Warming Up: The Bulldog foot­ball team is begin­ning to warm up for the 2010 foot­ball sea­son. The team will try to improve on its 1–10 record from the 2009 sea­son. Photo By: Kate Dupon | Photo Editor

The Ferris State foot­ball team will be look­ing to get back to their win­ning ways this upcom­ing fall as they kick off the sea­son on Sept. 3.

The Bulldogs broke their streak of three con­sec­u­tive years with a win­ning sea­son as they fin­ished the 2009 cam­paign with an abysmal 1–10 record. Their only win was against win­less Tiffin University. It was the team’s sec­ond los­ing sea­son in the past nine years. Head Coach Jeff Pierce will be return­ing to the pro­gram for his 16^th sea­son as a Bulldog. The Bulldogs have recorded nine win­ning sea­sons out of the 15 years that Pierce has spent at the helm.Ferris will be look­ing to a large recruit­ing class to come in and start con­tribut­ing right away as they will be wel­com­ing a total of 24 new student-athletes to the pro­gram for the 2010 cam­paign. The new recruits will con­sist of 13 play­ers on the defen­sive side of the ball and 11 on offense.

The Bulldogs are expect­ing a total of 13 return­ing starters from last year as they will have seven play­ers on the offen­sive side of the ball, four on defense, and both kick­ers return­ing.
Ferris will be look­ing to con­tinue the devel­op­ment of chem­istry on the offen­sive side of the ball as they attempt to revive their offen­sive attack, which fin­ished last in the GLIAC in total offense this past year. In 2009, Ferris fin­ished in the bot­tom two of every offen­sive cat­e­gory. Chris Boden, the off-season hire offen­sive coor­di­na­tor, has his work cut out for him as he attempts to res­ur­rect the Bulldog attack. Senior full­back Leon Curry will be look­ing to help get the offense headed in the right direc­tion with his phys­i­cal play.

“We’re going to bust our tails dur­ing the off­sea­son so we can get six yards and score six,” said Curry.

One bright spot from last year was on the defen­sive side of the ball, as Ferris was very good against the pass. The team fin­ished sec­ond over­all in the GLIAC in pass­ing defense. In the 11-game sea­son, oppos­ing offenses scored 14 touch­downs through the air as the Bulldogs were able to hold them to an aver­age of only 149 pass­ing yards a game.

Ferris will open the 2010 sea­son on the road against the Hillsdale Chargers in a non-conference bout on Sept. 3. Last year, the Chargers oblit­er­ated Ferris at FSU’s Top Taggart Field as they gal­loped to an easy 59–14 win. Hillsdale made the play­offs last year as they fin­ished with a record of 10–3 over­all and 8–2 within the GLIAC.

“They’ve got a very good team and are com­ing off an out­stand­ing sea­son so it will be a big test for us to start the year,” said Pierce.

Ferris will also be trav­el­ing to play Lake Erie College and Ohio Dominican University who will be join­ing the GLIAC for the first time. Both schools had pre­vi­ously com­peted at the Division III level and are cur­rently going through the process of being accepted as full-fledge Division II members.

The team will play their reg­u­lar sea­son finale at Northwood on Nov. 13. Ferris will not play back-to-back games on the road or at home dur­ing the sea­son as away and home games alter­nate every week. The Bulldogs cer­tainly will have their work cut out for them, but they have many of the tools already in place for a suc­cess­ful sea­son. They are just going to have to take full advan­tage of those tools and hope to get a few balls to bounce their way as the 102^nd sea­son of Bulldog foot­ball approaches.

“We are going to have to play well every Saturday in order to win,” said Pierce.