Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks
Football Friday - LB Shae Campbell's Ascension
November 02, 2018 06:55 PM | Football
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia's sprouting middle linebacker Shea Campbell has plenty of deep football roots.
His grandfather is Gene Steratore, father of recently retired NFL official Gene Steratore Jr. whose opinions we now hear on CBS NFL telecasts each Sunday as its rules expert.
Grandpa Gene, by way of Shae's mother Kristen Schweiss, is equally well-known around these parts for his time spent as a Pitt Panther football player in the mid-1950s before transitioning into a longtime fair-minded area college football and basketball official.
He arbitrated many games at old Mountaineer Field and the WVU Coliseum through the years when some Mountaineers students, knowing Steratore's Pitt Panther roots, took to calling him "Gene The Bad Call Machine."
Grandpa Gene's major college debut actually occurred during a WVU-Pitt basketball contest at the old Field House in the late 1960s when popular local referee John "Sheriff" Tiano pulled a hammy and couldn't finish the game.
Sheriff Tiano had his own issues with Pitt rooters because of his West Virginia residency, but that is a story for another time.
Steratore, recalling the game for local sports historian George Von Benko in Von Benko's profile of Steratore for the Fayette County (Pa.) Sports Hall of Fame website, said he was actually sitting on the Panther bench as a guest of his old coach Bob Timmons when he got called into action.
A reluctant Steratore pointed out his obvious Pitt ties to WVU coach Bucky Waters and athletic director Red Brown, but they didn't seem to care too much. The way things were going for the Mountaineers, one biased ref wasn't enough to make up for a really, really bad Pitt basketball team.
"I was introduced and got a standing ovation from the crowd; they were happy to see the game continue, but the first call I made they turned on me and booed," Steratore told Von Benko.
And Mountaineer fans continued booing him.
But they're certainly not booing his grandson Shea, who came in and bailed out the 12th-ranked Mountaineer football team big time when starting middle linebacker Dylan Tonkery was put on the shelf with his own hammy issues.
Campbell got his first college start at Iowa State and performed reasonably well against the Cyclones considering the circumstances, which, incidentally, were fairly similar to his granddad's major college debut all those years ago.
Shea's second start against Baylor last Thursday night went much better when he was in on a handful of tackles and made a second-quarter interception that led to a Martell Pettaway 33-yard touchdown run.
The coaching staff thought so much of Campbell's performance that it named him its player of the game.
"I think Shea is playing really well right now," West Virginia defensive coordinator Tony Gibson noted. "He's making a lot of plays and making things happen."
A quick glance at the stat sheet reveals that Campbell, in just two starts, has three fewer tackles than Tonkery's 22, although six of Tonk's stops have occurred behind the line of scrimmage.
Campbell is also playing well as outside linebacker David Long Jr.'s wingman, allowing the gambling junior the opportunity to continue rolling the dice and hunting for those big plays.
As a result, when Tonk finally regains his good health, he's going to have a fight on his hands replacing the 5-foot-11, 240-pound Campbell, who had zero Division I offers following his senior year at Morgantown High.
Campbell said he could have gone to Fairmont State or some of the other local Division II schools just as Grandpa Gene could have continued calling those California (Pa.) JV games back in the late 1960s.
But Grandpa Gene possessed a Greater Aspiration Gene, which he has clearly passed on to Shea.
"I wanted to play at a school that was going to have 60,000 people in the stands (or 100,000 come Saturday at Darrell K Royal Stadium)," Campbell said earlier this week. "I wanted the big deal because I knew I was capable of it."
Back in the day, that meant starting out in the auxiliary locker room with the rest of the walk-ons and working your way up to the varsity locker room. That's changed today, but it doesn't matter at what program you're playing, walk-ons just don't get the same benefit of the doubt that scholarship guys get because there is so much more invested in a player on scholarship.
Therefore, the window of opportunity is extremely, extremely small for walk-ons - something Campbell admitted he came to quickly understand in high school when he was driving all over God's creation trying to get college recruiters to take notice.
Despite the lack of interest, he always considered himself a major college football player even when others had their doubts.
"If you treat yourself like a walk-on then you are going to feel like one," he explained. "If you look at it more like I'm a player on this team and I have a role then you are going to feel different about it."
It helps that his coach, an old NAIA defensive back, has his own Greater Aspiration Gene. Down in Glenville they still talk about the time the undersized and scrappy Tony Gibson played the entire 1993 NAIA national championship game against East Central Oklahoma with a broken arm.
He refused to see a doctor until after the game was finished. That was his window of opportunity, and he sure as hell wasn't going to let someone else have it.
Now, Campbell is forcing his coach to make some tough choices because this is now HIS window of opportunity.
"He always says he's going to play the best 11 guys, regardless of who you are," Campbell said. "When you do get a chance you have to make the best of that opportunity. There is a lot to be said for that, because you don't get a lot of chances."
Great point, Shea. Now, Campbell's stellar play is forcing another difficult decision, this one coming from Grandpa Gene.
Although he will never renounce his Pitt heritage nor send back those yearly Beef Jerky Bowl ticket applications he receives in the mail from the Panther ticket office, he's been forced to pay much closer attention to Mountaineer football games from his home in nearby Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
"When I told him I was going to go play at WVU he was kind of like, 'Now I've got to cheer for WVU,'" Campbell laughed. "He was a little upset about that."
