MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Mike Sherwood’s record-setting 416-yard passing performance against Pitt in 1968 almost never happened. Sherwood had overslept on the day of the game and arrived late for the team breakfast. West Virginia coach Jim Carlen didn’t tolerate his players being late for anything.

	Mike Sherwood passed for 416 yards and two touchdowns against Pitt in 1968. WVU Sports Communications

“Jim Carlen told me that he wasn’t sure if I was going to play that day,” Sherwood recalled. “He was a guy that if you weren’t punctual you paid the price.”

Steve Yates, the student trainer who knocked on Sherwood’s door telling him that he was late, also delivered the good news that he was going to play during pre-game warm ups.

“I kind of kept my mouth shut and went on to the stadium,” Sherwood said. “He came right up to me after we had finished warm ups and he told me that (Carlen) was going to let me play.”

Pittsburgh was coming off a crushing 63-7 loss to UCLA in which the Panther defense was burned several times, despite starting outstanding sophomore linebacker Ralph Cindrich and two future pros in Bryant Salter and Charlie Hall in the secondary.

“They had some decent players and it was one of those days when we were just quicker than them,” Sherwood said. “I’ll be honest, what (offensive coordinator Bobby) Bowden had us doing in the passing game at the time was really sophisticated.

“We did a lot of drop-back passing with backs out of the backfield and a lot of five-man patterns,” Sherwood said. “A lot of teams weren’t doing this at that time in college football.”

Sherwood completed 27 of 37 passes for 416 yards and two touchdowns, exceeding Allen McCune’s WVU passing record set in 1965 by nearly 100 yards. West Virginia easily won the game 38-15.

Only once prior to Sherwood’s afternoon had a Mountaineer quarterback passed for more than 300 yards in a game (McCune) and Sherwood also obliterated the school completion record set in 1951 by Gerry Fisher and matched in 1958 by Dick Longfellow.

“We pretty much had our way with them,” Sherwood said. “We had a lot of different guys that caught the ball. We had a long pass to (running back) Bobby Gresham for a touchdown. Oscar Patrick and Wayne Porter … Bob Zambo had a few catches at tight end. We spread the ball around that day.”

The performance was particularly special to Sherwood, who grew up just 1 ½ hour away from Pittsburgh in Bellaire, Ohio. Sherwood took a recruiting visit to Pitt but the Panthers didn’t offer him a scholarship.

“They thought they had a great recruiting class coming in and in the end they did not offer me,” Sherwood said.

“I’ll be honest, it wasn’t that big a deal to me (getting revenge against Pitt),” Sherwood said. “I see all the things they talk about now and the constant media attention with so many things that back then we didn’t even think about or know about. It wasn’t like I went there to prove something to them. Obviously you want to win but we had played them the year before (in a freshman game) and they beat us 32-6.”

Sherwood knew many of the Pitt players through his roommate Bob Zitelli, who grew up in McKees Rocks, Pa.

“He knew a lot of these guys personally,” Sherwood said. “They were people that Bobby had grown up with and knew so I knew a little more about them. I had kind of got connected to WVU through a guy named Lee Patrone, who was from Bellaire and played basketball there. I had started following them and I had been to Pitt-West Virginia games back in the early 1960s.”

It wasn’t until after the game that Sherwood realized what he had accomplished. Carlen was never big on individual statistics and Sherwood found out through Wheeling sportswriter Bill Van Horne that he had broken the school passing record.

“When I was walking back to the bus with my mom and dad Bill Van Horne walked up to me and told me that I had broken all these records and how many yards I had thrown for,” Sherwood remembered. “Again, it’s one of those things that it wasn’t an emphasis on records and the constant writing about these things.”

Sherwood had another outstanding game against Pitt in 1969 as a junior, leading the Mountaineers to a 49-18 blowout victory. West Virginia used a three-man backfield in 1969 and scaled back Sherwood’s passing. He only attempted 10 passes against the Panthers that year, completing five for 53 yards.

“I can remember very vividly one conversation I had with Coach Carlen and he was talking about not wanting to force the ball downfield too much,” Sherwood said. “Even when we were throwing the ball he was more of a ball-control kind of guy.”

The win in 1969 was the first time since the late 1890s that West Virginia had beaten Pitt three times in a row.

It should have been four straight in 1970 during Sherwood’s senior season, but West Virginia blew a 27-point halftime lead and lost 36-35 in Bobby Bowden’s first season on the West Virginia sidelines.

Sherwood recalled an ominous conversation he had with Bowden walking off the field at halftime.

“He said to me, ‘Mike, you’ve really got their number.’ I said, ‘Well for two and a half games anyhow, coach.’ We had just walked off the field and of course the second half was just a nightmare,” Sherwood said.