Heacock was the one who screwed this program the most. Was given the keys to a Mercedes and turned it into a junker.
LOL. He was given the keys to a team that could never win a regular season game against anyone solid. He was given the keys to a team that cold not compete in, let alone win the conference. He was given the keys to a team that was just recently a spread power and now forced to run a pro set (whe the rest of the college world was doing just the opposite), just so his predecessor could "tryout" for OSU; then suffered the same fate...being blown out in the post-season by a SoCon team that ran the same style of ball that we did just a few years earlier.. You and everyone else lives in this early 90's independent YSU team. Don't tell me that you could not pick our win/losses every year that Tressel was in-charge. Tressel was great at scheduling YSU into the post-season. So good tha the NCAA outlawed his proctices and everyone nicknamed the new rules the "Tressel" rules. Heacock had to win a conference that was very good and still receiving one bid, while still having to play already-scheduled DII schools that did not even count.. Heacock had to build a team hat could compete in a DI conference...not win games against PSAC (DII) and "MAC Wanabes". All of this with a budget that now included an AD salary. Funny how the local media back-tracked on their Heacock insults when his defenses began to dominate the same MAC, that we were hoping to join and call a "step-up".
Every coach we had had their own demons and strengths. You listen to that same garbage as everyone else about coach H's recruiting, yet we recruited better under his tenure than at any other time since the late 1960's (CA, FL, GA, PA, East Coast & lower West states) and the number of all-Americans proved it. Duzzer was a solid coach, people said just not ready to take the team to the next level ...yet the joke was that they did not want to even give him a stadium..
I have already covered Tressel and let's not forget how close he came to being booted after his first few years. He finally copied GSU and then established an identity for the team that could win and then chucked it into the garbage.
Coach H had to mold this team into a GFC team. He was smart enough to realize that he had to play the same hard-nose game that people in this town could identify with and still compete in a conference. He talked about moving the offense back and was not given permission, Then, when it was clear that he was leaving, they finally made a switch on O, to match a conference that had switched ...we had a terrible first year and an improved second (and final) year. Yet our dominating D remained, along with a football team that paid for iteself.
That is until coach Wolf fired 3/4 of that D in one weekend and hired an over-priced lousy DC. We all knew the team was never going to recover, and it did not. Strollo dug deeper into the university pocket-book than had ever been done before (general funds). We lucked into a good OC that was able to produce record numbers, but we suffered with a DC from Florida and our our complete lack of fundamentals (and the record yards and points being put up against us) was the result.
Now it is difficult to work with Bo, and lack of coaching depth is the result.
