Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks
Darryl Talley’s No. 90 to be Officially Retired on Saturday
September 30, 2021 12:08 PM | Football, Blog
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Darryl Talley can remember like it was yesterday, standing on the loading dock in the back of the Towers dormitory watching his little brother John looking at him from the back window of the car as his family drove out of the parking lot headed back to Cleveland.
It was the first time in his life he had ever been away from home.
"I was crying," he laughed. "I went from the city straight to the country, and I didn't know anybody. Then, when I walked inside, I realized all of the kids who were there were there for the same reason – to get a college education and play football. We were there by ourselves, no more mom or dad or anybody else looking over our shoulders."
Talley's high school career at Shaw High in East Cleveland consisted of 10 games, not much to really go on. Gary Stevens, who brought Talley to West Virginia, recalled years ago seeing something in Talley other coaches didn't.
"There were some people recruiting him, but they didn't see what I saw in this guy," he said. "He could run like crazy; all you had to do was watch the film. I studied that film and I said, 'This kid is going to make it as a player.' So, some people were after him, but they weren't pounding after him.
"I pounded after him."
Stevens was the guy who brought all of those Northeast Ohio football players to West Virginia in the late 1970s, familiar names such Curlin Beck, Eldridge Dixon, Ray Armstrong, Dane "The Train" Conwell, Dennis Fowlkes, Bob Crites, Pat Conachan, Frank Kinczel, Delbert Fowler, Oliver Luck, and of course, Talley.
"Damn near half of our team back then was from Northeast Ohio," Talley said.
Stevens had his Ohio recruiting shtick down to an art. Chain-smoking Tareyton Light cigarettes and talking a mile a minute, he would drive those Cleveland boys to town in his University-issued Chrysler, snaking down through campus to show them the different buildings before they approached the old stadium.
He smoked so much, in fact, that there was a permanent film coating the inside of the window that rendered each car he drove unsellable.
Nevertheless, instead of stopping at the old stadium and taking his guys out on the field to give them a good look at where they were going to be playing immediately, he jammed his foot down on the accelerator and blew right past it. He took them up a winding hill to an excavated patch of land next to the hospital on the outskirts of town.
When they got out of the car, he told them this was where the new stadium was going to be built and this was where they were going to make a name for themselves playing football for the West Virginia Mountaineers.
As was usually the case with Darryl back then, he really wasn't paying too much attention.
"I just looked at him and I said, 'OK.' No big deal. It's a new stadium. But when they finally opened the place and John Denver was in there singing 'Country Roads' … to this day, there are only two other things that give me chill bumps on my arms," Talley admitted. "One was playing in my very first Super Bowl and the other was when my two kids were born."
This Saturday afternoon, Talley is going to get some more chill bumps on his arms. His West Virginia jersey No. 90 is officially being retired, right there alongside all-time Mountaineer greats Ira Errett Rodgers, Sam Huff and Bruce Bosely.
Later this year, Major Harris' No. 9 will also be officially retired.
Talley remembered spending his first year at West Virginia getting his head beat in. He recalls the time he got his helmet knocked off by Penn State fullback Matt Suhey on a student-body right play and chasing the Nittany Lion ball carrier down the field while trying to put his helmet back on.
Another time when he wasn't in the game, he was photographed sitting on the bench asleep while West Virginia was battling Pitt in the Backyard Brawl down at what he calls the "snake pit" – old Mountaineer Field.
What happened? What changed?
"Obviously, I woke up," he laughed.
Did he ever!
By the time Darryl was a senior in 1982, West Virginia football also woke up, going from being an annual loser to one of the top 10 teams in the country. The Mountaineers won nine games and upset Florida in the 1981 Peach Bowl, and nine months later went to Norman, Oklahoma, and stunned No. 9 Oklahoma in the 1982 season opener.
Talley famously played that game with a 102-degree fever in the 105-degree heat at Memorial Stadium.
A month after that, at No. 2-ranked Pitt, 39 years to the day this Saturday, the college football world got to see what the rest of us already knew – Darryl Talley was a baller!
