MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Can it really be 30 years since West Virginia's magical 1988 football season?
 
That was the year the Mountaineers ran the table, beating all of its Eastern rivals - Pitt, Penn State, Maryland, Virginia Tech, Boston College and Syracuse - on the way to a perfect 11-0 regular season record.
 
It seems like every other year (or at least in five-year intervals) we recognize what many people consider to be the greatest team in school history and we are doing so again the weekend of the home opener against Youngstown State on Saturday, Sept. 7, as part of Varsity Club Weekend. (You can read more details about the 1988 team reunion here)
 
Was the '88 team West Virginia's greatest? 
 
That's an argument for another time, but it was the only one to ever reach the national championship game, losing 34-21 to Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl out in the desert in Tempe, Arizona.
 
Quarterback Major Harris was its star, but the heart and soul of that team was a 25-member senior class led by its four co-captains, Kevin Koken and John Stroia on offense, and Bo Orlando and Robert Pickett on defense.
 
Many of those seniors were fifth-year guys – grown men – old enough and mature enough to handle the unprecedented exposure the program received that summer building up to the season.
 
The publicity reached its peak right before the opener against Bowling Green when ESPN's Beano Cook, the former Pitt sports information director who never missed an opportunity to needle the Mountaineers, came to campus to proclaim West Virginia his preseason pick to win it all.
 
He chose West Virginia, not because of its coach Don Nehlen, nor Harris, Reggie Rembert, Renaldo Turnbull, Mike Fox nor the team's impressive depth on both sides of the ball that season. He picked the Mountaineers because of their schedule, which he considered the easiest of any national title contender that year.
 
He saw those tune-up games at Mountaineer Field against Bowling Green and Cal State-Fullerton. He saw those favorable home matchups against Maryland, Boston College, Penn State and Syracuse, and he saw road the contests at Pitt, Virginia Tech, East Carolina, Cincinnati and Rutgers as very winnable.
 
Pitt was usually tricky in Pittsburgh because the Panthers always had plenty of NFL talent, even if it didn't always show up on the football field.
 
Virginia Tech was never easy in Blacksburg and Syracuse lurking at the end of the season was always a concern, the Orange clipping Nehlen's Mountaineers in season-concluding games in 1980, 1981, 1983, 1986 and 1987.
 
And, of course, Penn State was forever West Virginia's Alamo, even before Joe Paterno's tenure began in 1966. It got to the point where Mountaineer fans were always conditioned to begin the season with an 0-1 record based on where the Nittany Lions fell on the schedule.
 
But in 1988 Penn State was coming to Morgantown, where West Virginia finally ended its long and depressing 25-game losing streak to the Nittany Lions, 17-14, four years prior. Who knew the Penn State team Paterno brought to Morgantown in '88 would be its worst in generations? 
 
So, naturally, West Virginia's triumphs over Pitt, Penn State and Syracuse are the ones Mountaineer fans most readily remember from that season.
 
A.B. Brown busting off that draw play for a 64-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter to finally break open the Pitt game was a satisfying feeling for WVU rooters, as was Undra Johnson's long touchdown run right before halftime to give WVU an insurmountable 41-8 lead over Penn State at halftime.
 
West Virginia scored 10 more points in the fourth to put an unheard of 51 on Joe Pa's defense.
 
Then, against Syracuse, Willie Edwards stepped in front of a Todd Philcox pass and returned it for a pick-six to put the finishing touches on a perfect regular season.
 
All three victories were critical steps toward perfection. 
 
But the biggest step in '88 was taken earlier that year against Maryland, another West Virginia regional nemesis. It was well established by the mid-1980s that Maryland was West Virginia's so-called "barometer game." Beat the Terps and a good season was assured; lose to Maryland and eight months of complaining ensued.
 
And there was quite a bit of complaining going on in 1985, 1986 and 1987, especially in '85 and '86 when Maryland throttled West Virginia by scores of 28-0 and 24-3.
 
