Ball State center Ethan Crowe (54) leads a veteran offensive line this season.
Submitted photo
Somewhere between sunblock and sand, Ethan Crowe came to the conclusion he wasn’t done playing football.
While with friends on spring break a few months back, Ball State’s all-Mid-American Conference center started to become nostalgic about the sport he’d played nearly all of his first 22 years.
Having turned 23 earlier this month, the 2020 Center Grove graduate knows he made the right decision.
“We were in Hollywood, Florida, and I was just starting to miss football,” said the 6-foot-5 Crowe, who, thinking his career was over, had already began to cut weight from the 307 pounds he carried on fall Saturdays to as low as 268 pounds.
A percentage of Crowe’s initial frustration was traced back to him injuring his left knee in the fifth game of the 2023 season, a 42-24 loss at Western Michigan. He reinjured the knee late in the season during a 24-21 loss at Bowling Green.
“I had been playing football my entire life, so spring break was kind of a refresher for me. I needed to take a mental break,” Crowe said. “I really didn’t think they would take me back.”
At the urging of some teammates, Crowe decided to see for himself.
Ball State offensive line coach Colin Johnson immediately sent Crowe a text that said, in effect, we’ll take you back in a second.
“Ethan is the leader because he’s been here the longest,” Johnson said. “He is such a cool-headed experienced player, so that helps with the younger players we have in the program. For those young guys to see the way Ethan works day in and day out speaks volumes about his leadership.
“He’s got a great exterior where he can take a joke, but he has no problem dishing it out.”
Crowe didn’t participate in the Cardinals’ winter meetings or spring practice, but was back in the weight room under the guidance of Dan Wenger, Ball State’s first-year director of strength and conditioning.
The work has paid off and then some, as Crowe now boasts max lifts of 335 pounds in the bench press, 500 in the squat and 315 in the power clean — all three approximately 30 pounds more than his personal bests at this time a year ago.
He’ll anchor an offensive line that has the potential to be one of the best in recent memory at Ball State.
Not only is Crowe a first-team MAC preseason selection, but 6-4, 309-pound left guard Jon Mucciolo is a second-teamer, and tight end Tanner Koziol (6-7, 240) and right guard Taran Tyo (6-4, 305) earned third-team status.
It won’t take long to find out. Ball State opens the season at home on Sept. 7 against Missouri State. A week later, the Cardinals travel to Miami, Florida to play the five-time national champion Hurricanes; later out-of-conference road tests include James Madison (Sept. 28) and Vanderbilt (Oct. 19).
“We have an ongoing joke that we might be the oldest offensive line in the country,” Crowe said. “The amount of game experience is unbeatable.”
The young man who nearly stepped away from football now hopes to one day have the opportunity to play professionally. Johnson believes it’s possible.
“Does he have the skill set to? Yes. I would say he would have to have a really good senior year to be drafted,” Johnson said. “Teams want to see his power improve. Ethan is a phenomenal athlete who can get to every block, and we put a lot of focus on that in the offseason.”