Talley lined up at nine of the 11 defensive positions, made an interception covering the slot receiver, harassed quarterback Dan Marino all afternoon, blocked a punt for a touchdown and damn-near beat those Panthers all by himself.
Remember, this was not the Pitt Panthers of today, but rather the Dan Marino, Jimbo Covert, Bill Fralic, Chris Doleman, Bill Maas and Tim Lewis Pitt Panthers of yesteryear. They had dudes all over the place.
Pitt won the game 16-13 because it had several Darryl Talleys; West Virginia only had one. Longtime defensive line coach Bill Kirelawich once told me it was the greatest individual performance he's seen by a football player, ever.
Darryl remembered calling his father before the game to tell him to watch him play on TV.
"I said, 'Pop, they are going to put us on national TV and I'm going to show my ass off!'" Talley said.
That was the day Darryl Talley became a consensus All-American.
It was also a perfect example of the selflessness that he later displayed in the pros while playing for the Buffalo Bills – most likely to his personal detriment in the eyes of the hall of fame voters. While Darryl was doing the dirty work taking on all those extra blockers, Bruce Smith and Shane Conlan were free to make the plays. Smith parlayed that into a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton and Cornelius Bennett is probably headed there one day, too.
There is no question Talley played in their shadows. Still, he managed to play in two Pro Bowls and help the Bills to four straight AFC championships in the early 1990s. From 1988 until 1993, Buffalo won 70 games and lost just 26.
When Talley was drafted by the Bills in 1983, they were in the midst of three straight losing seasons. It was a similar deal at West Virginia when Talley arrived in 1979. From 1976 to 1979, the Mountaineers posted records of 5-6, 5-6, 2-9 and 5-6 before the ship finally steadied after Don Nehlen arrived in 1980.
During Darryl's last two years at West Virginia, the Mountaineers won 18, lost six, beat Florida in the Peach Bowl and reached the Top 10 in the Associated Press Poll during his senior season in 1982.
"My dad taught me when I was young, 'If you want to win, son, you better make sure everybody on your team plays like you play. If they all play the way you play and you're the weakest link in the chain, the chain will never break.' So I tried to do whatever I could do to help the rest of my teammates, and for myself, sometimes I took the hard road," Talley admitted. "It was hard, but we won. At the end of the day, all that mattered to me was winning football games."
Talley added, "Football is the ultimate team game. It doesn't take five or seven or nine, it takes 11 individuals to do anything well. And, to have them do it all at one time is a pretty damned good task."
Talley recalled a talk he once had with Garrett Ford, one of the two Black members of West Virginia's athletic staff at the time. Of Ford, Talley said he was one of the few guys in Morgantown at the time "who looked like us."
He continued, "This is going to sound crazy, but he would always tell us, 'Look, don't just let the University use you. You get something out of this, too. You get a degree and you get your education!'"
Talley admits he will be flooded with a river of memories when he walks out onto the field at the end of the first quarter of Saturday's game against Texas Tech with his college sweetheart, Janine, their two daughters, Alexandra and Gabrielle, and his parents by his side.
A bunch of his Mountaineer homeboys will be there as well.
The first time he ever walked out onto the field some 41 years ago to play Cincinnati he had to do so through the mud and wet cement. That's how far the stadium – and West Virginia University for that matter – has come since then.
"There are not that many guys that get their number retired from their university," Talley noted. "I've had hall of famers on my (Bills) team that haven't had that done for them despite all of the accolades they amassed while they were in college. In order to have something like this happen, you have to do something pretty special, and it's sort of mind-blowing when you really think about it.
"There are just a handful of people alive who see it when it gets done," he added. "There may be a bunch of guys who get their numbers retired after they were dead, but to get to see it? That is going to be huge. They set the criteria high here and to be able to achieve this is just something."
It really is!
Congratulations Darryl Talley, your No. 90 may be retired soon, but it will live on forever.
