A Pot of Gold
August 29, 2008 10:42 AM | General
August 29, 2008
Mary Ravasio Minard sat down for an interview with new West Virginia University football coach Bill Stewart at the Milan Puskar Center earlier this week. A portion of that revealing interview will air tonight on Mountaineer Magazine. The interview in its entirety can be viewed for free through Mountaineer TV at MSNsportsNET.com. A one-time registration is required.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Bill Stewart, standing before a wounded football team still getting over the loss of its coach, searched for the right words to inspire a group of young men about to step into the arena to face the powerful Oklahoma Sooners in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.
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| Bill Stewart found his pot of gold in the Arizona desert.
AP photo |
Having lived for two years in Phoenix as an assistant coach at Arizona State Stewart knew well the tale of the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, how thousands each year have journeyed into the Superstition Mountains searching in vain for their pot of gold.
“I just looked up there and saw those Superstition Mountains and it just popped in my head and I said, ‘You know guys, how many people have died out in these Superstition Mountains looking for the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine? They still can’t find it today with all this technology. It’s there and they can’t find it.’”
Stewart told the team that their pot of gold was right in front of them at the University of Phoenix Stadium. Indeed the Mountaineers found their pot of gold that night, as did Bill Stewart. Just hours after the game West Virginia University Director of Athletics Ed Pastilong made the decision to remove the interim tag in front of Stewart’s name by making him the school’s 32nd head football coach.
Following the on-field celebration and the postgame press conference, the 55-year-old Stewart was expecting to spend a quiet evening in his hotel suite with his wife Karen, whom he still refers to as his bride, his son Blaine (named after Stewart’s father) and other close family members. The next day he was fully prepared to wake up and begin looking for a new job.
But that night Stewart was going to savor the evening with his family, to soak in the good fortune that was bestowed upon a man who once moved his wife seven times in a span of ten years - a man who for most of his adult life has worked on one-year contracts.
Then the phone rang. On the other end was Pastilong.
“I about fell over,” Stewart said. “I was on such a high and I thought maybe he would say, well Billy when you get back to Morgantown maybe we’d like to talk to you. That’s what I thought. Blaine was like, ‘Gee whiz dad what do you think?’ I said maybe they’ll give us a chance for an interview and that’s all I could ask for. We went back to his room and talked. It was a powerful night. I never dreamed that would happen.”
The skeptics called it a battlefield promotion. The next morning on a local Phoenix radio show a caller likened West Virginia’s hiring of Stewart to that of a “house painter replacing the architect.” Stewart understands the skepticism and he welcomes the opportunity to prove them wrong.
“I live in America, too. I live in a great land where their opinions are not only welcomed, but are expected,” Stewart said. “You can say just about anything you want to say and it’s OK to do that. However, I live in the same great country and that gives me the right to get up, put a smile on my face, be in charge of my attitude and try to mold this football team into a positive, top-flight football program.”
Bill Stewart kills you with kindness and he has a politician’s gift for remembering names and people’s most significant accomplishments. He learned this from his late father Blaine Stewart, who turned his back on a promising country music career to raise his two sons in a small Ohio River town where the people know, care about, and respect each other.
“My father, he was a kind and compassionate man,” Stewart recalled. “He was a country boy from Bens Run, West Virginia, over by the Ohio River. My dad probably never said a cross word in his life. Me, on the other hand, I was a lot like my mom – she was a fireball. But my dad was a great human being, a World War II vet. They talk about the greatest generation, bam, stamp that right on him.”
When Blaine Stewart returned from the War he began touring the area with country and western groups as a mandolin player.
“My dad, they say, was the best mandolin player in the country,” Stewart said proudly. “He was on the fast track. Our next door neighbors were Grandpa Jones and his wife Ramona and my dad was great friends with Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins and Cowboy Copas – the three people that were on that plane (that crashed in 1963). Dad wasn’t playing with them in the big time, but he could have been.”
Stewart recalled the time when he was in junior high school sitting on the steps and listening to his father turn down another appealing offer to tour the country and play at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.
“I’m sure that broke his heart to do that but he thought it was the right thing to do,” Stewart said. “They said, ‘We’ve got to have you come to the Grand Ole Opry and play with us.’ He said, ‘I’m not coming.’ They said, ‘Well why?’ He said, ‘I’m not leaving New Martinsville. I’m raising these boys.”
Football entered Bill Stewart’s life when he was a seventh grader as a means to keep up with his older brother Ted, and in the wide blue eyes of young Bill, those great Magnolia Blue Eagle players like the late Emo Schubach who wound up getting a scholarship to play at the University for Coach Gene Corum. Back then everybody simply referred to WVU as the University.
Stewart was a manager on Magnolia’s state championship team in 1964 because the town did not have a junior high football team. It was then that he became interested in coaching.
“I really, really took to the coaches. They were good men and good role models and I thought, man, these are really special guys,” Stewart said. “I’ve always liked coaches, from Little League baseball and basketball all the way up. I really loved the game and liked those men. From that moment on I knew what I wanted to be.”
After his senior season at Magnolia in 1969, Stewart followed his high school teammate Wib Newton to West Virginia University to play on the freshman team. Newton was a natural athlete - many say one of the best to ever come out of New Martinsville until a knee injury claimed his football career. Stewart, on the other hand, survived on guile and guts.
“I came to West Virginia and they measured me at 5-10 ½ and 177 pounds,” Stewart laughed. “I thought I was ready to take on the world.”