In 1987, West Virginia scored the first 14 points of the game, then turned the ball over six times and watched the Turtles march back to win 25-20 – one of six defeats for the Mountaineers that season.
 
"At that time, Maryland was a very good football program," Nehlen recalled. "Jerry Claiborne had them for a while and then Bobby Ross was their coach and they were winning ACC championships …"
 
… And beating the Mountaineers to the point where some were wondering if Maryland had passed West Virginia by - including some of its players.
 
"If you think back through the years, we would be going pretty well until we got to Maryland and then Maryland would destroy us," wide receiver Grantis Bell noted a couple of years ago. Incidentally, Bell is still involved in college football officiating games in the Southeastern Conference.  "I don't know what it was. So we get to the third game of the year and we're playing Maryland. That was the game that was going to tell us whether or not we were going to have a great season, a good season or a terrible season."
 
"Maryland was like a real Backyard Brawl for us because they always played us tough," fullback Craig Taylor said.

"Maryland was beating us pretty consistently back then," Nehlen added. "We sort of measured our program by Maryland a little bit. We knew if we could hang with them we could hang with anybody on our schedule, and if we beat them then we knew we were going to have a good season."
 
For one of the few times ever, a Don Nehlen-coached team wasn't ready to play a football game coming out of the gate against the Terps that afternoon. Brown dropped the football the first time he carried it (without even being touched), leading to a quick Maryland touchdown.
 
Then, on West Virginia's next offensive possession, wide receivers Calvin Phillips and Jamie LeMon ran the wrong patterns causing Harris' third-down pass to sail wildly into the Terrapin bench.
 
Maryland got the ball back and tailback Michael Beasley scored his second touchdown, a 74-yarder, when quarterback Neil O'Donnell caught West Virginia in an all-out blitz and he pitched the ball to the trailing Beasley, who got past cornerback Alvoid Mays and ran untouched nearly the length of the field into the end zone.
 
Barely five minutes had expired and West Virginia was already behind 14-0. 
 
So much for running the table and going undefeated.
 

"That was the first time we were behind that year," Phillips said. "For a minute it was a shock. Are we as good as we think we are?"
 
Another WVU fumble, this one from Taylor, thwarted a great scoring opportunity at the Maryland 5.
 
When the Mountaineers got the football back after a Maryland punt, Nehlen decided to shake things up and put in his two backups Undra Johnson and Aaron Evans in the backfield, and they immediately ignited the offense by carrying the ball for gains of 11, 6 and 20 yards before Johnson plowed in from the 4 (pictured above).
 
Another Maryland punt enabled WVU to tie the game when tight end Keith Winn wrestled the football out of the arms of a Terrapin defensive back in the end zone for a 20-yard touchdown. Winn, like Johnson and Evans, was also part of West Virginia's valuable supporting ensemble.
 
WVU took control of the game early in the third quarter, and then broke it wide open in the fourth when short touchdown runs by Brown and Taylor - the two guys who couldn't hold onto the football in the first quarter - made it a 41-24 ballgame.
 
Orlando put the game on ice when he stepped in front of backup quarterback Scott Zolak's pass at midfield and returned it 56 yards for another touchdown. Flanker Reggie Rembert added the final score, giving West Virginia a very satisfying 55-24 victory.
 
Everyone contributed to this triumph – the stars, the regulars and the backups – which is what made that afternoon so special, and what made that football team so special.
 
After the Maryland game, Don Nehlen finally had a gang of believers.
 
"We knew we were going to be a great team," offensive guard John Stroia recalled in 2013. "The moment I knew 100 percent was the Maryland game.
 
"We were down 14-0 and (Nehlen) came over to where the offensive line was sitting on the sidelines and in his unique style he said, 'We're not throwing the damned ball the rest of this half! You got that, gang? I want two tight ends and we're going to ram it down their throats!'"
 
And they did.
 
And they kept ramming it down people's throats all the way to Arizona.