I'm always on the lookout for a good story to tell, and I think I've got a couple good ones for you today as we inch closer toward Sunday's lid lifter against our old friends from Blacksburg.
 
Bud Foster, Virginia Tech's veteran defensive strategist, had some interesting comments about the West Virginia-Virginia Tech series.
 
Foster, beginning his 31^st season with the Hokies, was in on the ground floor of Tech's ascension from a minor-bowl-contending program in the early 1980s to one of the most respected college football teams in the country by the late 1990s.
 
If you recall, when Frank Beamer took over the Tech program in 1987 the Hokies were on probation from the Bill Dooley days and Beamer endured tough sledding during his first six years in Blacksburg.
 
In fact, it was fairly common knowledge in football circles at the time that if he didn't have success in 1993 a pink slip was likely forthcoming.
 
Well, Beamer won nine games that season, beat Indiana in the Weed Eater Bowl and his program soon blew up when he got that great run of Tidewater-area players in the late 1990s, headlined by once-in-a-lifetime quarterback Michael Vick.
 
Foster was a part of all of that, and he said earlier this week one of the college teams Tech emulated when Beamer first got to Tech was Don Nehlen's West Virginia program.
 
At the time, Nehlen had things going at WVU with quarterback Major Harris, the Mountaineers reaching the national championship game in 1989 where they lost to Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl.
 
"West Virginia was at a point in their program where they were at a level above where we aspired to be," Foster recalled. "I'm just talking about everything, from their stadium, to their facilities to where they were in the rankings and those types of things."
 
West Virginia had just completed its first major expansion to Mountaineer Field in 1985, increasing the seating capacity from 50,000 to 63,500 while Tech's open-ended Lane Stadium seated approximately 50,000.
 
But Tech stuck with Beamer, a former Hokie player, and when AD Jim Weaver came on the scene, he doubled down on his coach and invested a lot of money in Virginia Tech football in the 1990s when Beamer finally experienced success.
 
The Hokies were soon able to build a wall around the Tidewater area where they were getting most of their best players, Weaver mobilized Tech's athletic donors to build impressive facilities and Hokie football soon exploded.
 
In the meantime, West Virginia was unable to keep up financially, didn't have the benefit of the homegrown talent Tech had access to and Nehlen was nearing the end of his long and successful coaching tenure in Morgantown.
 
That is how one program went from becoming a near-automatic win on the schedule to one that won seven of the last 10 meetings in the series from 1996-2005.
 
Two of those victories during Beamer's peak seasons in 2000 and 2001 were by margins of 28 and 35 points over the Mountaineers.
 
Foster said a 12-10 victory over West Virginia in Morgantown really gave Tech the momentum it needed for the greater success it enjoyed in the 1990s.
 
"The first time we beat them on a goal line stand with Major Harris," Foster said, "that was a big win for our program as we were in the early Beamer era.
 
"If we wanted to get (the Virginia Tech program to West Virginia's level), we needed to beat somebody like that so it was a big game for us taking that next step towards where we wanted to go as a program," he added.
 
Another big victory Foster readily recalls was the 1999 win in Morgantown that preserved Virginia Tech's undefeated season and set the Hokies up to face Florida State in the 2000 national championship game.
 
The Hokies rallied from a point down with about a minute to go in the game in what has since become known in Blacksburg as "The Miracle in Morgantown."
 
"That kind of catapulted us to the national championship game," he recalled.
 
Foster correctly points out the history and tradition of this football game far predates the Don Nehlen-Frank Beamer coaching tenures, however.
 
"If you go back through the history, there have been a couple games that were lopsided, but if you go back through those scores there are a lot of low-scoring, tight football games," he said. "That is a rivalry. I think the last 33 times we've played they've won 17 and we've won 16. When you get both teams competing and having a chance to win, that's what these games have been."
 
Even though the two programs haven't faced each other on the gridiron in 12 years, Foster said he's constantly reminded about the rivalry.
 
"I know where I live I'm surrounded by Mountaineers and I know this, there will be Blue and Gold flying for a year or more, depending upon the outcome of that game," he said.
 
"Or," he added, "I'll fly my flag pretty proudly."
   
If you haven't already done so, check out ESPN.com senior writer Ryan McGee's excellent, long-form story with plenty of Mountaineer football references in his piece on Alabama coach Nick Saban and Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher.
 
Saban grew up in Monongah and was the starting quarterback for one of the outstanding prep teams in state history in 1968 that included terrific WVU tailback Kerry Marbury.
 
