May 28, 2026
Ferris State football Hall of Famer John Sonntag named homecoming grand marshal
John Sonntag holds a Ferris State University football record that has stood for more than 50 years. He’s been a fixture at football games for years. This fall, he'll lead the Bulldogs' homecoming parade.
Sonntag, a Big Rapids resident and Ferris State Athletics Hall of Fame linebacker, will serve as grand marshal of the university's fall homecoming celebration.
"When they asked me to be in the parade, I had tears," he said. "What? Where'd it come from?"
The answer runs more than 50 years deep.
A record that still stands
Sonntag arrived at Ferris in 1969 as a freshman linebacker from Ann Arbor’s Pioneer High School. He led the team in tackles that season and earned first-team All-NAIA District 23 honors — the first of four consecutive times he would receive that distinction.
After his freshman year, Sonntag left for the U.S. Army. He served for two years, reached the rank of sergeant on the day he became eligible and returned to Ferris State in 1972.
On Oct. 26, 1974, Division I Eastern Illinois University — which won their conference that season — Sonntag recorded 30 tackles, including 18 solo stops and 12 assists. Both the total and solo tackle stats remain program single-game records at Ferris State.
"Pound for pound, [Sonntag] was the toughest football player I've ever coached," Hall of Fame coach Bob Leach said.
Sonntag earned first-team All-Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and All-NAIA District 23 honors all four seasons, captained the team as a senior and earned induction into the Ferris State Athletics Hall of Fame in 2005.
The long way back
The football field doesn't tell the full story. Sonntag enrolled at Ferris State with a 1.8 GPA and, by his own account, headed in the wrong direction.
After failing to attend classes in his freshman year, he walked to the Army recruiting office, where the captain wanted him to re-enlist.
"I have a mission," Sonntag replied to him. "I've got to go back to a place I was welcomed at and get my degree."
He returned to Ferris State in 1972 and graduated in 1975 with a dual bachelor's degree in teaching and community education — and a 3.2 GPA.
"The military definitely got me that structure," Sonntag said. "Football has the same structure."
After graduation, Sonntag worked in a sawmill and on pipelines before a former Big Rapids Brewer football teammate — then a Mecosta County deputy — told him about an opening at the sheriff's department. He joined in 1980, worked eight years in corrections and eight years on road patrol, and won election as Mecosta County Sheriff in 1997. Residents re-elected him three times.
A Bulldog for life
The jersey came off in 1974, but his commitment never did.
Sonntag estimates he attended 96 percent of Ferris football games since graduating — missing only a handful following the death of his late wife Joyce, a surgery, and a close friend's wedding.
"He bleeds Bulldog Red," said Tammy Mercer, his partner.
That loyalty eventually took a new form. Sonntag thought about the freshman he once was — undisciplined, unfocused, a 1.8 GPA — and what a different opportunity might have meant.
"There are kids like me that can do better," he said. "I want to give them a chance to pay it forward when they become something."
In 2024, he established the 30 Tackles Endowed Scholarship through the Ferris Foundation — named for his single-game record and structured to support Bulldog linebackers and offensive linemen.
This spring, after a conversation with head coach Tony Annese about what the program needed most, Sonntag directed $102,000 to the university through One Day for Dawgs — nearly a fifth of the campaign's $505,232 total — with $100,000 earmarked for the Indoor Activities Complex.
"I'm just a regular Joe," he said.
His record suggests otherwise. Sonntag has never stopped choosing Ferris State — on the field, in the stands and now in the ways that will outlast him.
"I wasn't good enough," he said of what kept pulling him back. "Had to be better. I don't know where that came from. I really don't. I just had to get better to be here. This was the place I chose to do that and to live in."