Mountaineer Flashback: '88 Maryland
September 11, 2014 11:04 AM | General
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| Our own Dale Wolfley provides protection on this PAT try during the 1988 game against Maryland at Mountaineer Field |
| WVU Athletic Communications photo |
For many years, the West Virginia-Maryland football game was always considered a barometer for the type of season West Virginia was going to have.
Beat the Terrapins and WVU was looking at a good year; play poorly against them and the season was headed down the tubes - at least that’s way Mountaineer fans typically have viewed things.
Last year that certainly turned out to be the case. Same deal back in 1999 when West Virginia got whacked over the head, 33-0, at Byrd Stadium.
There have been times, too, when West Virginia lost to Maryland and ended up having a successful season, such as in 2002 when WVU lost to the Terps and ended up finishing second in the Big East, or back in 1994 when West Virginia fell to Maryland but wound up going to a bowl game anyway.
On the flip side, there have been many instances when West Virginia beat Maryland only to finish the year without the type of season Mountaineer fans had envisioned.
That happened in 1977 when WVU stunned the 11th-rated Terps in College Park, but the year ended with the Mountaineers winning just four more games. It happened, too, in 1991 and 1992 when West Virginia beat the Terps only to conclude those two seasons by staying home for the holidays.
So this barometer stuff is sometimes right and sometimes wrong, depending upon your point of view and how deeply you investigate things.
But there was one instance when West Virginia’s performance against the Terps clearly impacted the outcome of a season. The year was 1988 when the Mountaineers produced the first undefeated, untied regular season record in school history.
To this day, the players on that undefeated ‘88 team believe the victory over Maryland in Morgantown on September 17, 1988 was the one that put them on the path to perfection.
A year prior, in 1987, West Virginia had finally rediscovered its identity with quarterback Major Harris, but the Mountaineers didn’t have much to show for it.
West Virginia played well at Penn State. And lost. WVU went toe-to-toe with sixth-ranked Syracuse in the Carrier Dome. And lost. The Mountaineers slugged it out with 11th-ranked Oklahoma State out in El Paso, Texas in the Sun Bowl, Harris and Co. going play-for-play with Thurman Thomas, Barry Sanders, Hart Lee Dykes, Mike Gundy and the rest of those outstanding players Pat Jones had assembled out in Stillwater.
And lost.
Then, to begin the 1988 season, West Virginia went right through Bowling Green and Fullerton State like a hot knife through butter, yet there were still lingering doubts about how good this team really was and if it could finish the deal against the better teams on its schedule.
Right away, those thoughts were amplified when Maryland jumped out to an early 14-0 lead behind the legs of running back Michael Beasley (yes, the same Michael Beasley who wised up and switched to the good guys the following season).
Beasley scored on touchdown runs of 11 and 74 yards to put West Virginia in a big early hole.
“I remember when Beasley hit that 74-yard run,” recalled former Mountaineer defensive back David Lockwood a few years ago. “I had an angle to tackle him and I got pushed from behind and I thought I had got clipped. (WVU teammate) Darrell Whitmore took the wrong angle and he tripped me up.”
“That was the first time we were behind that year,” wide receiver Calvin Phillips remembered in 2008. “For a minute it was a shock, ‘Are we as good as we think we are?’”
West Virginia coach Don Nehlen had always placed Maryland right near the top of his pecking order of big games, almost on the same level as the Backyard Brawl, Penn State and Virginia Tech.
Nehlen still points to a tough 17-13 victory his team got in College Park in 1981 as one of the big early moments in his turnaround of Mountaineer football. All of the things that he preached to his team about never giving up and playing a full 60 minutes came to fruition against the Terps that late September afternoon.
The reason Maryland took on a more prominent place in the hierarchy of important regional games was because it typically took place in mid-September and was usually the first real test for the Mountaineers after a few warm-up games.
“With Coach Nehlen that game was ALWAYS in red (on the schedule board in the team meeting room),” recalled offensive lineman Dale Wolfley, now director of the WVU Varsity Club and Mountaineer Sports Network from IMG pregame radio host. “It was always our first red-letter game.”
In the first quarter of the ‘88 Maryland game, Don Nehlen was certainly seeing red.
