Campus Connection: Narrowing WVU's Sports History Down to 3 Coaches
February 23, 2018 12:38 PM | Football, Blog
Professor MATT WELLS, who doubles as West Virginia's senior associate athletic director for external affairs, frequently sends me emails on history-related topics.
I got one from him earlier this week with a link to this from the Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/19/all-of-american-history-fits-in-the-lifespan-of-only-three-presidents/?utm_term=.0a6afebdb63a
He suggested that I come up with something similar for the history of West Virginia University athletics, which dates back to a snowy late November afternoon in 1891 when the Mountaineers foolishly issued a challenge to Washington & Jefferson to come down and play a football game.
W&J was already well-schooled in the game and had some of the best gridders in the area playing for its football team.
The Presidents accepted the challenge and beat the Mountaineers, 72-0, which doesn't sound all that bad until you realize touchdowns then only counted as four points.
To make matters worse, not enough money was collected during the game and the players who issued the challenge had to come up with the rest of the dough to pay for Washington & Jefferson's expenses traveling 48 miles down to Morgantown, which in 1891 either involved riding a train or taking a boat.
Ouch.
But, getting back to Matt's email suggestion, here is the lifespan of West Virginia's athletic history whittled down to just three football coaches - DON NEHLEN to CHARLES "TRUSTY" TALLMAN to JOHN ETHAN HILL.
Nehlen, the architect of West Virginia's modern gridiron ascension, was born on Jan. 1, 1936 when Trusty Tallman was in his final season coaching the Mountaineers.
That team had a winning 6-4 record, but Trusty decided to take a better-paying job with the West Virginia State Police. Can you imagine a state police job today paying more than a college football coach's salary?
It did back in 1936.
Tallman was born on Sept. 18, 1900, the year WVU mathematics professor Hill beat out zero other candidates to coach the football team to a 4-3 record in 1900. Hill, being a Yale graduate, was one of the few men on campus at the time who actually knew anything about football.
Professor Hill parlayed his winning season at West Virginia into a lucrative job as a sanitary engineer for New York City and continued to make the Big Apple his home until his death in 1941.
Hill was born Oct. 15, 1865 - two years after West Virginia became a state and six months following the conclusion of the Civil War.
So, the life span of West Virginia University athletics can be whittled down to just three football coaches.
Incidentally, the oldest living football coach - 88-year-old BOBBY BOWDEN - was born Nov. 8, 1929, 10 days after the great stock market crash.
West Virginia's coach that year was IRA ERRETT RODGERS, who was born May 26, 1895, the year HARRY MCCRORY coached the football team.
McCrory was born Aug. 1, 1871, which was the year the first Major League Baseball game was supposedly played.
That was also the year the city of Birmingham, Alabama, was incorporated.
Birmingham is Bowden's birthplace.
I suppose I better stop here …
TYLER RADER used to play on winning football teams at West Virginia University. Now, he's a part of NASCAR driver Austin Dillon's winning Daytona 500 winning team.
Rader, a member of West Virginia's 2012 Discover Orange Bowl championship team, has been a member of Dillon's pit crew since 2013.
You can read more about it here …
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/sports/cross-lanes-native-tyler-rader-part-of-dillon-s-daytona/article_ede458e3-1412-5b1e-9e11-e691f8ec4648.html
Spring football work begins on Tuesday, Feb. 27 and will conclude with the annual Gold-Blue Spring Game on Saturday, April 7. Coach DANA HOLGORSEN and his coordinators TONY GIBSON and JAKE SPAVITAL will meet with media on Wednesday, Feb. 28 to provide an update on the team.
Morgantown native ZACH SPIKER, once a member of JOHN BEILEIN'S WVU staff and the son of former longtime Mountaineer football athletic trainer JOHN SPIKER, pulled off the biggest comeback victory in NCAA history last night when his Drexel Dragons overcame a 34-point first half deficit to defeat Delaware, 85-83.
Drexel outscored Delaware 56-27 in the second half after being down 53-19 with 2:36 left in the first half.
Drexel is now 12-18 under Spiker in his second season after going 9-23 in his first. Spiker came to the Philadelphia school following a seven-year tenure at Army that saw him win 102 games, including a 19-14 record during his final year at West Point in 2016.
Zach's wife is former WVU women's soccer assistant coach JENNIFER DEPREZ.
A Mountain State broadcasting legend is signing off on ESPN. Clarksburg's MIKE PATRICK, who grew up following Jerry West and West Virginia's great basketball teams of the late 1950s, announced earlier this week that he is ending his 36-year association with ESPN that began in 1982 when the network was still in its infancy.
