That wave Dana Holgorsen’s 12^th-ranked West Virginia University football team is riding right now has Mountaineer football fans from Weirton to Welch, Martinsburg to Matewan, and all points in between riding right along with them.

 

What was once a small ripple has turned into something that continues to grow bigger and bigger each week.

 

If you recall, the Big 12 coaches earlier this summer picked West Virginia to finish seventh out of 10 teams in the league standings this season. The only buzz going on in Morgantown were those pesky cicadas that came out of the ground earlier this summer only to return for another 17-year hibernation.

 

Well, we’re now seven weeks into the college football season and the buzz is beginning to pick up around the state with West Virginia being one of just nine undefeated teams from Power 5 conferences still remaining.

 

ABC will be in town for tomorrow’s TCU game and Milan Puskar Stadium will be rocking once again with another sellout crowd in the books.

 

Each week this team has gotten a little bit better, a little bit more battled tested and a little bit more confident. Nobody cares who gets the credit and nobody cares what others are saying or writing about them - good or bad.

 

“It makes no difference to me,” said quarterback Skyler Howard following last Saturday’s 48-17 victory over Texas Tech. “The same people that are bringing our name into the conversation now left it out before. We don’t pay attention to it and I don’t care, personally.”

 

Holgorsen repeated that sentiment earlier this week.

 

“I think this is a good group of kids that like each other and like playing the game, and they didn’t listen when everybody was saying we sucked and they’re not going to listen when everyone is saying we’re good. It’s pretty much as simple as that,” he explained.

 

There is only one other person living in the state who knows exactly what Holgorsen is going through right now with his football team - Don Nehlen.

 

West Virginia’s Hall of Fame coach had one of these seasons back in 1993 when he took a team from nowhere (picked in the middle of the pack in his conference) and steadily led them up the ladder until they were looking down at the rest of the country.

 

Had there been a college football playoff back in 1993, West Virginia would have been one of the four teams in it - and just about everyone from Seattle to Miami, Bangor to San Diego, and all points in between would have gone out of their minds.

 

These days, Dandy Don has a radio show he does on Monday nights with former Marshall coach Bob Pruett during the football season, and he also does a little motivational speaking to businesses from time to time on how to improve productivity.

 

He used a business analogy when I asked him earlier this week how a coach can take a team from out of nowhere, build them up and then keep them focused on the task at hand each week during a long and grueling season.

 

“No. 1, team building starts early and the most important thing in team building is the head of whatever you’re doing - coaching a football team, running an insurance company or running an athletic program - you’ve got to make the people or the players believe in your plan and then make sure they can execute it,” said Nehlen. “If a leader has a great passion for what they’re doing it will rub off on those below them. In football, most teams are the reflection of the personality of the guy who is coaching them.”

 

In Nehlen’s case, that meant always having positive people in his organization, and making sure everyone felt important - no matter what role they had on the team.

 

“I guarantee you Dana has somehow got his kids feeling important,” said Nehlen. “They feel like they are part of it … you know yourself, if you go to work and there are guys who are not contributing anything or they’re not doing anything or they just walk around with a bad attitude, before long they’re not worth anything.

 

“Well, the sad thing is they will try and get other people to feel like they do and that’s why the leader is so very, very important,” Nehlen continued. “I think one of the best things I ever did as a head football coach was when our season was over I spent a half hour with every kid on my team and we discussed everything. We discussed his academic progress, we discussed the weight room, we discussed what he had to do and then I told him how special he was and how important he was to the team.

 

“I’d say, ‘Listen Tommy, even though (the quarterback) gets all of the ink, without you we’re dead because your day to shine is Tuesday and Wednesday. His day to shine is Saturday, but you are just as important in my eyes as my quarterback.’ And when kids feel like they are part of the success the team has then you’ve got something going for you.”

 

In ‘93, Nehlen had to deal with a tricky situation because he had two outstanding quarterbacks on his roster requiring all of his knowledge and know-how to make it work.

 

That year he had an established guy already in the program in Darren Studstill, and then came along Notre Dame transfer Jack Kelchner, who became sort of a folk hero in the state.

 

Both were damn good quarterbacks, and they both knew it.

 

“That was tough with Jake and Darren and what made it even tougher was they were a different kind of quarterback,” Nehlen recalled. “One was a guy that wanted to get out on the perimeter and the other guy would have rather sat back there and threw it. What overrides all of that in team building is the top guy has to be honest and the reason Jake and Darren were so good together is because of how honest I was with them.”

 

Nehlen continued.

 

“I said, ‘Hey, I’m not sure which one of you turkeys is the best, Darren, you can do some things, and Jake, you can some things, so here is what we’re going to do’ and that’s what we did. The honesty, the consistency and the fairness of the leader - and the passion of the leader - will funnel down to that football team and they will become a reflection of you,” he said.

 

Later on, when his team began experiencing success and the outsiders started jumping on board, Nehlen was able to keep his team grounded by reminding them that it was only them when no one else was with them.

 

Which is what Holgorsen is doing right now with his guys.

 

“That’s an everyday deal and it’s much, much more difficult now because I didn’t have to deal with all this texting, tweeting and all this stuff,” said Nehlen. “I had to deal with the newspaper and a little bit of television, but you’ve got to make them understand, ‘Hey, these guys make their living writing articles and we make our living by performing on Saturday and in order to perform on Saturday we’ve got to get better because everybody is aiming for us.

 

“That team has got to understand they’ll never stay the same. They are either going to slip or they are going to climb the ladder. They won’t stay on the same rung,” he added.

 

Nehlen’s 1993 team started on the bottom rung and climbed all the way to the top. We’re about to see how high Dana Holgorsen’s team can climb in 2016, beginning with tomorrow’s game against TCU, which Holgorsen says is his team’s toughest test to date.

 

“Great teams expect to win and normally you get what you expect,” said Nehlen. “If you expect to be good in life, chances are you are going to be good. If you don’t expect to be good, then you probably won’t let yourself down.”

 

Put another way, if the Mountaineers want to win on Saturday they might, but if they expect to win on Saturday they probably will - this coming from the man who has done it before.

 

We’ll see you in Morgantown.

 

Have a great weekend!