MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Forty years ago this September, West Virginia University celebrated the opening of what was then known as “new Mountaineer Field.”

It was perhaps the most significant moment in the history of WVU football – maybe even the University’s history.

Without that new stadium there would be no Don Nehlen, no national championship game appearance in 1989, no Sugar, Fiesta or Orange Bowl victories, no Big 12 Conference membership, no Neal Brown, no Shane Lyons and no return of president Gordon Gee.

Indeed, without that stadium the Mountaineers would have continued taking aim at the Temple Owls and Villanova Wildcats of the world.

By the mid-1970s, West Virginia was, at best, toiling in old Mountaineer Field. For all of its charm and allure on the main campus, nestled between two hillsides at the bottom of Falling Run Road, that old stadium was a cement anchor around the football program’s neck. 

It was falling apart and becoming an eyesore – a visual metaphor of West Virginia football in the late 1970s.

Frank Cignetti, who became a Hall of Fame Division II coach at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, was in a no-win situation when he replaced Bobby Bowden as the Mountaineers’ head football coach in 1976.

WVU teams then habitually lacked adequate depth because it was impossible to recruit enough good football players to play in the old stadium.

Before Bowden left for Florida State, he was adamant that something be done about Mountaineer Field, once returning from a Texas spring football practice with some plans he had somehow gotten to add a 10,000-seat deck on one side of the stadium.

“We had to get this thing built - that and an indoor facility,” Cignetti, now 82, recalled earlier this week from his home in Indiana, Pennsylvania. “Those were the two big things West Virginia football needed because everybody surrounding us who we were competing against in recruiting had great facilities.”

Born out of Bowden’s spring visit to Texas was a plan to renovate the old stadium. Some of the stadium’s age-old issues such as a lack of adequate parking or accessibility to a modern, four-lane highway were never really addressed in a $20,000 stadium feasibility study West Virginia University president James G. Harlow had approved.

What that study proposed was a 10,400-seat upper deck constructed above Campus Drive, additional improvements to Mountaineer Field and an indoor Shell Building for the team to practice in. 

The price tag for everything was approximately $10 million. That is what the athletic department presented to the West Virginia State Legislature during its regular session in the spring of 1977.

Also under consideration as part of a $60 million bonding proposal were new basketball arenas for Marshall University and West Liberty, and academic facilities at West Virginia State and Shepherd.

Immediate Issues

Sixty million was a lot of money to spend at that time, and prior expenditures for WVU athletic structures had not gone well as far as state taxpayers were concerned.

When athletic director Harry Stansbury convinced West Virginia University to construct Mountaineer Field in 1923, choosing the Falling Run Road site because of its close proximity to Morgantown’s train station, he did so with the promise of raising the money to pay for it through contributions and ticket sales.

He figured with Clarence Spears continuing as WVU’s football coach, the Mountaineers were poised for a long period of sustained success. 

But Spears left for Minnesota the summer after the 1924 season and Mountaineer football soon fell on hard times. Also, many of the pledges Stansbury had secured weren’t honored - some because it had rained the day of the Washington & Jefferson game and those submitted in ink had become illegible.

As a result, soon after the stock market crash in 1929 that led to the Great Depression, the athletic department fell behind on its stadium debt requiring a taxpayer bailout in the late 1930s.

Forty some years later, many state legislators hadn’t forgotten that.

That’s why it took West Virginia athletic director Red Brown nearly 10 years to get the legislature to appropriate funding for a new basketball arena in 1967, and that’s why the University opted to shoot for the much cheaper alternative of remodeling old Mountaineer Field instead of building a new football stadium somewhere else in town.

But the legislators saw things differently this time.

An interstate highway construction boom in the late 1960s and early 1970s, championed by former governor Arch Moore, had brought West Virginia University’s campus much closer to other population centers in the state.

As work on Interstate 79 from Charleston to the Pennsylvania state line north of Morgantown was coming together, and expansion of Route 48 (now Interstate 68) to four lanes in pockets from Morgantown to the state’s Eastern Panhandle continued to progress, more and more people attended Mountaineer football games in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Unfortunately, when they got to Mountaineer Field, they had no place to park.

In the 1940s and 1950s, parking wasn’t a major issue at the 35,000-seat facility because nobody came to the games on a consistent basis anyway, preferring instead to listen to Jack Fleming on the radio. 

That’s one of the reasons why Fleming became so wildly popular throughout the state.