Patrick and Ron Franklin became the two most recognizable play-by-play voices in college football by the late 1980s when ESPN began acquiring more games.
In addition to college football, college basketball and college basketball, Patrick was the voice of ESPN's NFL Sunday Night Football from 1987-2005 working with Joe Theismann and Paul Maguire.
He also called ACC basketball throughout ESPN tenure, covering 30 ACC championships while frequently being paired with Dick Vitale to call Duke-North Carolina games.
Patrick, who has made his home in the Washington, D.C., area for years, also called several WVU football and men's basketball games during his time at ESPN.
He was a big fan of football coach DON NEHLEN and often praised the work he did in transforming the Mountaineers from a losing football program in the late 1970s into a national power by the mid-1980s.
MIKE CAREY'S West Virginia women's basketball program continues to gain viewing interest in North Central West Virginia.
The Mountaineers' recent Nexstar telecasts on Jan. 3 against Kansas State and on Jan. 24 against Texas Tech easily won their time slots in the Clarksburg-Weston DMA.
On Jan. 3, the women's game easily outperformed the Cavaliers-Celtics NBA game on ESPN and the North Carolina-Florida State men's game on ESPN2, as well as other programming.
Then, on Jan. 24, the women's game against the Red Raiders had no trouble outperforming the Rockets-Mavericks game on ESPN and the Louisville-Miami men's basketball game on ESPN2.
Yes, people are watching the Mountaineer women's basketball games on television!
Don't forget, the parking lots surrounding the WVU Coliseum will not open until 4 p.m. on Saturday for the Iowa State men's basketball game because of the WVU women's game against Oklahoma State at 1 p.m.
The lots normally open three hours before game time but cannot open that early with the women's game in progress.
Speaking of women's basketball, the Mountaineers need to get a victory over Oklahoma State on Saturday afternoon to keep their NCAA Tournament hopes alive. West Virginia, 20-8 following Tuesday night's win at Kansas State, is among CHARLIE CREME'S "First Four Out" in his most recent bracket posted four days ago on ESPN.com.
Oklahoma State has also moved into the danger area after its upset loss to Kansas earlier this week.
The Big 12 right now has just two NCAA Tournament locks in Baylor and Texas.
In addition to Oklahoma State on Saturday, WVU concludes its regular season on the road Monday night at third-ranked Baylor.
BOB HUGGINS' men's team is a tournament lock and is currently playing for seeding. Following its big road win at Baylor on Tuesday night, West Virginia moved up one spot to a four-seed in JOE LUNARDI'S latest bracket updated Thursday.
After Iowa State on Saturday, West Virginia has a big one against Texas Tech on Monday night at the Coliseum and concludes the regular season on the road at Texas on Saturday afternoon.
A strong regular season finish could get the Mountaineers up to a three-seed, and possibly even to two if they can win the Big 12 Tournament in Kansas City.
West Virginia has been the tournament runner-up the last two seasons.
Why is it that we place so much value on how many points a player scores during a basketball game?
It's been like that ever since they began keeping score of games.
What was the first question your dad always asked you when you got home from a game? I bet it was, "How many points did you score?"
Well, what if your job was to get the other guys the ball? Or, what if you were supposed to stop the other player or grab rebounds?
Why isn't that valued as much?
"I think to most people it's the person scoring the ball," Bob Huggins theorized Friday morning. "Let's be honest, you folks (media) it's the guy scoring the ball. You don't see in the paper that Wesley Harris just shut down the guy averaging 22 points a game and held him to 10. That's not the headline. The headline is 'Jevon Carter's 22 leads the Mountaineers.'
"That's kind of the way it is."
Sometimes, it even happens with coaches. I can remember a story GALE CATLETT once told me when he was an assistant coach on ADOLPH RUPP'S Kentucky staff in the early 1970s. Catlett was recruiting a player over in the Eastern part of Kentucky, and he called Rupp to give him a report about the game he had just watched.
Rupp asked him how many points the player scored. Catlett didn't recall the specific number, but he said it wasn't that many.
Rupp told Catlett to stop wasting his time recruiting him because if he couldn't score at least 20 points against the players he was facing in that part of the state then he wasn't good enough to play for the University of Kentucky.
I only bring this up because JEVON CARTER'S great all-around season might be getting overshadowed by the gaudy scoring numbers being put up by Trae Young, Devonte' Graham and Keenan Evans.
And JC is by no means a scoring slouch, averaging 16.8 points per game.
But will people take the time to move past the scoring column to also take a deeper look at the assists, the steals, the rebounds, the free throw shooting and the other areas where Carter is excelling this year?
I hope so.
