Vince McMahon ILLINOIS VALLEY COMMUNITY COLLEGE Accomplishments ● Legendary football coach
during the late 1970s to the early 1990s ● Had a career record of 112-52 including 15 straight winning seasons, his teams appeared in five Midwest Bowls and won four ● His 1979 IVCC team finished 11-0 and placed third in the NJCAA Poll, team was a Class of 2019 inductee into the NT IV Sports Hall of Fame ● Member of the IVCC Hall of Fame (individual, 1976 team and 1979 team), NJCAA Football Coaches Hall of Fame and NJCAA Region IV Hall of Fame and now two time-member of the NT IV Sports HOF ● Wrote two books on the game: Coaching the NoHuddle Multiple Offense and Coaching the Option Wing Offense
SUBMITTED PHOTOS
By Andy Tavegia
I
t didn’t take long for Vince McMahon to realize what he may have gotten himself into. A former assistant coach on his first head coaching gig, McMahon was charged with running the Illinois Valley Community College football program – a program that hadn’t had a full-time leader since its return just a few years prior. However, on one of his first in-district recruiting visits, he heard the doubts. “I remember I was recruiting at Hall, and I heard one kid say to another, ‘That’s the last place in the world I would ever go,’” McMahon said. But as they say, if you build it, they will come. And what McMahon built was a program that – based on mostly in-district talent – won 68 percent of its 164 games over his 16-year period. As time went on, it became easier and easier for McMahon to draw players from the Illinois Valley – an area with multiple strong prep programs – to play for IVCC. It all started with his second recruiting class. Coming off a 2-7 season in 1975, he managed to convince a small but talented recruiting class to play at IVCC. Despite having just 32 players on the total roster, the Apaches went 6-3 that year and 7-2 the next with a Midwest Bowl appearance.
WHERE are they NOW
14 June 2022 | Illinois Valley Sports Hall of Fame | A NewsTribune Publication
