In the FCS Huddle: Pelini hits ground running at Youngstown

(SportsNetwork.com) – Disregard any thought of a three- or five-year rebuilding plan, new Youngstown State football coach Bo Pelini has returned home to do one thing – win, and win big.

“That’s why we’re here. That’s why I came back here,” Pelini said. “I didn’t come back here to lose, I came back here to try to continue to build a great program and compete for conference titles and national championships. I’m looking forward to having the opportunity to do that.”

The Youngstown State program has stood on the doorstep of its first FCS playoff berth since 2006 in each of the last two seasons, and returns an experienced team this year, so the Penguins could crack the national Top 10 and will be expected by many to reach the postseason. The future surely is now.

But Pelini is no ordinary first-year coach – one of the bigger hires among FCS schools in recent years after he spent the last eight seasons guiding the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

That tenure ended with the fiery 47-year-old shown the door for failing to meet lofty expectations. The Cornhuskers went 67-27 and won nine or 10 games each season, but they never seriously challenged for a national championship.

Youngstown State is quite familiar with national titles, having won four of them on the former Division I-AA level – all in the 1990s – and the architect of that run, Jim Tressel, also has returned to the Missouri Valley Football Conference university in the last year as school president. Although Pelini didn’t attend YSU, he grew up in the Youngstown area and has embraced his homecoming, just as Youngstown has embraced him back.

“Football is football as far as I’m concerned,” Pelini said about the drop from the FBS to the FCS, “they’ve just got different resources, different scholarship counts, just some roles that you operate under that are different. Other than that, as far as how to develop a team, develop your football team, do those types of things, I don’t think it’s much different.”

The seventh head coach in YSU football history, Pelini replaced Eric Wolford, who was fired after going 31-26 over the last five seasons. The last two years have left the Penguins wanting more, as they began the 2013 season with an 8-1 record and last year at 7-2, but melted down each time with a three-game season-ending losing streak.

Still, the Penguins will bring back seven starters on each side of the ball this year, including sophomore quarterback Hunter Wells, running back Martin Ruiz, wideout Andrew Williams and four linemen from an offense that struggled in the red zone as well as a defense led by ends Derek Rivers and Terrell Williams and linebacker Dubem Nwadiogbu. Both starting kickers will be new.

While Pelini doesn’t necessarily believe he has to step in and change the culture of the program – as many first-year head coaches set out to do – there’s plenty of work to be done to ensure the Penguins won’t fall short of their goals again. They play in the top FCS conference, which is home to a North Dakota State program that has won the last four national titles.

“I want to implement the culture that I believe is right,” Pelini said. “I think Coach Wolford did a good job here, a really good job. So now I’ll just try to build with new things and take it to another level.

“Mental and physical toughness and accountability, discipline, all of the things that I think are important. Obviously, those are some of them. We’re trying to get these kids started off on the right foot, give them every chance to have success.”

Spring practices begin March 17. There is continuity with the return of Shane Montgomery as offensive coordinator for the sixth straight year. Pelini, who served as a defensive coordinator at LSU and Oklahoma in addition to Nebraska, has given that role to Ron Stoops Jr., a position coach the last five seasons, in a promotion.

“Nebraska’s loss is our gain,” Ron Jaworski, a former Youngstown State quarterback and current NFL analyst for ESPN, told The Vindicator newspaper in Youngstown. “He has great people skills and he’s a great motivator outside of the Xs and Os and design of how to run offenses and defenses.

“What a great attribute to have in Youngstown. The local guy comes home. It’s a great story and I think the program is going to have incredible success.”

Blue-collar Youngstown sits just inside the Ohio/Pennsylvania border, about 60-65 miles between both Cleveland and Pittsburgh. The university hopes a native – Pelini attended Cardinal Mooney High before he left Youngstown to play free safety at Ohio State – is just what it needs to restore the Penguins program to a lofty level.

And Pelini isn’t shying away from expectations.

“I think there’s a lot of good coaching that goes on in this conference. I think there’s some good programs,” he said. “You’re gonna be challenged every week in this conference. I think that’s good. That’s what you want to do, you want to play good opponents, you want to play at the highest level. I think we’re gonna do that.”

Categorized in: NCAA Football