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Tough love powers YSU roster overhaul
By JOE SCALZO
YOUNGSTOWN
“Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated.”
— Lou Holtz
Last year’s Youngstown State University football media guide had a roster with 102 players. Of the 89 non-seniors on that roster, 42 are no longer with the team.
That’s 47 percent.
The statistic is a little bit misleading — a handful of those players left while Jon Heacock was still coach and a few others were not yet on that particular roster — but even with a little wiggle room, that’s a pretty stunning figure.
Add in an entirely new coaching staff and you get an idea of how much YSU football has changed in 12 months. When Eric Wolford was hired to replace Jon Heacock in December, he implemented a “tough love” approach that alienated many holdovers.
Wolford makes no apologies for it.
“I think the dead weight weeded itself out,” Wolford said recently. “I didn’t necessarily throw a bunch of guys off the team; they just figured out if they can’t do things right on a consistent basis, they were probably better off going someplace else.
“Some guys hang themselves.”
Wolford is nothing if not a straight shooter. If he’s not happy with a player or a unit, he’ll say so privately and publicly. (And has. Often.)
That wasn’t Heacock’s style. Or Jim Tressel’s style, for that matter.
“The good thing with him [Wolford] is, you know where you stand,” said YSU offensive coordinator Shane Montgomery, a former head coach at Miami (Ohio) whose interview style is more like Tressel than Wolford. “He doesn’t sugarcoat anything. He tells you when you do a good job, he tells you when you can do a better job.”
Immediately after he was hired, Wolford talked about the need to improve the Penguins’ talent level. He’s been an aggressive recruiter, both among high school kids and at the junior college and Division I levels.
But while he’s willing to take a risk on a talented player with academic issues, he hasn’t shown the same impulse with character risks.
Wolford wants to win now but he said he doesn’t want to compromise his principles or set a bad precedent.
“We have got to lay a foundation here for the future,” Wolford said. “We’re not trying to do a quick fix. We want to bring in good character people.
“If you’re trying to do a quick fix, you might be bringing in renegades and guys that have got in trouble in other programs. We’re trying to build this thing for the long haul.”
That’s the same approach taken by Wolford’s mentor, Kansas State coach Bill Snyder. Wolford, an Ursuline graduate, was part of Snyder’s first recruiting class and, over the course of his four-year career, saw the Wildcats go from a national laughingstock to a legitimate contender.
He’s patterned much of his program after Snyder’s principles, constantly evaluating his personnel and seeking input from his staff, all in the hopes of once again making YSU a national championship threat.
“We had to make some tough decisions — and he did — about getting rid of some players that had been on the team the previous year and that, on paper, maybe could have helped us in certain areas, especially since we’re short on depth,” Montgomery said of Wolford. “He’s done a good job of making decisions that are best for the team.”