MSN Flashback: 1982
December 22, 2007 12:53 PM | General
December 22, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – In the summer leading into the 1982 season opener against Oklahoma Don Nehlen had everyone in West Virginia convinced that his football team had no chance of beating the Sooners.
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| Jeff Hostetler had the best passing day of his college career against Oklahoma in 1982.
WVU Sports Communications photo |
Nehlen talked about the September sweltering heat, Oklahoma’s lightning-fast option offense and its smothering defense. He talked up Oklahoma’s great tradition. He talked up West Virginia’s lack of tradition even more.
Don Nehlen was selling used cars to everyone who was listening.
Oklahoma in 1982 was not close to being the same football team Coach Barry Switzer had at the end of the 1970s when it went to four straight Orange Bowls. The Sooners slipped to 7-4-1 in 1981 and had several question marks heading into the 1982 campaign. OU was now two years removed from outstanding quarterback Thomas Lott, and while Kelly Phelps was good, he wasn’t quite in the same league as Lott and J.C. Watts.
Erratic running back Stanley Wilson was talented, but not nearly as dependable as Greg Pruitt, Joe Washington, Kenny King, Billy Sims and David Overstreet before him. Switzer ultimately turned to freshman Marcus Dupree, who became the Sooners’ leading rusher in ’82.
The defense was good but covering the pass was something entirely foreign to a Sooner defense that practiced every day against the triple-option.
Even though he had a new quarterback in Jeff Hostetler, Don Nehlen planned on giving Hostetler’s arm plenty of work. Oklahoma knew next to nothing about Hostetler, who sat out the 1981 season after transferring from Penn State when he was beat out by Todd Blackledge in 1980.
And Nehlen decided to gamble on defense just as he did against Florida in the Peach Bowl nine months earlier when he came out in the nickel and blitzed strong safety Donnie Stemple on nearly every play. Nehlen knew if he stuck with his regular defense that Oklahoma would have a schematic advantage on most running plays. They had to do something different to get more people at the point of attack.
Defensive coordinator Dennis Brown devised a scheme that put all 11 guys near the line of scrimmage with free safety Tim Agee lining up where the middle linebacker usually played. It was the job of 185-pound Agee to key the fullback on the dive play. To keep Phelps guessing, sometimes they had Agee switch and take the quarterback or the pitch man.
“We decided to dare them to throw,” Nehlen said later.
That wasn’t all Nehlen did. He began working on his team right after the Peach Bowl, telling them that they needed to get stronger in the weight room to compete against the Sooners. He called everyone he knew in the Big Eight looking for something to exploit. He also continued to cry wolf in the newspapers.
“Anytime a team like ours must open the season with a team like the Sooners you’re just about asking for a miracle,” Nehlen said. “Keep in mind we’ve only had one winning season at West Virginia since 1975. And when you look at the other times we’ve played Oklahoma the scores were 47-10 and 52-10.
“I don’t think there is any sense in kidding anyone,” said Nehlen without as much as a wink. “We don’t have near the athletes of Oklahoma. We have a young, almost brand new offense that is still making mistakes. Our defense has been up and down. I would say this team has a chance of going 0-11 or anything above that … literally.”
When the locker room doors were closed the man who later once called a winless Temple team “flat-out scary to a degree” was telling his team a different story.
“You aren’t going to die in the heat at Oklahoma. That’s a bunch of crap. They’re going to get up on us early because it will take a while to adjust to their offense and their speed, but we’re going to get them in the fourth quarter,” Nehlen prophesized. “They think that’s when we’ll die but that’s when we’ll beat them.”
Sure enough, Oklahoma scored two quick touchdowns and led 14-0 after the first quarter. The Mountaineers pulled to within four, 14-10, and got 10 big points in a span of eight seconds right before the end of the half.
Paul Woodside nailed a 38-yard field goal to pull West Virginia to within one, 14-13. Nehlen then gambled with an onside kick that the Mountaineers recovered at the Oklahoma 33 with 10 seconds left. Instead of a sideline pass to get into position for another Woodside field goal attempt, Nehlen rolled the dice once more and called “81 Deep” to wide receiver Darrell Miller. Amazingly, Hostetler put the ball right on the money to Miller for a 33-yard touchdown with just five seconds on the clock.
A 14-0 Oklahoma first quarter lead had completely evaporated. There was pandemonium in the West Virginia locker room at halftime. The players were yelling, hollering, and banging their helmets on their lockers.
“My God,” Nehlen told one of his assistant coaches, “they believed every word I told them. Now we’ve got to get them settled down or we’re going to be in big trouble in the second half.”
Nehlen wasn’t the only one in a state of mild shock. A hush came over the sold-out Memorial Stadium crowd when the teams left the field. ESPN, just three years old at the time and not anywhere close to what it is today, was also having problems. Several times in the first half the TV producer had mistakenly identified defensive coordinator Dennis Brown as Nehlen until West Virginia’s Nick Smith barged into the truck and yelled, “That’s not Don Nehlen you’re showing on TV! That’s our defensive coordinator you’re showing!”
Oklahoma retook the lead on its opening possession of the third quarter. West Virginia answered. The Sooners tied the game again when Darrell Songy blocked Greg Robertson’s punt and Keith Stanberry recovered the ball in the end zone. But Michael Keeling’s PAT was blocked by defensive tackle Chuck Harris, keeping the score at 27.
Two fourth-quarter West Virginia touchdowns - the game-breaker coming on a 43-yard draw play by Curlin Beck with 2:14 remaining - gave West Virginia an unlikely 41-27 upset victory.
“We executed beautifully and that stupid draw play I always called just ruined them,” Nehlen said years later. “With their wishbone they didn’t know how to play catch up football. They would hand it off to the fullback and the clock kept running. I said, ‘Just keep doing it brother – keep doing it.’”
“I never saw Nehlen happier after a game,” said longtime reporter Mickey Furfari.
Of course Barry Switzer had little to say afterward.
“Maybe West Virginia is better than we thought,” he said. “We knew they would complete some passes but they beat us time and again by running the same deep routes. You could say we were victims of a bombing raid. We couldn’t stop them.”
Oklahoma did stop West Virginia’s post-game radio show.
“They pulled our phone lines right in the middle of our locker room show,” radio color analyst Woody O’Hara later recalled. “That was going to be the best post-game show we ever did.”
Nehlen, mistaken for his defensive coordinator by the television people earlier in the day, got another surprise on Sunday when he read the Tulsa newspaper.
The headline read: Sooners Beaten by Virginians.
“That’s OK,” said Nehlen with a crooked smile. “We knew who won.”