The reality was that as much as Bill Stewart wanted to play football at West Virginia University it just wasn’t going to work for a 177-pound guard. He wasn’t interested in standing on the sidelines and being a cheerleader so he transferred to Fairmont State where he could play some football.
“I stayed a year and had a blast,” Stewart said of his brief time in Morgantown. “I formed great friendships which I have to this day. Once I transferred down to Fairmont State everything blossomed from there. I got bigger and bigger and had a lot of fun.”
When his career at Fairmont State was finished in 1973 Stewart had offers to become a graduate assistant coach. But he preferred to go back to high school, coach football and teach history. He did that for two years at Sistersville High School and was about to take a coaching job in St. Clairsville, Ohio, when he got a call to join the staff at Salem College. This time he decided to give small college football a try.
“We played darn good football in those days,” Stewart said. “Three years before I had been playing against some of the guys I was now coaching and they remembered me. That was kind of interesting. I was young and full of energy and that’s when everything took off from there.”
During the next eight years, coaching jobs followed at North Carolina, Marshall, William & Mary, Navy and once again North Carolina. Every move was an advancement.
“I never applied for a job,” Stewart said.
It was at North Carolina where Stewart learned that the coaching business is sometimes cruel and unforgiving.
“We got fired at North Carolina and I still have a crack in my heart over that,” Stewart said. “Dick Crum is a great man and is a great role model for me – the best, greatest and most polished organizer I’ve ever been around. When they let him go at North Carolina I will forever have a crack in my heart because it wasn’t right.
“The loyalty that they preached all the time sometimes wasn’t a two-way street – it wasn’t 50/50,” Stewart said. “Most of the time it was 20/80, and that’s when I learned about the business.”
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| Bill Stewart's first head coaching stint was at Virginia Military Institute from 1994-96.
VMI photo |
Stewart’s most painful lesson came nine years later when his three-year head coaching career at VMI ended abruptly following the controversy surrounding a statement he made to an African-American football player during practice. No one else heard the conversation. Stewart told the administration that he would resign if his assistant coaches were spared and to this day Stewart refuses to utter one negative word about his experience at VMI.
“At VMI, where I was blessed to coach, I was just too demanding and wanted it to happen too soon,” Stewart said. “The program had been down for so long and it was a tough situation. We took a shot at it and I will forever be grateful for the opportunity.”
Stewart’s three years at VMI taught him a lot about himself.
“I was too hands-on as a micromanager. I never was that cocky like I invented the game, but I was full of myself and pretty sure-fire,” he admitted. “The things I didn’t do well I’ve eliminated from my repertoire and won’t repeat again. I learned to hire good people and delegate after that – I’m a whole lot more about delegating now than I was back then.”
After a year off from coaching in 1997, Stewart spent two seasons in the Canadian Football League before returning to West Virginia as a member of Don Nehlen’s coaching staff in 2000. When Nehlen announced his retirement 10 months later, Stewart was the only Nehlen assistant new coach Rich Rodriguez retained.
“Rich was very good to me,” Stewart said. “Rich gave me work for seven years and I in turn gave him loyalty for seven years. I was happy for him (taking the Michigan job) if that’s, indeed, what he wanted to do. I was cool with that.”
Today, seven months after he led West Virginia to its finest hour on the football field, Bill Stewart now prepares for his first full season as the Mountaineers’ head coach. He has assembled a fantastic coaching staff full of men of great character who want to coach at West Virginia University and believe in the possibilities the University possesses. Their best qualities are the qualities West Virginians admire the most – hard work, loyalty, honesty and humility.
Stewart continues to work long hours but he says he is learning to manage his time much better, especially when it comes to speaking engagements. He has come to realize that it’s OK to say no once in a while so he can see his son’s doubleheader or steal a few extra minutes with his bride. During the summertime he demanded that his coaches take a week away from the office to spend time with their families because he remembers those long, empty hours he spent at the office away from his wife and new son when he was at VMI.
Stewart is comfortable sharing the spotlight with his assistant coaches, oftentimes referring questions to them about specific players or strategies. He works both sides of the practice field, observing, encouraging, exhorting and sometimes disciplining when the need arises. He refuses to curse out a player or challenge his dignity. The years have taught him to think about what he says instead of saying what he thinks. And when the effort is not to his liking he’s not against having the team run the stadium steps or do some up-downs – Bill Stewart’s special way of killing them with kindness.
They say old Coach Stew is as soft as a pillow. His players say when you push into that pillow too far you run right into a steel bar. The players are always first and foremost to Bill Stewart. It was, is and always will be the No. 1 priority in his football program.
“If a parent calls like this morning and we are getting ready for a staff meeting I have to take that call,” Stewart said. “I told the guys to start the meeting and I’ll be there when I’m finished.
“The coaches coach and I worry about the attitudes. That’s what I’m in charge of,” Stewart said. “I’m in charge of the attitudes and the overall atmosphere. That’s all … the mojo, that’s what I really worry about.
“This isn’t some boys club; we get after them sometimes and hurt their feelings - you can do this better or that better. But my whole deal is morale, the attitude and chemistry. If the chemistry is right then you can do anything. Nothing can stop you.”
The man knows what he speaks. Bill Stewart’s coaching career is a testament to the power of positive thinking - mixed in, of course, with a little humility. Every so often his soon-to-be 14-year-old son will remind him where his priorities lie.
“He’ll look at me and say, ‘Man you’re not that special. You’re still my old pop,’” said Stewart, grinning. “I say, ‘Thanks buddy, that’s good to know.’”