Saban wasn't deemed good enough by coach Bobby Bowden to earn a scholarship to play at WVU, instead going to play for Don James at Kent State, but he did spend a couple of seasons in Morgantown on Frank Cignetti's Mountaineer staff as a defensive backfield coach in 1978 and 1979.
 
One of his star pupils was longtime NFL cornerback Jerry Holmes.
 
Fisher played at Clarksburg Liberty and like Saban, didn't receive a scholarship to play for the Mountaineers, but his coaching career path includes many ties to West Virginia University. His top offensive strategist at Florida State today is Rick Trickett, who had two different stops at West Virginia, coaching with Cignetti in the late 1970s before returning to Morgantown in the early 2000s to work for Rich Rodriguez.
 
The story can be accessed here: http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/20495103/alabama-crimson-tide-nick-saban-florida-state-seminoles-jimbo-fisher-west-virginia-roots
   
If you missed Thursday night's Dana Holgorsen Show on our new and improved WVU Gameday App, a free download available through the Apple and Google Play stores, Holgorsen revealed a couple of interesting tidbits about his team leading into the Sunday's opener.
 
He announced two permanent captains to begin the season - fullback Elijah Wellman and linebacker Al-Rasheed Benton.
 
"I've done it a little bit different," he said. "Sometimes we have the players vote, which turns into a popularity contest which is really not what a captain is made of at times. Sometimes we have the coaches vote. What I did when I first got here was a new week it was a new captain.
 
"And I didn't like that either because some of the guys I put out there game one weren't even on the team game 10, but we did this last year," he continued. "It was pretty clear cut, we named two guys right before the first game - center Tyler Orlosky and linebacker Justin Arndt. They had the respect of the team and were really in-tune with what was going on."
 
Then during the season, as additional players were deemed worthy, he introduced additional captains. Holgorsen said he plans to continue doing that this season.
 
The other little tidbit of news on the team is the players' decision to wear jackets and ties on airplane trips this year.
 
"This came as a surprise to me because I've always been under the assumption that these guys wanted to travel as comfortably as they possible can," Holgorsen said. "They came to me and said, 'Coach, we want to look good.' I said, 'You look good. We've got great Nike stuff. The wind suits look great; great tennis shoes.' They go, 'No, we want to look like you.' I go, 'Well, good luck with that' and shook my head a little bit."
 
So Holgorsen had his team outfitted for jackets, dress slacks and shoes and they will wear them on the airplane during road trips this fall.
 
"There are about 80 of our guys (on the travel squad) who are going to be in nice Daniels sport coats, fancy khaki pants and a nice pair of shoes," Holgorsen said. "Some of them even got bow ties."
 
The great thing about this is the players will be able to keep these to wear for job interviews, school presentations or on special occasions.
 
"For a lot of these guys, this is the first suit these guys have had," Holgorsen said. "Thanks to (director of athletics) Shane (Lyons) and the administration, because, obviously, it's an expense to them, but I think it's important (to the players). They can go wear it on a job interview or whatever and the next year they get another one. I think it's important that they have some stuff they look good in and can be proud of."
   
Penn State, unrated in the preseason women's soccer top 25, will arrive in Morgantown this Saturday as the nation's top-ranked women's soccer team.
 
Hard-working women's soccer sports information director Shannon McNamara informs me this will be the first time Dick Dlesk Stadium will serve as the host venue for the No. 1-ranked women's soccer team in the country not named West Virginia University.
 
The big game, pitting the No. 1 and No. 6 teams in the country, is scheduled to kick off at 7 p.m.
   
I was saddened to learn about the passing yesterday of Villanova coach Rollie Massimino, whose 1985 Wildcat team made one of the most unlikely runs in NCAA Tournament history when they defeated heavily favored Georgetown in finals, 66-64.
 

That victory was Massimino's calling card, eventually helping him earn more money when he left Villanova to succeed Jerry Tarkanian at UNLV in 1992.
 
But Massimino's tenure in Vegas was brief, yet he pressed on coaching at Cleveland State and then later at NAIA Keiser University in West Palm Beach, Florida, right up until shortly before his death at age 82.
 
Earlier in his career, Massimino had a pretty extensive history with West Virginia University, his Wildcat teams frequently facing the Mountaineers when the two programs played each other in the Eastern Collegiate Basketball League (ECBL) and later the Eastern 8 before the Wildcats jumped to the Big East following the 1980 season.
 
