Second-year Austin Peay coach Will Healy was chosen as winner of the Eddie Robinson Award on Wednesday. (Austin Peay State University Photo)Will Healy was home in Clarksville, Tenn., packing for a long recruiting trip when a call came from his athletic director, causing the Austin Peay football coach to stop what he was doing and sit down. He needed a moment to absorb the news he had been given.
In his second season as the Governors' coach, Healy guided the program to one of the biggest turnarounds in the country, and for that work he has been named the Eddie Robinson Award winner as the Football Championship Subdivision national coach of the year.
"The first thing I asked (AD) Ryan Ivey was if my dad had put him up to pranking me," Healy said with a laugh. "It's a pretty amazing honor, and to me it means that I've hired the right guys to be on our staff. It's awesome that our program is recognized across the country and that people at the FCS level are starting to understand what we're doing.
"I'm overrated in that I've surrounded myself with great people, and they're the reason we were able to do what we did this season."
The 32-year old Healy, a Boyd-Buchanan graduate and former University of Tennessee at Chattanooga assistant coach, took over an Austin Peay program that had lost 16 straight games and finished 0-11 in his first year as coach. This season the Governors, who had won just one game in the previous four seasons, went 8-4 overall, including 8-1 against FCS competition, and narrowly missed out on a playoff berth.
Austin Peay's seven wins against Ohio Valley Conference opponents were the most in program history, and the eight wins tied for the most overall. Austin Peay also set home attendance records on multiple occasions this season.
The turnaround had Healy featured by national college football media outlets, including the Paul Finebaum Show and ESPN's College Gameday.
"When you become a national story, like we were this year, it keeps you in the topic of conversation with recruits and helps build what we're trying to do," Healy said Wednesday between stops on an extended recruiting trip. "It's crazy to think how far we've come from in the last year. Everyone from the players to the coaching staff to the administration has played a huge role in it."
Last week it became public knowledge that Healy was a finalist for the South Alabama coaching vacancy. But before an offer could be made, Austin Peay gave the entire coaching staff a raise that would assure their return.
The Eddie Robinson Award is named after the legendary Grambling State coach and given annually to the top coach at the FCS level.
"What an extraordinary achievement for a well-deserving coach," Ivey said. "This award is a testament of Coach Healy's ability to lead a group of individuals, to make them believe in a vision - a dream at the time - and then put in countless hours of work, dedication, perseverance and love for each other to make that vision a reality."
Contact Stephen Hargis at shargis@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6293. Follow him on Twitter @StephenHargis.