Even when West Virginia had great football teams in the early 1950s - when quarterback Fred Wyant and College Football Hall of Famers Sam Huff and Bruce Bosley were starring for the Mountaineers - they frequently did so in a half-filled stadium.

Stadium Renovators vs. Stadium Builders

Downtown business owners and long-time residents of Morgantown wanted the football stadium to remain where it was for economic and nostalgic reasons, while fans from other parts of the state, backed by the Elks Club in Charleston, wanted a new stadium someplace else in town with adequate parking and located reasonably close to a four-lane highway.

Therefore, the stadium renovators were pitted against the new stadium builders when the state legislature convened in 1977 to consider a stadium bond, among other things.

A month-long debate reached a climax when Senate President William Brotherton Jr. offered an amendment to the bill, calling for the construction of a new football stadium rather than renovating the old one.

“What this thing came down to was a group in Charleston that really wanted to build a new stadium and that sort of put an end to renovating the old stadium,” Cignetti said.

Cignetti was in a difficult position because he preferred a new football stadium, which was not what his bosses were advocating.

“I had to be very careful about that because Leland (Byrd) and Dr. Harlow were my bosses and we sort of came at it from different angles on what we had to do as far as the future of the football program there,” Cignetti admitted. “I can remember coming back to him after a meeting with a couple of legislators and they told us if it’s not going to be a new stadium, we are not going to support this.”

The legislature’s decision to support Brotherton’s amendment for a new stadium was totally unexpected by Harlow and was interpreted by some as a shielded attempt to kill the bill. In retrospect, it likely crystalized the entire process, and after differences in the House and Senate bills were ironed out, each chamber passed the amendment.

The solution for funding the bond was to increase student fees, which got around new Gov. Jay Rockefeller’s state-wide building ban, which he implemented to help ease the burden on state taxpayers who were dealing with a national economic recession at the time.

Astonishingly, what the state legislature had approved as part of its $60 million bond was a new Mountaineer football stadium in a yet-to-be-determined location in Morgantown - with absolutely no plans whatsoever.

Furthermore, just a $20 million figure was appropriated for the entire project! 

When the bill’s passage was announced, Harlow was less than enthusiastic. The outgoing president, retiring to his native Oklahoma at the end of the school term, was still married to the proposal the University had presented to the legislature.

“I think a new football stadium will cause more problems than it solves,” Harlow told Charleston Daily Mail sports editor, Bill Smith. “I see the very likelihood of not being involved in the selection of a site. It will probably be done by the governor, the legislature and the Elks Lodge members.”

That last bit was a shot at Charleston businessman and Elks Club member Jim Nooney, who bitterly criticized WVU for not enthusiastically supporting the construction of a new football stadium.

“The people wanted a new stadium and they got it, but the only thing (they are) worried about is coming out of this looking bad because (they) asked for $10 million and got $20 million instead,” Nooney told AP sportswriter Alan Robinson. 

“I just don’t understand it,” Nooney, who led a drive to get 10,000 signed petitions demanding a new football stadium be built, added. “The state legislature gives the university the chance to build something that’s been needed for years – a brand new football stadium that will enable us to compete favorably with other teams on our schedule – and (they act) like the university has been slighted.”

West Virginia University athletic director Leland Byrd countered Nooney’s criticism by stating that he thought the plan the University had presented the legislature was “more feasible.”

Harlow noted the $20 million allocation was not likely enough to fund a new football stadium, particularly at some of the potential sites under consideration.

The most logical place for the stadium, according to Harlow, was near the Mileground on a 300-acre patch of land the University owned. But undermining had made it cost-prohibitive to construct a football stadium in that location. Harlow also considered it to be the University’s most valuable piece of property, estimating its value at $1.5 million. 

Cignetti said he was not a fan of the Mileground site because he wanted a place closer to the two campuses for the students.

“I was looking at it from the standpoint of, ‘Hey, we don’t need a third area in terms of a campus,’” he recalled.

Harlow mentioned that land near the WVU Coliseum wasn’t practical because of space limitations, and a large piece of property on Stewardstown Road, where the WVU Dairy Farm was located, also was not ideal.

The biggest issue with the University golf course location was its close proximity to the WVU Medical Center.

“We never considered a new stadium when we decided to ask the legislature to upgrade our stadium,” Harlow said at the time. “We believe it is more practical to renovate our current facility than it would be to construct a new stadium in a different part of town not easily accessible to the students, as Mountaineer Field is now.

