Head Coaches do NOT call players out in the media, or throw them under the bus. If they think a player or players are to blame, they give evasive answers to the media, and then discuss the issue/issues with the player/players behind closed doors.
The EASIEST way to lose a team is by bad mouthing the players in the media after a loss. Wolford has been doing this his ENTIRE time at YSU. For that matter, he bad mouthed Heacock and the players inherited from Heacock upon taking the job.
He came in talking brash, which is fine, provided the talk is backed up by performance. Fair or unfair, the HC gets the praise when a team performs well, and gets the blame when the team does not meet expectations. Any person who has ever coached knows this is the case. And, in each sport, players at certain positions get more credit than they may deserve for wins, and more of the blame for losses. It is like this in sports. It is like this in pretty much every profession.
If a K-12 school does not perform well academically, has a host of discipline problems, and is just a mess in general, the Principal is going to take the fall. If a company is doing poorly with sales, the Sales Manager is going to take the fall. If a company is performing poorly in another area, the department manager/managers are going to take the blame. Especially when it is their 5th year on the job, they have been given pretty much everything they asked for in terms of budget, facilities and other upgrades asked for in order to produce for the company. Alot of people on here have or are are blaming Ron Strollo for the coaching failures of Heacock, Wolford, Slocum, Hill, Martin. And, that is understandable, because Ron Strollo is the AD, and he is the person who made the decision to hire these coaches. Fair or unfair, that is the way it works, and ANY person hired as AD of a D1 college sports program knows this when taking the job.
Eric Wolford has dug his own grave if this ends up being his final season as HC at YSU. And, unlike with Coach Heacock, I do not think there will be many people shedding a tear for Wolford. Not because people wanted the team to lose, but because Wolford has done plenty to irk a whole host of people over the past 5 years, and not being able to get the team to the playoffs is only ONE of those things.
He and his team still have one game left to play, with an opportunity to win and make the playoffs. If YSU fails to beat NDSU, I see no reason keeping Wolford can be justified. And, if YSU loses and he is kept on for another season, there will be even fewer tickets sold for next years games, and even fewer people that actually attend the games. That will be a negative for the entire athletic department.