Massimino's Villanova teams faced West Virginia 11 times, winning seven. Two of Villanova's victories over WVU propelled it to the NCAA Tournament; in 1978, when Rollie's team knocked off West Virginia, 63-59, in the ECBL finals and again in 1980 when he defeated WVU, 74-62, in the championship game of the Eastern 8 tournament at Pittsburgh's Civic Arena.
 
Joedy Gardner, West Virginia's embattled coach who lost his job shortly after falling to Villanova in the '78 Eastern 8 finals, recalled in 2010 Massimino's unique sense of humor during a courtside visit before that game.
 
In the midst of a disappointing 10-win regular season, Gardner knew his WVU tenure was likely over unless his team pulled off another miracle upset victory to reach the NCAA Tournament.
 
"Rollie comes up to me before the game and he says, 'Coach, I've got a big family and I've got a big bill to feed my kids and we can't have you beating me now,'" Gardner recalled. "He was saying he had to win the game just to keep his job …"
 
Probably the best West Virginia team of that era, Gardner's '77 squad during Bob Huggins' senior season, met its Waterloo against Massimino's Wildcats in the ECBL tournament semifinals.
 
WVU had an opportunity to win the game in regulation, leading 69-67 with 39 seconds to play, and possessing the basketball.
 
Keep in mind, back then there was no shot clock or 3-point shot so things were looking pretty good for the Mountaineers.
 
So, Gardner called timeout to put an extra free throw shooter into the game, freshman guard Dana Perno, who ended up losing the ball at midcourt. His turnover led to guard Rory Sparrow's game-tying jumper nine seconds later.
 
Huggins' shot attempt to win the game in regulation didn't drop, and Villanova, despite losing star forward Larry Herron to fouls, outscored West Virginia, 14-6, in the extra session to advance to the ECBL finals where it knocked off Duquesne in the championship game.
 
Twice, Huggins missed out on reaching the NCAA Tournament as a WVU player, once when John Thompson's upstart Georgetown Hoyas defeated West Virginia, 62-61, in the ECAC tournament finals in Morgantown in 1975 during Huggins' sophomore season, and again in 1977 when Massimino's Wildcats outlasted the Mountaineers at the Spectrum in Philadelphia.
 
Coach Mass was certainly one of a kind.  
And finally, Chuck Cox, the son of 1940s-era Mountaineer football player Clarence "Bud" Cox, recently sent me one of the most unique items of West Virginia University sports history I have ever come across – 15 minutes of Jack Fleming's radio call from the 1949 Sun Bowl game against Texas Mines in El Paso, Texas.
 
Of course, there is an interesting backstory to this.
 
Chuck's father played on Parkersburg High's 1943 state championship team and joined the Marines during World War II. When he returned stateside he entered West Virginia University in 1946 on the GI Bill.
 
Bud came out for football that fall, made the team, and eventually became WVU's top pass-catcher in 1948 when Wing-T expert Dudley DeGroot was hired away from the pro ranks to succeed Bill Kern as West Virginia's football coach.
 
He was responsible for WVU's first touchdown in the Sun Bowl, a 25-yard pass from Jimmy Walthall, as the Mountaineers stunned favored Texas Mines, now Texas El-Paso, 21-12.
 
Following his playing career, the elder Cox obtained a portion of the game broadcast that was made, on-site, on 78 RPM transcription discs before they were shipped to different stations throughout the state to air later, one of those being the Parkersburg station.
 
The Parkersburg station's sports director, knowing that Cox had scored West Virginia's first touchdown in the second quarter, pulled that specific disc out of the station's game recordings and later gave it to him.
 
Cox kept the recording until his death 15 years ago when his son Chuck discovered it among some other personal items preserved from his WVU playing days.
 
Chuck eventually located someone in Florida capable of transferring the audio into a usable format, and Wednesday he passed along to me the digital file, a portion of which you can listen to right now.
 


The announcer calling the game that afternoon was a very young Fleming, just two years into his long tenure of describing West Virginia University football and basketball action. It is clear to the ear that Fleming's voice had not yet matured into what most of us remember from him when he was in his prime.
 
Considering that very little is known to exist of Fleming's pre-MSN announcing days, this is truly a once-in-a-lifetime discovery!
 
And through the wonders of the Internet, we are capable of sharing it with you today.
 
Have a great weekend, we'll see you in D.C. and Let's Go Mountaineers!