Scalzo: Working the beat with Wolf was fun

He said things like “You can’t Google football” and “You can’t win the Daytona 500 driving a tractor.”

He compared recruiting to shaving, saying if you don’t do both every day, you’ll look like a bum.

He called former quarterback Marc Kanetsky a werewolf (“If we ever get fleas, we’re in trouble”), said punter Nick Liste’s eyebrows reminded him of strength coach Mike Cochran’s back (“They’re like evergreen trees”) and once went on a hilarious rant about Andrew Williams’ hometown lacking a McDonald’s, a grocery store, running water and cable TV. (“They just got the big dish. Remember those dishes from cable TV years and years ago? Those are new down there.”)

Eric Wolford may not have won enough games at Youngstown State, but he sure won a lot of interviews.

Yes, he was brash. Yes, he rubbed people the wrong way. Yes, he was a little too quick to blame his players and a little too slow to blame himself.

But if I had to sum up Wolford in one word, it’s this: fun.

I’ve told this story before, but I’ll repeat it here: In 2001, when I was a 22-year-old puppy in his first year at The Vindicator, I decided to write a story about coaches’ wives. One of them was Jon Heacock’s wife, Trescia, who admitted they went to Pizza Hut and saw “Rocky IV” on their first date.

A few days later, just before the article came out, I introduced myself to Heacock and told him I’d just interviewed his wife.

“Yeah, I know,” he growled. “What did you do that for?”

Heacock was a no-nonsense guy who was absolutely beloved by just about everyone at Youngstown State. When you ask people about him, you hear a lot of words like “kind” and “genuine” and “brilliant” (at least when it comes to coaching defense).

But from a reporter’s perspective, the guy wasn’t much fun.

Fast forward to March of 2010. Wolford stepped off the field following his first spring practice, joked about then-guard Eric Rodemoyer’s tan, bragged about his curly locks and needled YSU sports information director Trevor Parks about his connection to the weather gods.

And that was before he answered any questions.

Afterward, WFMJ sports director Dana Balash looked at me and said, “Now THAT was different.”

(Speaking of Balash, Wolford ribbed him mercilessly about his hair. Even when Balash wasn’t there, Wolford would make jokes about it to the WFMJ cameramen. When former Tribune Chronicle sports editor Dana Sulonen was covering the team, Wolford referred to her as “Dana with hair,” then looked over at Balash, grinning. Wolford also liked to rip on me whenever I showed up with dog hair on my sweater, which happened a lot because my dog’s favorite activities seem to be wrestling and shedding.)

Wolford and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye. He took issue with a couple articles I wrote — I can think of at least two cases when he was 100-percent right — and when YSU decided to close practices to the media in October, it was pretty clear that policy was directed at me (since I was the lone reporter who still showed up to cover practice).

But he never ducked a question — whether it was from me or anyone else — and there aren’t many coaches this side of Steve Spurrier who are better at filling up your notebook on a slow news day.

As the years went by and Wolford’s agonizing losses piled up, my coverage got more critical and our relationship got more distant. It happens. Sometimes my job is to be a pain in the rear end. Sometimes I’m just naturally a pain in the rear end.

But I’ll never forget a phone call I got from Wolford two years ago. It was just before spring practice began, when he was coming off a 7-4 season that saw him go O-for-October. I had been critical in my season-ending wrap-up and I hadn’t talked to him in two months.

Out of the blue, he called to tell me he understood I was just doing my job.

“It’s not personal,” he said.

Wolford failed to meet YSU’s expectations, but that doesn’t mean he was a failure. He upgraded the team’s overall talent. He made the players more accountable for bad behavior. He proved the annual “money games” weren’t just about paychecks. And he (usually) made my job fun.

Last Saturday, when the Penguins fell behind 38-7 to North Dakota State early in the fourth quarter, I logged on to Twitter, stared at the screen for 30 seconds and finally wrote, “Time for a coaching change, YSU.”

As the past few days proved, it was.

But after five fun years, I wish it wasn’t.

Joe Scalzo covers YSU football for The Vindicator. Write to him at scalzo@vindy.com or follow him on Twitter @JoeScalzo1.