster shrinking from around 100 players to nearly 60 or 65 by the time the season started.

His first rule was simple: go to class. Show up on time. Finish workouts. Compete every day. Players who would not buy in were not carried along. The roster got smaller, but Meyer believed the players who stayed became tougher because of it. That philosophy followed Meyer everywhere.

At Bowling Green, then at Utah, Florida, and Ohio State, Meyer pushed a formula built on accountability and repetition. His famous formula, E + R = O, has guided him everywhere. That loosely translates to Event plus Response equals Outcome. Players can’t control everything that happens to them. However, they can control how they react. So, practices became intense. Details mattered, and relentless effort became non-negotiable. The Missouri game perfectly mirrored that philosophy.

“The team won one game the year before, and that’s all we did was get first downs,” Meyer said about the Missouri game. ” We got first down, first down, first down, first down. On defense, we kept tackling. And sure enough, we’re there, 5 minutes left in the fourth quarter. We need to score a touchdown. And we do.”

Bowling Green finished 8-3 in Meyer’s first season. The Falcons then went 9-3 in the second year. Meyer left with a 17-6 record and turned one of the worst teams in the Mid-American Conference into one of its best programs almost overnight.