Career
While attending Ohio State University, Bolen played three years for both the Ohio State Buckeyes football and Buckeyes basketball teams. In football, he developed a reputation as a "fierce, tigerish" player and "the premier defensive end in the West", and he was selected as a consensus first-team end on the 1917 College Football All-America Team. In basketball, he was captain of Ohio State"s 1917-1918 team
Bolen served as the head football at Ohio Northern University from 1919 to 1921 and at Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio from 1923 to 1929, compiling a career college football coaching record of 37–40–1.
He was also the head coach of the men"s basketball team at Ohio Northern from 1919 to 1922, tallying a mark of 37–19. Bolen died in 1953 and was buried at the Green Lawn Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio.