No. 8: 2014 switch to black-on-black
One of the complaints thrown at older coaches who have lasted into the era of spread offenses and fast-paced football is that they’re too conservative.
During the 25 years he coached in Tyrone, John Franco’s offensive approach couldn’t be called conservative – after all, the program’s top point and yardage producing teams all came from his system – but he was by all means traditional.
So when the Eagles experienced success in 1995 wearing white pants with black/orange/black stripes, with plain black jerseys at home and plain white jerseys on the road, that became the look, and it wasn’t changing. No matter what the newest trends were, like moves to matte helmets, multi-colored jerseys, or funky stripes on pants – all of which came and went during his tenures – those looks had zero chance of making it onto Gray-Veterans Memorial Field by anyone playing for Tyrone. For Franco, that would have been like putting Steely McBeam on the side of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ helmets in place of the single US Steel-themed logo.
When Franco left Tyrone to coach at Altoona in 2012, his successor, Steve Guthoff, had a goal of maintaining the standard his predecessor had established, so he rocked no boats, and that included tweaks to the uniform.
The man who followed Guthoff did not have the same hang-ups.
Jason Wilson took the reins of the Golden Eagles in 2014, and his top priority was getting Tyrone back to championship-level football. The wheels never completely fell off under Guthoff, but two straight losses in the District 6 2A semifinals had everyone longing for the good ol’ days from just three years earlier. And Wilson looked like just the guy to get them there, especially when he began reuniting the coaches who were on staff under Franco.
Winning impressively and in volume returned. But what didn’t was the old Franco-era uniform that had become a mainstay of the program over a period of 20 years.
Putting the 90s-style relics in the closet, Wilson went to a new uniform in his very first season, going with black-on-black at home and black pants with white jerseys on the road.
It was a look that clearly set a tone: things would be different under the new regime, though ironically the biggest difference was a return to many of the systematic things that worked so well under Franco.
The pants featured a orange stripe that tapered upwards while both the home and away jerseys had shoulders ringed in orange. The only holdover from the previous uniform was the helmet. The Golden Eagles’ shells would still be the classic white with orange Ts on the side (at least for a little while).
If ever there was a time to make such a move, it was in 2014 because Tyrone had the goods, and any initial hesitation by the fanbase was quickly mitigated by the thrill of watching a rookie coach take a team on the ride of a lifetime.
Tyrone had a first-year starter at quarterback in Garrett Hunter, a first-year starter at tailback in Aleic Hunter, and of the many receivers who caught passes only one – Nick Getz – had done much as an underclassman. And yet none of that mattered. Over the first six weeks of the seasons the Golden Eagles went 6-0 and from Weeks 3-6 scored 52, 42, 47, and 42 points, respectively.
After a Week 7 loss to Clearfield, Tyrone responded by shutting out Central Mountain 61-0.
Football Fridays were exciting again, and the new threads played into that buzz.
Tyrone would ultimately improve to 11-1 and play in the District finals against a Mount Union team that was humming. The Trojans were undefeated and averaging 44 points per game, so when the Golden Eagles ran onto the turf at Mansion Park in their white jerseys and black pants, they knew they were in for a battle.
They made it a battle of their liking with an offensive game-plan that belied their modern-day uniforms. Running the ball on 50 of their 57 plays from scrimmage, the Eagles took the air out the ball, kept Mount Union’s top playmakers playing defense, and ground out 353 rushing yards.
The diminutive Hunter had most of them, rushing for 304 yards on 34 carries, including touchdown runs of 74 and 78 yards to bookend a 35-21 victory that gave the program its 10th District 6 title.
Wilson became just the second coach in Tyrone history to win a District championship in his rookie season, and all was right in the world in the borough.
He would tinker with the team’s look one more time the following season in 2015, changing the traditional lids to matte black while keeping the orange Ts.
The look was sharp, as was the team, which never really missed a beat in Wilson’s second season. Another first-year starter at quarterback, Drew Hunter, threw for 2,000 yards, and Gary Weaver picked up from Hunter’s 1,800-yard season and ran for more than 1,500 himself. The Golden Eagles lost to a strong Juniata team in the semifinals that season, but things were looking good, including the uniforms.
The switch to black helmets was unique. Only one other team – the Eagles in 1963 – had worn black helmets, and none had ever gone as far as to wear ALL black at one time. Teams in the 70s topped off black pants with orange jerseys, so this was something new, and it worked.
For a number of reasons, enumerated in Volume II of The Tyrone Football Story: A Team, A Community, and 100 Years of Defying the Odds, the wheels came off rather quickly as Wilson moved into his third season. An unprecedented string of injuries was the main culprit, and it coincided with the rise of teams like Central, Bellefonte, Bald Eagle Area, and even Penns Valley. Tough non-conference games against Chestnut Ridge and Hollidaysburg – a pair of teams enjoying their best seasons in years – also played a factor.
The result was Tyrone struggled to a 5-5 regular season finish in 2016 before losing in the first round of the playoffs to go 5-6, the fist sub-.500 season at Tyrone since 1992. A year later the Eagles went 3-7, but still squeaked into the postseason, the Eagles’ 23rd straight trip to the playoffs.
By 2018, there was a lot riding on Tyrone’s ability to make improvements, and early on things looked good. The Eagles started 4-0 before hitting the grind of the season with consecutive games against Bellefonte, BEA, Clearfield, and Hollidaysburg, which evened them out at 4-4. However, with games against Penns Valley and Huntingdon to close the season, chances seemed good Tyrone could get back over .500 and qualify once again for the postseason.
But that season the Eagles lost to Penns Valley for the first time ever before falling to Huntingdon in Week 10. Playoffs were off the table, and it was a third-straight losing season.
Wilson stepped down a few months later, Franco returned, and while his first season back in the borough saw Tyrone go 2-8 (the team’s worst record in a quarter of a century), the significant change from Year One of his second tenure was a switch back to the old-style uniforms the Eagles had been accustomed to from 1995 through 2013.
If Wilson’s time as Tyrone’s head coach demonstrated anything it was the winning isn’t easy, and it’s not guaranteed, either. That was something many fans lost sight of during the 20 years prior to him taking over. When you look at the list of the best coaches to come out of Tyrone, there’s essentially Franco and Steve Jacobs miles ahead of everyone else and bunch of other guys just trying to keep the program above water. The number of head coaches who have finished their careers on the plus side of .500 is actually relatively small.
The list of those who have won championships is even smaller, but Wilson is on that one, and that’s what he will be best remembered for, along with daring to buck tradition and give Tyrone’s uniforms a look unlike any before or since.
ORANGE AND BLACK 