Winning Hire
January 07, 2008 02:51 PM | General
January 6, 2008
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Bill Stewart won over the minds of his football team. He won the hearts of the state and he won one of the biggest football games in school history when West Virginia knocked off Oklahoma 48-28 in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.
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| Bill Stewart jokes with reporters a day before West Virginia's 48-28 victory over Oklahoma in the 2008 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Ariz.
AP photo |
But can he continue to win football games for the Mountaineers? Hall of Fame coach Don Nehlen believes he can.
“Number one Billy is a great football coach and it was evident against Oklahoma,” Nehlen told WAJR last Friday. “I felt very certain that we would play a great football game because of the rapport of Billy and the other coaches had with the team.”
Nehlen said Stewart possesses all of the outstanding qualities necessary to make him a successful head football coach.
“He’s an excellent recruiter and above all, he’s just a good, old-fashioned, great guy. When I hired him I was pleased as the devil because he was a great coach for me. He served his time and he paid his dues. Thank goodness things worked out well for him,” Nehlen said.
“Bill is a very positive guy and I think that’s one of his real strong suits,” Nehlen said. “He’s not going to berate kids. He’s not going to chew them out except maybe in his office sometime when he’s upset. He’s not going to ever embarrass somebody publicly and I think that’s very, very important. He’ll do a great job of handling the kids because that’s his strong point.”
Nehlen also believes Stewart has what it takes to sell West Virginia University to blue chip football recruits.
“The biggest thing that makes a great recruiter is hard work,” Nehlen said. “Recruiting is no different than anything else. You’ve got to get up at 6 in the morning and be after it at 7 am and don’t quit until 10 o’clock at night. He’ll do that. He also has an infectious personality. Kids like him. He’s not going to turn kids off.”
Assistant coach Bill Kirelawich has been around the game a long time and believes what Stewart did preparing the football team for the Fiesta Bowl was nothing short of miraculous.
“He absolutely earned it there is no doubt in my mind,” Kirelawich said. “He was given an impossible task and he did it. And he did it with flying colors. If he coaches another 20 years he’ll never coach a game that was as tough as this one.
“Believe me, I can’t get into all of the distractions and the reasons that made it difficult but he was placed in an impossible situation and he came out on top,” Kirelawich said.
The amazing job Stewart did in the Fiesta Bowl was not lost on WVU Director of Athletics Ed Pastilong.
“Billy was one of the first people that we had in mind but we did not want to disrupt his staff or the players for this very, very important game,” Pastilong said. “Billy really took one of the longest interviews ever taken by a prospective candidate - 2 ½ weeks. Really at the end he obtained this position the old fashioned way – he earned it.”
Pastilong noted that continuity was a very important factor in selecting Stewart as the school’s 32 head football coach.
“It takes a lot of people to have a successful program,” Pastilong explained. “We’ve got an outstanding team in place over at our Puskar Center and we wanted to retain a large portion of that team.”
Don Nehlen believes what has been put in place by the WVU administration will make it much easier for Stewart and his coaching staff to continue down the successful path created by Rich Rodriguez.
“We are so far ahead of anybody else in the Big East it’s unbelievable,” Nehlen said. “We’re going to dominate that league like we have and we are going to continue to dominate it because the administration has really, really come through and that facility building is just absolutely gorgeous.”
