Tales from the Backyard Brawl
November 30, 2007 11:22 AM | General
November 30, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - With the exception of the Jock Sutherland years from 1924-38, no West Virginia coach faced a more formidable challenge against the University of Pittsburgh than Don Nehlen did when he took over the Mountaineer football program in 1980.
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| Don Nehlen was responsible for making the Backyard Brawl competitive again.
WVU Sports Communications |
West Virginia had lost to Pitt by scores of 44-3 in 1977 and 52-7 in 1978, and was in the midst of a long seven-year losing streak to the Panthers. Pitt finished 1976 ranked No. 1 in the country, and had Top 10 finishes in 1977, 1979, 1980, 1981 and 1982.
Pitt’s 1980 team finished No. 2 in the polls but many today still argue that the ‘80 Panthers might have been the most talented football team in college football history. Four players from that team have already been enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame, and 29 players were drafted by NFL teams, including seven in the first round.
Dan Marino was the quarterback. Hugh Green finished second in the Heisman Trophy balloting as a defensive end. Mark May and Jimbo Covert were the offensive tackles. Russ Grimm played center.
“There were many times that I would play an entire game and not hit the ground,” Marino told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2005.
Pitt was so talented and physical that after the first day of fall camp in 1980 Panther Coach Jackie Sherrill did not practice his team in full gear for the rest of the season.
“I’ve never heard of any team before or since doing that,” Sherrill remarked in 2005.
Nehlen, getting a second chance at leading a college program after his first try at Bowling Green went sour in 1976, understood immediately what the Pitt game meant to West Virginians having been involved in the Michigan-Ohio State series for four years. He also realized that what he had done at Bowling Green was very sound.
“I found out at Michigan that it was strictly a mind game,” Nehlen commented in 2006. “When you have a bunch of kids who believe in themselves and believe in the program you have a chance to win. When I was there, I said to myself if I ever get a chance to be a head coach again I’ll be good because what I was doing at Bowling Green was good. I just wasn’t real sure I believed in it because I didn’t have anything to compare it with.”
In 1980 Nehlen’s West Virginia roster wasn’t close to having the talent Pitt possessed and it showed. Pitt easily won the game 42-14. Making things especially difficult was the fact that West Virginia had foolishly scheduled a midseason trip to Hawaii a week before the Pitt game.
“We have Hawaii and then we have to play Pitt and Penn State back to back my first year. In ‘79, ‘78, ‘77 and ‘76 not a single kid that I had inherited had ever played on a winning team,” Nehlen said. “We have those two back to back after coming home and losing an entire day traveling. It takes you two days to recover from a trip like that and it was just a mess.”
West Virginia lost two days worth of preparation for the Pitt game because of the travel time required to get back to Morgantown. The game plan wasn’t completed until Tuesday evening. Of course, the WVU-Pitt game was over by halftime.
“We played Penn State pretty well but we got killed by Pitt,” Nehlen said.
The next year in 1981 West Virginia was able to inch a little closer to Pitt, losing 17-0 to the No. 4-rated Panthers at Mountaineer Field. Pitt was without quarterback Dan Marino, out with a badly bruised shoulder after throwing six touchdown passes against South Carolina, and it tried only six passes. The Panthers completed just one – to West Virginia.
But the Mountaineers couldn’t get past the 50 yard line against a Panther defense that came into the game having surrendered minus 10 yards rushing in three games against Illinois, Cincinnati and South Carolina.
In 1982, West Virginia was leading the No. 2-rated Panthers after three quarters 13-0 in Pittsburgh.
“The amazing thing about that game was three years before that we were one of the worst football teams in America,” Nehlen recalled.
But Marino got hot in the fourth quarter and directed a pair of scoring drives, the second ending with a 6-yard touchdown pass to Julius Dawkins. Pitt won the game 16-13.
“I remember the fourth quarter Marino hit three or four great passes on us,” Nehlen said. “They were that 12 to 15-yard curl. We were playing what we called ‘tough’ coverage’ where we took (Darryl) Talley and put him out on the split end and over shifted to try and stop their passing game.
“We didn’t have near the players that they did,” Nehlen said. “Probably 30 percent of that team wound up in the NFL. It was amazing.”
Even though the results had not yet shown up on the field against Pitt, Nehlen’s plan was slowly being put into place. He was building his team up physically and that was translating into more self-confident football players.
“I had linemen that could run five miles and couldn’t bench press 200 pounds. And I’m playing Pitt and Penn State,” Nehlen said. “I told our strength coach, ‘I don’t give a damn if these kids can run from here to the refrigerator, we’ve got to increase their strength by 30 percent or we’re going to get killed.’”
The fruits of Nehlen’s labor blossomed in 1983. It took a 90-yard drive against the No. 1-rated defense in the country for West Virginia to end Pitt’s seven-game winning streak. Thirteen of the 14 plays during the drive came on the ground.
“We drive 90 yards on a defense that is absolutely loaded with professional football players,” Nehlen said. “On the scoring play I know Foge Fazio is going to have everyone coming down inside like you won’t believe and Jeff (Hostetler) waltzed into that end zone absolutely unmolested.”
West Virginia’s 24-21 victory in 1983 had finally pulled the Mountaineers up into Pitt’s class. By the end of the decade, the Panthers were chasing West Virginia.
“The last 15 years or so that I coached here we really kicked the crap out of them,” Nehlen said. “Even early on when they had all those great, great pros, other than my first year every game was been a battle.”