There is some good in it for Grandpa Gene, though. The West Virginia games are far easier to locate on his TV set than those Pitt games on the ACC Network.
His grandfather is Gene Steratore, father of recently retired NFL official Gene Steratore Jr. whose opinions we now hear on CBS NFL telecasts each Sunday as its rules expert.
Grandpa Gene, by way of Shae's mother Kristen Schweiss, is equally well-known around these parts for his time spent as a Pitt Panther football player in the mid-1950s before transitioning into a longtime fair-minded area college football and basketball official.
He arbitrated many games at old Mountaineer Field and the WVU Coliseum through the years when some Mountaineers students, knowing Steratore's Pitt Panther roots, took to calling him "Gene The Bad Call Machine."
Grandpa Gene's major college debut actually occurred during a WVU-Pitt basketball contest at the old Field House in the late 1960s when popular local referee John "Sheriff" Tiano pulled a hammy and couldn't finish the game.
Sheriff Tiano had his own issues with Pitt rooters because of his West Virginia residency, but that is a story for another time.
Steratore, recalling the game for local sports historian George Von Benko in Von Benko's profile of Steratore for the Fayette County (Pa.) Sports Hall of Fame website, said he was actually sitting on the Panther bench as a guest of his old coach Bob Timmons when he got called into action.
A reluctant Steratore pointed out his obvious Pitt ties to WVU coach Bucky Waters and athletic director Red Brown, but they didn't seem to care too much. The way things were going for the Mountaineers, one biased ref wasn't enough to make up for a really, really bad Pitt basketball team."I was introduced and got a standing ovation from the crowd; they were happy to see the game continue, but the first call I made they turned on me and booed," Steratore told Von Benko.
And Mountaineer fans continued booing him.
But they're certainly not booing his grandson Shea, who came in and bailed out the 12th-ranked Mountaineer football team big time when starting middle linebacker Dylan Tonkery was put on the shelf with his own hammy issues.
Campbell got his first college start at Iowa State and performed reasonably well against the Cyclones considering the circumstances, which, incidentally, were fairly similar to his granddad's major college debut all those years ago.
Shea's second start against Baylor last Thursday night went much better when he was in on a handful of tackles and made a second-quarter interception that led to a Martell Pettaway 33-yard touchdown run.
The coaching staff thought so much of Campbell's performance that it named him its player of the game.
"I think Shea is playing really well right now," West Virginia defensive coordinator Tony Gibson noted. "He's making a lot of plays and making things happen."
A quick glance at the stat sheet reveals that Campbell, in just two starts, has three fewer tackles than Tonkery's 22, although six of Tonk's stops have occurred behind the line of scrimmage.
Campbell is also playing well as outside linebacker David Long Jr.'s wingman, allowing the gambling junior the opportunity to continue rolling the dice and hunting for those big plays.
As a result, when Tonk finally regains his good health, he's going to have a fight on his hands replacing the 5-foot-11, 240-pound Campbell, who had zero Division I offers following his senior year at Morgantown High.
Campbell said he could have gone to Fairmont State or some of the other local Division II schools just as Grandpa Gene could have continued calling those California (Pa.) JV games back in the late 1960s.
But Grandpa Gene possessed a Greater Aspiration Gene, which he has clearly passed on to Shea.
"I wanted to play at a school that was going to have 60,000 people in the stands (or 100,000 come Saturday at Darrell K Royal Stadium)," Campbell said earlier this week. "I wanted the big deal because I knew I was capable of it."
Back in the day, that meant starting out in the auxiliary locker room with the rest of the walk-ons and working your way up to the varsity locker room. That's changed today, but it doesn't matter at what program you're playing, walk-ons just don't get the same benefit of the doubt that scholarship guys get because there is so much more invested in a player on scholarship.
Therefore, the window of opportunity is extremely, extremely small for walk-ons - something Campbell admitted he came to quickly understand in high school when he was driving all over God's creation trying to get college recruiters to take notice.
Despite the lack of interest, he always considered himself a major college football player even when others had their doubts.
"If you treat yourself like a walk-on then you are going to feel like one," he explained. "If you look at it more like I'm a player on this team and I have a role then you are going to feel different about it."
It helps that his coach, an old NAIA defensive back, has his own Greater Aspiration Gene. Down in Glenville they still talk about the time the undersized and scrappy Tony Gibson played the entire 1993 NAIA national championship game against East Central Oklahoma with a broken arm.
He refused to see a doctor until after the game was finished. That was his window of opportunity, and he sure as hell wasn't going to let someone else have it.
Now, Campbell is forcing his coach to make some tough choices because this is now HIS window of opportunity.
"He always says he's going to play the best 11 guys, regardless of who you are," Campbell said. "When you do get a chance you have to make the best of that opportunity. There is a lot to be said for that, because you don't get a lot of chances."
Great point, Shea. Now, Campbell's stellar play is forcing another difficult decision, this one coming from Grandpa Gene.
Although he will never renounce his Pitt heritage nor send back those yearly Beef Jerky Bowl ticket applications he receives in the mail from the Panther ticket office, he's been forced to pay much closer attention to Mountaineer football games from his home in nearby Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
"When I told him I was going to go play at WVU he was kind of like, 'Now I've got to cheer for WVU,'" Campbell laughed. "He was a little upset about that."
There is some good in it for Grandpa Gene, though. The West Virginia games are far easier to locate on his TV set than those Pitt games on the ACC Network.
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