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Former YSU coach steps in for Campbell at Toledo
Former YSU coach steps in for Campbell
By Brian Dzenis
As the coaching carousel rotates this time of year, it often falls to an assistant to take over a squad an ambitious head coach leaves behind with bowl season looming.
That assistant has to make sure the players don’t get too caught up in the spin.
It’s a task that falls to West Branch graduate and former Youngstown State head coach Jon Heacock, who has become the interim head coach for No. 24 Toledo after the exit of head coach Matt Campbell for Iowa State.
To hear Heacock tell it, it was all done in a day. After the Rockets lost to Western Michigan on Friday and were eliminated from Mid-American Conference championship contention, schools began reaching out to Campbell, who had previously put job talk on hold pending the MAC title game.
Heacock got a late-night call from Campbell, who told him he’d taken the Cyclones gig. By 2 p.m. Sunday, there was a staff meeting, then a meeting with the players an hour later. By 4:30 p.m., Campbell was on a plane bound for Iowa after saying his goodbyes and Heacock was in charge of the program.
“Under this situation, which is extremely difficult, it’s probably one of the most difficult I’ve been in as a coach,” Heacock, who served as the Rockets’ defensive coordinator. “One of the reasons I’ve chosen to do it is to help these kids through this process, as hard as it is, and I’ve been through it three or four times.
“If I could help the players work through this and have a good experience at a bowl game, that’s what they’ve asked me to do and I’m doing it.”
At 9-2 with wins over Iowa State and then-No. 18 Arkansas in hand, Toledo is a lock to go bowling and that should remove some of the sting of Campbell leaving for the players, but it might be a while before they play again and that leaves time to think.
“You don’t have an opponent this week so you’re dealing with the mental side, with no practice and no plan yet,” Heacock said. “We’re lifting and having meetings, but hopefully next week when we get a game, a game site and game plan, we’ll get excited to see an opponent and we’ll get refocused and settled in,
“With that and finals coming up, you can look more at what’s ahead than what’s happened.”
This is a time for the players to focus on themselves, Heacock said. This is when players can focus on academic obligations or older guys with NFL dreams can work out to get ready for that process. As for Heacock himself, it seems unlikely that he is getting a one-game audition to remove the interim tag.
“When I got into this I might have felt like that would be an option or least an opportunity, but the longer it goes, I think they’re looking for a guy with an offensive background and possibly some ties to the university,” he said.
“I think they’re looking outside the program. We have another guy, Jason Candle, who’s from the area and has been our offensive coordinator for seven years and has done a tremendous job and is a West Branch guy like myself.
“Between the two of us, we sensed it’s going to an outside source . They have search committee and in fairness, that’s the direction they’re going in and that’s fine. That’s their choice. It doesn’t have any impact on me hanging here trying to help these guys.”
If Heacock has to move, then so be it. He’s been there before. Since leaving the Penguins in 2009, he spent two years as an assistant at Kent State and one at Purdue before arriving at Toledo in 2014. He still keeps up with affairs in the Mahoning Valley, more so the high school teams than YSU.
“I recruit that area, so I pay attention to a lot of the high school teams,” Heacock said. “Occasionally through the process I’ll hear a little bit about Youngstown. I do stay in touch with coach [Jim Tressel], who’s been very important in my life and who I have a lot of respect for. In all my stops, he and I have stayed in touch.”
Heacock was a Tressel assistant and defensive coordinator at YSU before replacing him as the Penguins’ coach in 2001.
With one chance to take the wheel at a Top-25 program, Heacock can give his players an opportunity to move past Campbell’s exit and end the year on a high note.
“The biggest thing for us is, ‘Can we focus on the moment, not 10 days or eight days leading up to game?’” he said. “We’ll play the game the way our guys have played all year.
“We’ll do that and we’ll have some success.”