“We’re down 14-0 and coach came over to the offensive line on the sidelines and in his unique style he said, ‘We’re not throwing the damned ball the rest of this half! I want two tight ends and we’re going to ram it down their throats!’”
Imagining the fiery Nehlen doing that just makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. “As soon as he said that the entire offensive line looked at each other and said, ‘Yeah!’” remembered offensive tackle John Stroia.
“I remember throwing a pass behind Keith Winn and he kind of snatched the ball off of the defender,” said Harris. “That kind of got us going.”
The Winn touchdown grab tied the game at 14, and the Mountaineers added a Charlie Baumann 39-yard field goal and a Harris 3-yard touchdown run near the end of the half to take a 24-21 lead into the locker room.
“They made a couple of plays early but it’s a four-quarter game,” said Taylor, who owns the distinction of being the only known regular Mountaineer running back in school history to never lose a yard rushing during his collegiate career. “We don’t put up all of our stats in the first quarter so it’s going to come. We had to just buckle down and keep doing our job.”
They certainly did.
The offense scored virtually every time it had the football in the second half and the defense eventually got to Maryland quarterback Neil O’Donnell, which then led to them getting to his backup, Scott Zolak, too.
The pair of future NFL quarterbacks combined to complete just 8-of-19 passes for 99 yards with three interceptions, one of which Bo Orlando returned for a score.
West Virginia pulled away in the fourth quarter by scoring 21 points to register a resounding 55-24 victory over the Terps.
“When you’re trying to go undefeated there is going to be a game or two when you’ve got to come back,” Harris explained. “If you’re 9-0 and you’ve never been down you might panic and lose the game. But that game was early in the year and we came back and beat them and that was huge.”
Harris admits he struggles to recall other specific details from that ’88 Maryland game, but the ‘89 game in College Park remains crystal clear in his mind.
That game was played in brutally hot conditions that wound up being like a hike through the desert for the players. Guys were dropping like flies all afternoon, including offensive guard Dale Wolfley, who passed out in the shower after the game because of dehydration.
In fact, it was so hot that Harris’ center, Jeff Price, threw up all of the football just before he was about to bend down to snap the ball. When Harris saw the football completely covered with Price’s breakfast from that morning he wasn’t too thrilled about running a play.
“That was crazy,” Harris laughed.
Wolfley was lined up right next to Price when that happened and he said other players also became nauseous. It was almost like a replay of the best cook Uncle Sam ever saw, Frank Costanza, serving up some bad meat to the troops during that memorable Seinfeld episode many years ago – the episode when Costanza unforgettably said that he sent 16 of our best boys to the latrine.
“The Maryland nose guard lined up across from Price started puking when he saw that,” laughed Wolfley. “It was unbelievable. That was the hottest day I can ever remember.”
West Virginia won that game, too, 14-10, and went on to play Clemson in the Gator Bowl. Two years prior, the Mountaineers weren’t so fortunate, losing 25-20 to the Terps after jumping out to an early 14-0 lead.
Harris, then a freshman, also has vivid memories of that game.
“I threw an interception and the guy returning it (linebacker Kevin Walker) ran me over,” Harris said. “I’ll never forget that. It was the funniest thing ever. I throw an interception so now I’ve got to play defense. Well the guy caught it and he’s running back and I remember running over and trying to tackle him and he ran me over.”
West Virginia’s loss to Maryland in ‘87 was another instance of the Mountaineers getting beyond a loss to the Terps to have a successful season. So much for Maryland being a barometer game that year.
Whether or not the outcome of Saturday’s game will define West Virginia’s 2014 season remains to be seen. Sometimes beating Maryland has led to big things, other times it hasn’t, but there is no denying the significance the game has taken on with the school’s two fan bases.
Capital One Field at Byrd Stadium will assuredly be packed on Saturday afternoon, and many of those fans will be wearing Mountaineer gold and blue.
“I know the history of this game is important to everybody,” said West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen. “It’s important to our players. Recruiting is important in Maryland, so we have a lot of guys on the East Coast who we recruit who will pay attention to this game. It’s something we’re fired up about and look forward to.”
“I don’t remember any game with them ever being easy,” added Wolfley. “Even though Maryland was never in our conference, the game always felt like it was a conference game.”
It should have that feeling once again on Saturday, especially after the way Maryland doled it out to West Virginia last year in Baltimore.
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