As for me, whenever I want to know how my kids' teams did, the first question I always ask them is, "Did you help your team win the game?"
Have a great weekend everybody!
I got one from him earlier this week with a link to this from the Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/19/all-of-american-history-fits-in-the-lifespan-of-only-three-presidents/?utm_term=.0a6afebdb63a
He suggested that I come up with something similar for the history of West Virginia University athletics, which dates back to a snowy late November afternoon in 1891 when the Mountaineers foolishly issued a challenge to Washington & Jefferson to come down and play a football game.
W&J was already well-schooled in the game and had some of the best gridders in the area playing for its football team.
The Presidents accepted the challenge and beat the Mountaineers, 72-0, which doesn't sound all that bad until you realize touchdowns then only counted as four points.
To make matters worse, not enough money was collected during the game and the players who issued the challenge had to come up with the rest of the dough to pay for Washington & Jefferson's expenses traveling 48 miles down to Morgantown, which in 1891 either involved riding a train or taking a boat.
Ouch.
But, getting back to Matt's email suggestion, here is the lifespan of West Virginia's athletic history whittled down to just three football coaches - DON NEHLEN to CHARLES "TRUSTY" TALLMAN to JOHN ETHAN HILL.
Nehlen, the architect of West Virginia's modern gridiron ascension, was born on Jan. 1, 1936 when Trusty Tallman was in his final season coaching the Mountaineers.
That team had a winning 6-4 record, but Trusty decided to take a better-paying job with the West Virginia State Police. Can you imagine a state police job today paying more than a college football coach's salary?
It did back in 1936.
Tallman was born on Sept. 18, 1900, the year WVU mathematics professor Hill beat out zero other candidates to coach the football team to a 4-3 record in 1900. Hill, being a Yale graduate, was one of the few men on campus at the time who actually knew anything about football.
Professor Hill parlayed his winning season at West Virginia into a lucrative job as a sanitary engineer for New York City and continued to make the Big Apple his home until his death in 1941.
Hill was born Oct. 15, 1865 - two years after West Virginia became a state and six months following the conclusion of the Civil War.
So, the life span of West Virginia University athletics can be whittled down to just three football coaches.
Incidentally, the oldest living football coach - 88-year-old BOBBY BOWDEN - was born Nov. 8, 1929, 10 days after the great stock market crash.
West Virginia's coach that year was IRA ERRETT RODGERS, who was born May 26, 1895, the year HARRY MCCRORY coached the football team.
McCrory was born Aug. 1, 1871, which was the year the first Major League Baseball game was supposedly played.
That was also the year the city of Birmingham, Alabama, was incorporated.
Birmingham is Bowden's birthplace.
I suppose I better stop here …
***
TYLER RADER used to play on winning football teams at West Virginia University. Now, he's a part of NASCAR driver Austin Dillon's winning Daytona 500 winning team.
Rader, a member of West Virginia's 2012 Discover Orange Bowl championship team, has been a member of Dillon's pit crew since 2013.
You can read more about it here …
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/sports/cross-lanes-native-tyler-rader-part-of-dillon-s-daytona/article_ede458e3-1412-5b1e-9e11-e691f8ec4648.html
***
Spring football work begins on Tuesday, Feb. 27 and will conclude with the annual Gold-Blue Spring Game on Saturday, April 7. Coach DANA HOLGORSEN and his coordinators TONY GIBSON and JAKE SPAVITAL will meet with media on Wednesday, Feb. 28 to provide an update on the team.
***
Morgantown native ZACH SPIKER, once a member of JOHN BEILEIN'S WVU staff and the son of former longtime Mountaineer football athletic trainer JOHN SPIKER, pulled off the biggest comeback victory in NCAA history last night when his Drexel Dragons overcame a 34-point first half deficit to defeat Delaware, 85-83.
Drexel outscored Delaware 56-27 in the second half after being down 53-19 with 2:36 left in the first half.
Drexel is now 12-18 under Spiker in his second season after going 9-23 in his first. Spiker came to the Philadelphia school following a seven-year tenure at Army that saw him win 102 games, including a 19-14 record during his final year at West Point in 2016.
Zach's wife is former WVU women's soccer assistant coach JENNIFER DEPREZ.
***
A Mountain State broadcasting legend is signing off on ESPN. Clarksburg's MIKE PATRICK, who grew up following Jerry West and West Virginia's great basketball teams of the late 1950s, announced earlier this week that he is ending his 36-year association with ESPN that began in 1982 when the network was still in its infancy.
Patrick and Ron Franklin became the two most recognizable play-by-play voices in college football by the late 1980s when ESPN began acquiring more games.
