Mike Jacobs’ entire life has helped lead him to his new job as Toledo’s head coach.
When Jacobs was born in 1979, his father, also named Mike Jacobs, was the offensive line coach at Toledo. While his father left Toledo for West Virginia the following year, Jacobs returned to Northwest Ohio as a second-grader after his parents divorced. After growing up in the Toledo suburb of Maumee and graduating from Maumee High School, Jacobs played for Ohio State – where his father was offensive coordinator and offensive line coach – as an offensive lineman and long snapper, learning more about coaching from John Cooper and Jim Tressel along the way.
From there, Jacobs started his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Eastern Michigan, ultimately becoming a head coach for the first time at Notre Dame College in 2016. After four years as the head coach there, another four years as a Division II head coach at Lenoir-Rhyne and two years as a FCS head coach at Mercer, Jacobs is now an FBS coach for the first time at Toledo, which hired him in December after Jason Candle left to become the head coach at UConn…