There are some tickets still available for Saturday's Texas Tech game and those can be purchased by calling the Mountaineer Ticket Office toll-free at 1-800-WVU GAME or by logging on to WVUGAME.com.
It was the first time in his life he had ever been away from home.
"I was crying," he laughed. "I went from the city straight to the country, and I didn't know anybody. Then, when I walked inside, I realized all of the kids who were there were there for the same reason – to get a college education and play football. We were there by ourselves, no more mom or dad or anybody else looking over our shoulders."
Talley's high school career at Shaw High in East Cleveland consisted of 10 games, not much to really go on. Gary Stevens, who brought Talley to West Virginia, recalled years ago seeing something in Talley other coaches didn't.
"There were some people recruiting him, but they didn't see what I saw in this guy," he said. "He could run like crazy; all you had to do was watch the film. I studied that film and I said, 'This kid is going to make it as a player.' So, some people were after him, but they weren't pounding after him.
"I pounded after him."
Stevens was the guy who brought all of those Northeast Ohio football players to West Virginia in the late 1970s, familiar names such Curlin Beck, Eldridge Dixon, Ray Armstrong, Dane "The Train" Conwell, Dennis Fowlkes, Bob Crites, Pat Conachan, Frank Kinczel, Delbert Fowler, Oliver Luck, and of course, Talley."Damn near half of our team back then was from Northeast Ohio," Talley said.
Stevens had his Ohio recruiting shtick down to an art. Chain-smoking Tareyton Light cigarettes and talking a mile a minute, he would drive those Cleveland boys to town in his University-issued Chrysler, snaking down through campus to show them the different buildings before they approached the old stadium.
He smoked so much, in fact, that there was a permanent film coating the inside of the window that rendered each car he drove unsellable.
Nevertheless, instead of stopping at the old stadium and taking his guys out on the field to give them a good look at where they were going to be playing immediately, he jammed his foot down on the accelerator and blew right past it. He took them up a winding hill to an excavated patch of land next to the hospital on the outskirts of town.
When they got out of the car, he told them this was where the new stadium was going to be built and this was where they were going to make a name for themselves playing football for the West Virginia Mountaineers.
As was usually the case with Darryl back then, he really wasn't paying too much attention.
"I just looked at him and I said, 'OK.' No big deal. It's a new stadium. But when they finally opened the place and John Denver was in there singing 'Country Roads' … to this day, there are only two other things that give me chill bumps on my arms," Talley admitted. "One was playing in my very first Super Bowl and the other was when my two kids were born."
This Saturday afternoon, Talley is going to get some more chill bumps on his arms. His West Virginia jersey No. 90 is officially being retired, right there alongside all-time Mountaineer greats Ira Errett Rodgers, Sam Huff and Bruce Bosely.
Later this year, Major Harris' No. 9 will also be officially retired.
Talley remembered spending his first year at West Virginia getting his head beat in. He recalls the time he got his helmet knocked off by Penn State fullback Matt Suhey on a student-body right play and chasing the Nittany Lion ball carrier down the field while trying to put his helmet back on.
Another time when he wasn't in the game, he was photographed sitting on the bench asleep while West Virginia was battling Pitt in the Backyard Brawl down at what he calls the "snake pit" – old Mountaineer Field.
What happened? What changed?
"Obviously, I woke up," he laughed.
Did he ever!
By the time Darryl was a senior in 1982, West Virginia football also woke up, going from being an annual loser to one of the top 10 teams in the country. The Mountaineers won nine games and upset Florida in the 1981 Peach Bowl, and nine months later went to Norman, Oklahoma, and stunned No. 9 Oklahoma in the 1982 season opener.
Talley famously played that game with a 102-degree fever in the 105-degree heat at Memorial Stadium.
A month after that, at No. 2-ranked Pitt, 39 years to the day this Saturday, the college football world got to see what the rest of us already knew – Darryl Talley was a baller!
