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Pelini takes over as YSU football coach
Bo Pelini
Podcast Episode
Tom Williams, Ed Puskas, and Joe Scalzo talk about YSU's decision to hire Bo Pelini as the head coach of YSU football.
By Joe Scalzo
YOUNGSTOWN
On Nov. 15, as the Youngstown State football team headed to overtime against Indiana State, roughly 800 fans from an already-disappointing crowd stuck around to watch from the Stambaugh Stadium stands.
As the Penguins finished up the latest heartbreaking loss of the Eric Wolford era, Youngstown State fan Brian Whan tweeted out, “I don’t even need a calendar to know when it’s November. I just look and see when YSU stops winning football games.”
That was 31 days ago.
This morning, it feels like a lifetime ago.
Bo Pelini’s hiring on Tuesday morning trended nationally on Twitter. Tony Kornheiser talked about it on ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption.” It got coverage on websites like the USA Today, Sports Illustrated, the Washington Post, Yahoo, CBS, NBC and Fox. Even Pelini’s popular Twitter parody account, Faux Pelini, got in the act, changing the name to Yo Pelini.
“It was not a normal Tuesday in December,” joked YSU sports information director Trevor Parks.
And for a program that’s made the playoffs just once since Jim Tressel left after the 2000 season, it was exactly what YSU needed.
“I think I would be somewhat surprised if that stadium isn’t filled for the first home game,” said YSU radio analyst Chris Sammarone, a Chaney High graduate who started in three straight national championship games for the Penguins from 1992-94. “I think it keeps the people who were already associated with the program here. I think it’ll bring people back that maybe lost interest. And I think it creates interest for a whole new group of people because of the name recognition.
“Since it’s been announced, I haven’t heard one thing negative and a lot of that is coming from people who don’t show up on Saturdays. They just look in the paper to see if YSU won or lost.”
Tuesday was the three-week anniversary of Wolford’s firing and while Pelini’s name was mentioned almost immediately for the vacancy, few people outside of the YSU hallways believed it was possible. Even after FootballScoop.com reported last week that Pelini would take the job, sources at YSU shot down the rumor, hoping to manage expectations in case Pelini went elsewhere.
The news finally broke just before 11 a.m. on Tuesday but YSU waited until 5 p.m. to make an official announcement.
“We’ve been hearing rumors for a week or so now and I was kind of hoping they’d come true,” said former YSU kicker Jeff Wilkins, a 14-year NFL veteran who played for the 49ers in 1995-96 when Pelini was a defensive backs coach there. “As soon as his name started floating out there, there was a lot of talk, a lot of excitement.
“But just like anything else, he’s got to win. He obviously brings a winning attitude and a winning record, but now he’s got to go out and do it. And I think he will.”
While the Penguins benefited from Pelini’s Youngstown background — he and his wife, Mary Pat, are both Mooney graduates and Pelini has said he wants his children to attend Mooney — the hiring wouldn’t have been possible without his buyout from Nebraska. The Cornhuskers must pay him $150,000 a month for the next 51 months, a salary that will be offset by whatever he makes at YSU. While YSU has not released contract information for Pelini, it is expected to be similar to Wolford, who made just under $260,000 last year.
“When I first heard his name surface, I thought, ‘YSU has no shot,’” Sammarone said. “It’s unbelievable. The timing had to be just right and everything had to fall into place. The odds of an FCS school landing a guy who won nine games in the Big Ten for the last seven years aren’t very good.”
But, as Youngstown natives know, the Valley exerts a greater hold than most places.
“You’ve got to be from here to understand that,” said Kentucky tight ends coach Vince Marrow, who played with Pelini at Mooney and spent two years with him as a graduate assistant at Nebraska in 2011-12. “It’s a special place. It’s not a mistake that Bob [Stoops, the Oklahoma coach] and everybody else comes back here every year no matter what.”
Added Wilkins, who now lives in Canfield, “The only thing I can say is, you have to have lived here. When you grow up here, you see the type of people they have in this area and you fall in love with the area and the people. There’s a hard work ethic in this area and once it’s instilled in you, it never leaves.”
Although Pelini played quarterback at Mooney — Bucci called him “the most aggressive quarterback that ever played at Mooney” and “as good as any quarterback as we had here” — he’s a defensive coach to the core. He played safety for the Cardinals and at Ohio State and has been the defensive coordinator at Nebraska, Oklahoma and LSU. He also coached defensive backs for the 49ers and linebackers for the Patriots and Packers.
While YSU’s defense improved in Wolford’s final year under coordinator Jamie Bryant, it was a huge weakness in his first four.
“He can put his mark on YSU on the defensive side of the ball right away,” Wilkins said.
Pelini takes over a team that went 7-5 last season, including 4-4 in the Missouri Valley Football Conference. The Penguins will lose 11 seniors, including eight starters, but a talented core returns, led by first-team all-conference defensive end Derek Rivers, who had 14 sacks in a breakout sophomore season. YSU also returns a second-team all-conference running back (Martin Ruiz) and a quarterback in Hunter Wells who finished second in the conference’s freshman of the year balloting.
While no one expects him to win a national championship, this isn’t a rebuilding job, either. YSU can expect Pelini to contend for the playoffs in his first year.
All he has to do is what he did at Nebraska — win nine games.
“The first thing he has to do is put together the best staff he can with a budget that is going to be smaller than what he’s used to,” Sammarone said. “The talent is there. That’s one thing Wolford did do — get quality talent. But you’ve got to be able to coach those guys up.
“If he and his staff can coach these guys up, they have a real good chance to be good next year.”