BOWLING GREEN, Ohio — Bowling Green returns home to Doyt Perry Stadium on Tuesday night for its only true midweek MACtion game of the season, hosting Kent State at 7 p.m. in the 94th meeting between the two schools, Bowling Green State University Athletics announced.
Both teams arrive at 2-3 in Mid-American Conference play — Bowling Green is 2-7 overall and Kent State 3-6 — and the winner moves to .500 in the league with two games left, according to the game preview published by BGSU Athletics. The game airs on ESPNU.
The Anniversary Award is one of the Mid-American Conference’s more unusual rivalry trophies, because it honors an act of the Ohio legislature rather than a single famous game. The Lowry Bill of 1910 created both Bowling Green and Kent State as normal schools to train teachers, and the football series that grew out of that shared birth now stretches back more than a century, BGSU Athletics noted in its preview.
More than a conference game is at stake. The matchup decides the Anniversary Award, the rivalry trophy created in 1985 to mark the two universities’ shared founding in 1910 under the Lowry Bill, BGSU Athletics said. Kent State won last year’s meeting 24-21 on October 25, 2025, so the trophy currently sits with the Golden Flashes.
Bowling Green’s remaining schedule alternates home and away to close the 2026 campaign, highlighted by the Battle of I-75 against Toledo on Friday, November 20, on ESPN2. Tuesday’s game is the Falcons’ last midweek appearance of the season.
Fans heading to Doyt Perry Stadium should remember the clear bag mandate that took effect January 1, 2026, at all BGSU Athletics venues, the university said. Kickoff is at 7 p.m. Tuesday, and the game has not been played at publication time — this is a preview, with the result to follow in NewsForce247’s sports coverage.
For Bowling Green, a win would also steady a difficult season: at 2-7, the Falcons are playing for pride, the trophy and momentum into the Toledo rivalry game rather than a bowl berth. Kent State, at 3-6, still has more to protect in the conference standings, which makes Tuesday’s trophy game the Golden Flashes’ most direct path to a .500 league finish.
What happens next: the Falcons close the regular season against Toledo on November 20 and UMass on November 28, while Kent State finishes its own MAC slate — and the Anniversary Award changes hands, or stays put, under the lights in Bowling Green on Tuesday night.