Talley lined up at nine of the 11 defensive positions, made an interception covering the slot receiver, harassed quarterback Dan Marino all afternoon, blocked a punt for a touchdown and damn-near beat those Panthers all by himself.
Remember, this was not the Pitt Panthers of today, but rather the Dan Marino, Jimbo Covert, Bill Fralic, Chris Doleman, Bill Maas and Tim Lewis Pitt Panthers of yesteryear. They had dudes all over the place.
Pitt won the game 16-13 because it had several Darryl Talleys; West Virginia only had one. Longtime defensive line coach Bill Kirelawich once told me it was the greatest individual performance he's seen by a football player, ever.
Darryl remembered calling his father before the game to tell him to watch him play on TV.
"I said, 'Pop, they are going to put us on national TV and I'm going to show my ass off!'" Talley said.
That was the day Darryl Talley became a consensus All-American.
It was also a perfect example of the selflessness that he later displayed in the pros while playing for the Buffalo Bills – most likely to his personal detriment in the eyes of the hall of fame voters. While Darryl was doing the dirty work taking on all those extra blockers, Bruce Smith and Shane Conlan were free to make the plays. Smith parlayed that into a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton and Cornelius Bennett is probably headed there one day, too.
There is no question Talley played in their shadows. Still, he managed to play in two Pro Bowls and help the Bills to four straight AFC championships in the early 1990s. From 1988 until 1993, Buffalo won 70 games and lost just 26.
When Talley was drafted by the Bills in 1983, they were in the midst of three straight losing seasons. It was a similar deal at West Virginia when Talley arrived in 1979. From 1976 to 1979, the Mountaineers posted records of 5-6, 5-6, 2-9 and 5-6 before the ship finally steadied after Don Nehlen arrived in 1980.
During Darryl's last two years at West Virginia, the Mountaineers won 18, lost six, beat Florida in the Peach Bowl and reached the Top 10 in the Associated Press Poll during his senior season in 1982.
"My dad taught me when I was young, 'If you want to win, son, you better make sure everybody on your team plays like you play. If they all play the way you play and you're the weakest link in the chain, the chain will never break.' So I tried to do whatever I could do to help the rest of my teammates, and for myself, sometimes I took the hard road," Talley admitted. "It was hard, but we won. At the end of the day, all that mattered to me was winning football games."
Talley added, "Football is the ultimate team game. It doesn't take five or seven or nine, it takes 11 individuals to do anything well. And, to have them do it all at one time is a pretty damned good task."
Talley recalled a talk he once had with Garrett Ford, one of the two Black members of West Virginia's athletic staff at the time. Of Ford, Talley said he was one of the few guys in Morgantown at the time "who looked like us."
He continued, "This is going to sound crazy, but he would always tell us, 'Look, don't just let the University use you. You get something out of this, too. You get a degree and you get your education!'"
Talley admits he will be flooded with a river of memories when he walks out onto the field at the end of the first quarter of Saturday's game against Texas Tech with his college sweetheart, Janine, their two daughters, Alexandra and Gabrielle, and his parents by his side.
A bunch of his Mountaineer homeboys will be there as well.
The first time he ever walked out onto the field some 41 years ago to play Cincinnati he had to do so through the mud and wet cement. That's how far the stadium – and West Virginia University for that matter – has come since then."There are not that many guys that get their number retired from their university," Talley noted. "I've had hall of famers on my (Bills) team that haven't had that done for them despite all of the accolades they amassed while they were in college. In order to have something like this happen, you have to do something pretty special, and it's sort of mind-blowing when you really think about it.
"There are just a handful of people alive who see it when it gets done," he added. "There may be a bunch of guys who get their numbers retired after they were dead, but to get to see it? That is going to be huge. They set the criteria high here and to be able to achieve this is just something."
It really is!
Congratulations Darryl Talley, your No. 90 may be retired soon, but it will live on forever.
There are some tickets still available for Saturday's Texas Tech game and those can be purchased by calling the Mountaineer Ticket Office toll-free at 1-800-WVU GAME or by logging on to WVUGAME.com.
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