NCAC Coach of the Year, Tom Watts
OWU Football Coach Tom Watts. (Photo by Mark Schmitter ’12)
Football head coach Tom Watts earned the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) Coach of the Year award while leading the team to its first share of the NCAC title since 1989.
Watts won the award in his first year as head coach at OWU, and a lot of other people are taking notice of his work, especially athletic director Roger Ingles.
Ingles said that Watts’ attention to detail and his great relationship with players has done a lot of good for the football team. He also praised Watts’ ability to make quality halftime adjustments.
The rest of the country has taken notice as well, as Watts has since been awarded the Regional Coach of the Year award by the American Football Coaches Association.
Going forward, Ingles is confident that the program will become a perennial competitor. He did note that there is “a lot of difference” between the first year and second year of a head coach’s tenure.
Specifically, Ingles said, it is harder to stay at the top of the competition than it is to get there.
Next year in football, there will be some major changes to the way the schedule is put together. In the past, there have been seven conference games per season. Starting in 2013, there will be nine, leaving just one non-conference game per team.
Ingles said that this “will be better for the conference” because many of the “archaic” tiebreaker rules will no longer be in effect.