“What we proposed was $10 million to add 10,000 new seats to Mountaineer Field. The new stadium would cost at least $20 million and would give us only 5,000 more seats than we would get with the renovations.”

Harlow, admitting he was surprised the legislature and state Board of Regents Chancellor Dr. Ben Morton were so agreeable to a new football stadium, continued, “There have been no feasibility studies made for the new stadium and no site selected. You just can’t drive a stake in the ground and say, ‘Let’s build our stadium here.’ You need time for studies and to work out the numerous problems that will arise with the undertaking of a major project.”

The outgoing president concluded, “I’ve felt disappointed that the legislature and Dr. Morton did not work closer with the university in deciding to go ahead with the new stadium. Dr. Morton never mentioned to me prior to legislative approval that he favored the new stadium project. He never asked my opinion.”

An astonishing admission, for sure. Harlow said there was no discussion of what to do with Mountaineer Field once it was abandoned. He estimated tearing it down would cost the University at least $2 million.

Emergency Fundraising

Governor Rockefeller, who let the two competing sides battle it out before the legislature, still had final say on the bond. He could sign the bill, let it go into law without his signature or veto it.

His solution was to bring a delegation that included state Tax Commissioner Thomas Goodwin and state Finance Commissioner Miles Dean up to Morgantown to tour the four potential sites. The dairy farm was nixed almost immediately when the governor’s motorcade was halted because one of the vehicles had gotten stuck in the mud on West Run Road. 

Rockefeller actually had to get out of his car to help direct traffic until the travel party could proceed.

It also was readily evident to the group that the Evansdale site where the baseball field was located was too close to the Coliseum, making it impractical as well.

Rockefeller left Morgantown with more questions than answers, and he delayed signing the bill until the final day on April 27, 1977, when a consensus was finally beginning to form for the golf course site.

“That Evansdale area had the potential to really develop, and it has tremendously,” Cignetti noted. He believes a key advocate for the golf course site was Gordon Gee, Dean of the WVU Law School at the time. 

“Gordon felt if the stadium could be built near the law school, it would help him recruit law students by having conferences and seminars,” Cignetti explained. “He was a big supporter of that location.”

Rockefeller, who kept his intentions concealed right up until the time he signed the bill, turned into the new stadium’s biggest supporter.

And unlike Harlow, Byrd quickly pivoted once the state legislature had made its decision. He supported the new stadium until he left WVU to become commissioner of the Eastern Eight Conference.

His successor, Dick Martin, and his boss, Dr. Gene Budig, were handed the baton to oversee its completion.

Finch-Heery of Atlanta was hired to design the new stadium, and Beckley’s Gates Engineering was tasked with its construction.

Byrd and his surrogates traveled to Kentucky, Arkansas and Iowa State to get ideas on a stadium design, and they ultimately chose something very similar to Iowa State’s Cyclone Stadium (now called Jack Trice Stadium).

Following the official site dedication on May 3, 1979, Rockefeller was a regular recipient of updates on the stadium’s progress. He also was instrumental in raising the money for the Facilities Building to house the locker rooms and offices for the coaching staff. 

The initial $20 million legislature outlay was simply not enough to cover its cost.

So, he assembled an 11-person group consisting of Jim Compton, Allen Coppinger Jr., Samuel D’Annunzio, Fred Haddad, Lawson Hamilton, James “Buck” Harless, Elmo Hurst, Tracy Hylton, John Manchin, Bob Orders and Orville Thomas for a one-night fundraising meeting at the Governor’s mansion in Charleston.

One of the heirs to the Rockefeller family fortune got things started by writing a figure down on a piece of paper and putting it into a hat. That was the initial contribution for the WVU Facilities Building. He instructed the others to do likewise while two state troopers with sidearms guarded the door.

When all of the pieces of paper were returned and the contributions were added up, he instructed the process be repeated.

“Not enough, let’s try this again,” he declared.

The second time, enough money was raised for the Facilities Building, which today is known as the Milan Puskar Center.

Frenetic Pace

From the moment construction crews were on site, work on the stadium proceeded at a furious pace. Project manager Jack Stafford had roughly 18 months to complete 50,000-seat Mountaineer Field before the Sept. 6, 1980 season opener against Cincinnati.

