Tuesday, November 25, 2014
It was hardly a surprise when the news of Eric Wolford’s firing leaked Monday night.
Just about everyone — including Wolford — knew he was coaching for his job during the last three weeks of his fifth season with Youngstown State.
The Penguins lost all three games against Missouri Valley Football conference rivals Illinois State, Indiana State and North Dakota State. The writing, as they say, was on the wall YSU kept running into in November on Wolford’s watch.
A win in any one of those games and the Penguins likely would have made the playoffs and there was a chance Wolford would have been back.
Wolford — born in Youngstown, raised in Brookfield and an Ursuline High graduate — knew what he was getting into at YSU. It’s playoffs or bust and Wolford embraced the standard set by Jim Tressel, now YSU’s president. Tressel coached the Penguins for 15 seasons (1986-2000), during which his teams won four Division I-AA titles and played for two others.
In the 14 seasons since Tressel left for Ohio State, YSU has made the playoffs only once — in 2006 under his hand-picked successor, Jon Heacock.
Wolford’s teams were close to making the playoffs in all but his first season. A single timely victory in any season since and the Penguins would have played deeper into November — perhaps even December — and The Wolford Era would be ongoing instead of being finalized with an epitaph.
Close isn’t good enough in Youngstown, where fans openly grumbled about one-sided, out-of-conference games against inferior opponents and each late-season fade.
The result was rapidly dwindling interest in the program which struck bottom in the Penguins’ final two home games this season. Fewer than 1,000 fans were estimated to be inside Stambaugh Stadium in the second half of both games.
Twenty years ago, YSU was a program that made its own luck by playing smart — but admittedly conservative — offensive football, rock-solid defense and often-spectacular special teams. The Penguins also owned recruits within 100 miles of Youngstown, which is no longer the case.
It’s unfortunate Wolford — a personable, passionate man and terrific recruiter — couldn’t kick down the door to the playoffs, as the late Bum Phillips once famously put it.
So where does YSU go from here?
Maybe the best route is back to the future. You can be sure Tressel will be heavily involved in the search. The Penguins could do a lot worse than picking their next coach from the Tressel tree. A few names to watch:
Brian Wright is a former YSU assistant under Tressel and offensive coordinator under Heacock. He’s now the offensive coordinator at Florida Atlantic and helped lead the Owls out of last season’s scandal involving then-head coach Carl Pelini and defensive coordinator Pete Rekstis.
Rekstis, a four-year starter at free safety at YSU in Tressel’s early years, was Heacock’s defensive coordinator and had the same job at several other places, including Kent State and Rhode Island, where he is employed now. But he may not be far enough removed from what happened at FAU to be a strong candidate.
Tressel and YSU athletic director Ron Strollo — the public face of the search — can’t afford to take a chance on the next coach, who needs to be scandal-free and drama-free.
And he needs to fit into YSU’s budget. Sorry, Luke Fickell fans. Ohio State’s co-defensive coordinator makes about $800,000. He’s not coming here for $250,000.
But Buckeyes assistant head coach and running backs coach Stan Drayton might be affordable.
Drayton is a Cleveland native with Pennsylvania ties after a brilliant college career at Division III Allegheny in the early 1990s and a coaching stop across the state at Villanova.
He was on Urban Meyer’s NCAA championship staff at Florida in 2006-07 and was hired at OSU by Tressel shortly before he resigned in 2011. Drayton stayed on in Columbus after Meyer took over and later added the title of assistant head coach.
Don’t get too hung up on a lack of head coaching experience. Remember, the guy YSU hired in 1986 had never been a head coach and that worked out OK.
Tressel and Strollo know their football program is at a critical point. They’ll have to balance treading carefully and making a bold move.
Write Vindicator Sports Editor Ed Puskas at epuskas@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter, @EdPuskas_Vindy.