In addition to college football, college basketball and college basketball, Patrick was the voice of ESPN's NFL Sunday Night Football from 1987-2005 working with Joe Theismann and Paul Maguire.
He also called ACC basketball throughout ESPN tenure, covering 30 ACC championships while frequently being paired with Dick Vitale to call Duke-North Carolina games.
Patrick, who has made his home in the Washington, D.C., area for years, also called several WVU football and men's basketball games during his time at ESPN.
He was a big fan of football coach DON NEHLEN and often praised the work he did in transforming the Mountaineers from a losing football program in the late 1970s into a national power by the mid-1980s.
***
MIKE CAREY'S West Virginia women's basketball program continues to gain viewing interest in North Central West Virginia.
The Mountaineers' recent Nexstar telecasts on Jan. 3 against Kansas State and on Jan. 24 against Texas Tech easily won their time slots in the Clarksburg-Weston DMA.
On Jan. 3, the women's game easily outperformed the Cavaliers-Celtics NBA game on ESPN and the North Carolina-Florida State men's game on ESPN2, as well as other programming.
Then, on Jan. 24, the women's game against the Red Raiders had no trouble outperforming the Rockets-Mavericks game on ESPN and the Louisville-Miami men's basketball game on ESPN2.
Yes, people are watching the Mountaineer women's basketball games on television!
***
Don't forget, the parking lots surrounding the WVU Coliseum will not open until 4 p.m. on Saturday for the Iowa State men's basketball game because of the WVU women's game against Oklahoma State at 1 p.m.
The lots normally open three hours before game time but cannot open that early with the women's game in progress.
Speaking of women's basketball, the Mountaineers need to get a victory over Oklahoma State on Saturday afternoon to keep their NCAA Tournament hopes alive. West Virginia, 20-8 following Tuesday night's win at Kansas State, is among CHARLIE CREME'S "First Four Out" in his most recent bracket posted four days ago on ESPN.com.
Oklahoma State has also moved into the danger area after its upset loss to Kansas earlier this week.
The Big 12 right now has just two NCAA Tournament locks in Baylor and Texas.
In addition to Oklahoma State on Saturday, WVU concludes its regular season on the road Monday night at third-ranked Baylor.
***
BOB HUGGINS' men's team is a tournament lock and is currently playing for seeding. Following its big road win at Baylor on Tuesday night, West Virginia moved up one spot to a four-seed in JOE LUNARDI'S latest bracket updated Thursday.
After Iowa State on Saturday, West Virginia has a big one against Texas Tech on Monday night at the Coliseum and concludes the regular season on the road at Texas on Saturday afternoon.
A strong regular season finish could get the Mountaineers up to a three-seed, and possibly even to two if they can win the Big 12 Tournament in Kansas City.
West Virginia has been the tournament runner-up the last two seasons.
***
Why is it that we place so much value on how many points a player scores during a basketball game?
It's been like that ever since they began keeping score of games.
What was the first question your dad always asked you when you got home from a game? I bet it was, "How many points did you score?"
Well, what if your job was to get the other guys the ball? Or, what if you were supposed to stop the other player or grab rebounds?
Why isn't that valued as much?
"I think to most people it's the person scoring the ball," Bob Huggins theorized Friday morning. "Let's be honest, you folks (media) it's the guy scoring the ball. You don't see in the paper that Wesley Harris just shut down the guy averaging 22 points a game and held him to 10. That's not the headline. The headline is 'Jevon Carter's 22 leads the Mountaineers.'
"That's kind of the way it is."
Sometimes, it even happens with coaches. I can remember a story GALE CATLETT once told me when he was an assistant coach on ADOLPH RUPP'S Kentucky staff in the early 1970s. Catlett was recruiting a player over in the Eastern part of Kentucky, and he called Rupp to give him a report about the game he had just watched.
Rupp asked him how many points the player scored. Catlett didn't recall the specific number, but he said it wasn't that many.
Rupp told Catlett to stop wasting his time recruiting him because if he couldn't score at least 20 points against the players he was facing in that part of the state then he wasn't good enough to play for the University of Kentucky.
I only bring this up because JEVON CARTER'S great all-around season might be getting overshadowed by the gaudy scoring numbers being put up by Trae Young, Devonte' Graham and Keenan Evans.
And JC is by no means a scoring slouch, averaging 16.8 points per game.
But will people take the time to move past the scoring column to also take a deeper look at the assists, the steals, the rebounds, the free throw shooting and the other areas where Carter is excelling this year?
I hope so.
As for me, whenever I want to know how my kids' teams did, the first question I always ask them is, "Did you help your team win the game?"
Have a great weekend everybody!
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