Rockefeller provided some additional motivation by threatening to impose a $120,000 penalty and a daily fine of $1,000 if the stadium wasn’t completed in time for the game.

Seventeen days of rain in July and August made things extremely interesting. The Astro-turf playing surface was not installed until eight days before the opener, and new coach Don Nehlen, hired to replace Cignetti for the 1980 season, was unable to get his team on the field until two days before kickoff.

On game day, there was still wet concrete in some parts of the stadium and the press box was not yet finished, so sportswriters had to be stationed on the outdoor camera deck, sitting behind foldout tables. The elevator was limited to just hauling equipment, meaning everyone had to make an eight-story climb up the steps to get to their locations in the press box.

Fencing had not yet been installed around the new scoreboard, which required extra security positioned in that location to keep fans away from where the stadium’s power supply was located. During the pregame dedication ceremony, someone had managed to slip past security and pulled the lever to cut off power to the stadium.

Everything went out just before John Denver was about to sing “Take Me Home, Country Roads”.

“I think what happened was the security guard near the scoreboard was more focused on what was going on inside the stadium with John Denver, instead of watching his particular area,” Ed Pastilong, then in charge of game-day operations as the department’s facility manager, recalled. “Honest to goodness, there was a moment there when I think everybody in that stadium couldn’t believe it.

“It was fortunate we were all situated in one spot in our new command post and were able to figure it out so quickly. No one ever owned up to who left their post … and the best part, nobody ever asked,” Pastilong laughed.

Because fans were not accustomed to entering Morgantown via the Mileground, a line of traffic formed well beyond the Star City exit on I-79, causing many to arrive late for the 1:30 p.m. kickoff.

A last-minute surge in students necessitated many of them to sit in a dirt area underneath the scoreboard. No netting had been installed to keep flying footballs from reaching the students sitting behind the north end zone, which meant there was a drunken scramble for each ball that came their way. Every time a student manager ran out to retrieve a football, a game of keep-away developed until, finally, it was heaved up into the stands.

The 300-piece marching band, “The Pride of West Virginia”, had to assemble in front of the Facilities Building before the start of its pregame show, taking away from its dramatic entry onto the field as it once did when it used to run out of the tunnel in the old stadium.

Concession stands were ill-equipped to handle 50,000 hungry football fans and WVU students, per custom, booed each state politician as they walked up to the dais to speak during the pregame dedication ceremony.

For some unknown reason, Rockefeller – the stadium’s biggest advocate – received the loudest boo from the students.

Nehlen also was required to make a speech, and he later admitted that it was one of the most difficult things he ever had to do before a football game. Cincinnati was a bad football team, and he wasn’t sure if his team was any good, either, which made his pregame remarks seem like a blur of words.

Fortunately, his team had little trouble disposing the Bearcats 41-27.

Stadium Opening a Great Success!

John Samsell, writing in the Dominion Post, noted the new stadium had the “feel and sound of Three Rivers Stadium.”

He wrote that the open area underneath the upper deck provided fans some protection from the rain and sun, and the distance from the field to the seats gave everyone a great vantage point. One of the biggest criticisms of old Mountaineer Field was the close proximity of the seats to the field, requiring fans in the front row to have to stand to see over the players.

The adoption of the tailgate party was another popular game-day addition. For the first time, car trunks were opened and tables were set up with food and spirits in the parking lot near the stadium before the games. 

Recreational vehicles also were visible.

Cignetti, sitting in the press box instead of being on the field in his new role of assistant to the athletic director, watched everything unfold just as he once predicted. He told anyone who would listen in 1977 that the future of Mountaineer football hung in the balance if something wasn’t done.

Just three years after the stadium opened, West Virginia snapped its seven-game losing streak to Pitt in 1983. 

A year after that, the Mountaineers ended their 29-year winless streak to Penn State.

By the end of the decade, Nehlen had West Virginia on the doorstep of a football national championship when the Mountaineers faced top-ranked Notre Dame in the Sunkist Fiesta Bowl.

“There were a lot of people questioning if West Virginia could really make it big time in football,” Cignetti said. “But look at the success Don Nehlen had there and the coaches after him – they wouldn’t have achieved that without that stadium.”

Sadly, Frank Cignetti wasn’t able to enjoy the fruits of his labor. 

Not getting to coach a game in a new stadium for which he tirelessly advocated remains one of the biggest disappointments in his long and successful football career.

“But, that’s all behind me now,” Cignetti sighed.