Why Hasn’t There Been More ETSU Lament Over the Departure of Mike Ayers?
Thirty years ago the recently-retired Ayers left ETSU for Division II Wofford, then turned the Terriers in to a Southern Conference power.
This week Wofford named Josh Conklin as their new head football coach, replacing the recently retired Mike Ayers.
Ayers, who won 207 games with the Wofford Terriers in 30 seasons, got his head coaching start at East Tennessee State in 1985, ironically coaching a winless team.
After his initial 0–10–1 record Ayers was able to forge a 6–5 mark in ’86, restoring the Bucs to the record he inherited and beating the third-ranked and undefeated Furman Paladins in the process. The following season the Bucs recorded their only victory in history against a Division I-A, today FBS, program, a 29–14 triumph at N.C. State.
But then Ayers went to Wofford, which at the time was a Division II program. And while Ayers had been an assistant at Wofford before he came to ETSU, Division I programs are not supposed to lose coaches to Division II.
Ayers was replaced by Don Riley, who won only 12 games in four years and was plagued by rumors he was the subject the character of Luther Van Dam on Coach was based on (Riley wasn’t).
Meanwhile Ayers turned the Terriers into not only a Division I program, but a good Division I program with five Southern Conference titles.
How about this for irony, if not humiliation? When ETSU was dropping their football program in 2003, Wofford won the Southern Conference championship.
Yet somehow, nobody in Johnson City really mopes around wondering “what if Mike Ayers hadn’t left?”
Maybe that’s because after Riley, the Bucs were led by Mike Cavan, who produced the Buccaneers’ 1996 playoff season, and Paul Hamilton, who had four winning seasons in seven years.
Meanwhile Wofford’s climb during this time was slow but steady. The aforementioned Southern Conference title of 2003 was the Terriers’ first.
Maybe it’s because of the stigma of the winless 1985 season, or because after the victory against N.C. State in the ninth game of the ’87 season the Bucs promptly lost to 4–7 Virginia Military Institute and playoff bound James Madison to finish with a 5–6 record.
Maybe its because at the time, Ayers had never been part of a major college football program, while Riley, an graduate of East Tennessee State, came in from UCLA, where he had been the offensive line coach.
Ayers didn’t win many popularity contests with the blank stares he’d give to the camera during the Mike Ayers Show with Red Pitcher on WJHL (Friday nights at 11:30 p.m.!). I think back to them and wonder how he became, according to Ayers’ bio on the Wofford football webpage, “a much sought-after speaker for athletic groups and charitable events.”
Joe Avento of the Johnson City Press reported last month the reason for Ayers departure from ETSU was a contract dispute, though in hindsight one must wonder since basketball coach Les Robinson was the Bucs athletic director if Ayers felt he was going to be a second banana in Johnson City. Certainly the football program became one, and since ETSU would go on to become a nationally ranked basketball program, the sacrifice of football success was accepted by Buccaneers fans.
Did that sacrifice ultimately lead to the 12-year hiatus of the ETSU football program? Perhaps.
And maybe that’s why there’s little lamenting of the loss of Ayers in Johnson City, despite his success at Wofford.
Yes, losing a coach to a then-Division II school is embarrassing. But it was a byproduct of the path ETSU athletics took then, and had Ayers stayed, he likely would not have been able to duplicate the success he had in Spartanburg.
Marky Billson — YouTube. Follow him there and here.
