MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Christmas day marks the 100th anniversary of West Virginia University’s first ever team to play in a bowl game – the 1922 East-West Bowl featuring Clarence Spears’ undefeated squad.

That team won nine of its 10 regular season games by a combined margin of 246 to 21. The lone blemish was a 12-12 tie to Washington and Lee at Laidley Field in Charleston when Spears left the team in the hands of assistant coach Ira Errett Rodgers while he scouted Rutgers, the following week’s opponent.

The Generals lost to Virginia, Centre College and Virginia Tech, causing some to cast doubt on West Virginia’s claim as one of top football teams in the country. Six years ago, Mike Whiteford wrote a nice piece about this game in the Charleston Gazette that is now behind its pay wall: https://www.wvgazettemail.com/sports/shocker-at-laidley-field-cost-wvu-perfect-season-in-1922/article_1b1351ef-df4c-56d2-8796-09318ab52b4e.html

One retro ranking of West Virginia’s 1922 grid schedule placed it 63rd among all teams that season, mainly because it included West Virginia Wesleyan, Marietta, Washington and Lee, Cincinnati and Ohio University. According to the Azzi Ratem Football Rating System published in the 1944 Football News, the top five football teams of 1922 consisted of Princeton, California, Iowa, Vanderbilt and Cornell.

West Virginia was seventh.

The Mountaineers’ victory at No. 12 Pitt before 15,000 fans at Forbes Field on Saturday, Oct. 14, gave Spears’ program a huge boost in prestige and status. Charleston’s Homer Martin returned a blocked punt 28 yards for a touchdown in the second quarter and then Armin Mahrt drop-kicked a 36-yard field goal late in the game to give WVU a 9-6 victory over the Pop Warner-coached Panthers. Mahrt, a transfer from Dayton, appeared in only four games for the Mountaineers that season while opposing schools contested his eligibility.

West Virginia’s other major triumph came in Morgantown against arch-rival Washington & Jefferson at the old “splinter stadium,” located where the Mountainlair currently stands. An estimated 13,500 fans squeezed in to watch the Mountaineers thoroughly dominate a Presidents team that played California in the Rose Bowl just 10 months prior.

Halfback Nick Nardacci broke the ice with a 17-yard touchdown run in the third quarter and then added a 9-yard touchdown pass to Jack Simons in the fourth quarter in the 14-0 victory. Adding up the stats from the game’s play-by-play published in the local newspaper, Nardacci, a Youngstown, Ohio, product, finished the game with 153 yards rushing, 23 yards passing and 14 yards receiving in a tremendous, all-around performance.

The W&J win secured the tri-state championship for West Virginia, a team without any major stars that season. Nardacci, Martin, Russ Meredith, Joe Setron and Gus Eckberg were considered the best players on what onlookers described as Spears’ “perfect machine.” 

“Since 1891,” Chester Smith, of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Times, wrote, “the West Virginia Mountaineers have dreamed of sometime attaining their heights, but it was not until late today that the dream came true.  Thirty-one years, during which the Old Gold and Blue has seen one castle after another fade out in the mists of disappointment.

“A long, long time to wait, yet they will tell you here tonight that it was well worth it, for in the picturesque ‘splinter stadium’ here this afternoon, the Mountaineers swept their ancient foemen from Washington and Jefferson down for a 14-0 triumph.”

He added, “Tonight this mountain-bordered city is literally shouting itself blue in the face, singing the praises of the greatest team in West Virginia’s history.”

The euphoria continued when West Virginia accepted an invitation to represent the East in what was then called the San Diego East-West Christmas Classic.

The game was born in 1921 as San Diego’s challenge to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and pitted a team from the West against an Eastern power, where most of the good football teams then were located. The first game saw tiny Centre College, from Danville, Kentucky, rout Arizona 38-0 in a driving rainstorm before a much-smaller-than-expected crowd. In fact, the $2,000 in gate receipts for the game fell $23,000 below expectations, causing promoters to use a $25,000 insurance policy to cover its losses. 

Consequently, to say the game was on shaky financial ground is the mother of all understatements!

West Virginia was promised $12,000 to cover its travel expenses from Morgantown to San Diego, while Gonzaga, from Spokane, Washington, was given $5,000 for its 1,200-mile trek down the coast.

The financials for the game, published afterward, were an interesting study in wishful thinking. Tickets were priced at $1, $2 and $3 based upon seat location, and if every seat in City Stadium was sold that would net the game approximately $40,000 in total proceeds.

Subtracting the $17,000 for the teams’ travel expenses and $7,000 allocated for game promotion, an estimated $16,000 was left for everyone to share.

The promoters were guaranteed 10% of the proceeds, or an estimated $1,600, leaving the rest to be divvied up between the two teams and the San Diego Amusement and Recreation Association, which was responsible for various amateur sporting events in the city.

This was the fuzzy math game promoters sold to West Virginia athletic director Harry Stansbury in convincing him to bring his undefeated football team across the country to play Gonzaga, an unknown in football circles. Gonzaga, despite playing football for just two years, was being hailed as “the Notre Dame of the West Coast” because its coach was former Irish All-American quarterback Charles Dorals.

Houston Stockton, the grandfather of NBA great John Stockton, was Gonzaga’s best player and the Bulldogs were known as a passing team that scored the majority of their 201 points in the third and fourth quarters. Gonzaga lost 10-7 to Washington State, one of five college teams they faced that season. Their other defeat was to Multnomah Athletic Club, not to be confused with USC or Stanford, who were also facing Eastern teams during the holidays that year.

USC met Penn State in the Rose Bowl while Stanford arranged a game with Pitt to be played on its home field two days before the New Year. Therefore, three local football teams were taking Pullmans out to the West Coast, and West Virginia’s trip itinerary read like something out of The Iliad and The Odyssey. 

The 27-person travel party departed Morgantown on Tuesday, Dec. 19, traveling on the “West Virginian” to Pittsburgh. From there, the itinerary called for Dec. 20 stopover in Chicago on the “Metropolitan Express,” followed by a Dec. 21 trip on the “Navajo” to Las Vegas.

Then, it was on to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Williams, Arizona and to Needles, California by evening on Friday. The team was scheduled to reach its final destination on Saturday, Dec. 23 at 1 p.m. following a morning trip down the coast from Los Angeles on the “Lark.”

The team arrived late in Chicago and missed its connection, meaning an unexpected nine-hour stopover in the Windy City. When the Mountaineers eventually reached Los Angeles, Spears opted to get in a “secret workout” at an undisclosed practice site, but the secret workout was not very secret because the Wheeling Intelligencer reported it in its Thursday, Dec. 21 edition.

Twelve players were assigned to the lower bunks with nine players, team manager Okey Ogden and assistant coaches Ira Rodgers and Bob Kay sleeping up top. Spears, Stansbury and the team trainer, Nate Cartmell, quartered in the Drawing Room.

Upon arrival in San Diego, the Pullman was parked at the station where Ogden and some of the reserve members of the squad slept rather than in reserved rooms at the Coronada Hotel.

A practice was scheduled for Saturday afternoon followed by a visit to the local theatre. Sunday’s automobile excursion included a trip to the famous Tijuana racetrack where boxing champion Jack Dempsey was scheduled to be a personal guest of track president James W. Coffroth.

Following the game on Monday, Christmas Day, the team had more sightseeing scheduled in Los Angeles on Tuesday and then in San Francisco on Wednesday. The picture of the team surrounding child film star Jackie Coogan that was published in the 1924 Monticola was taken the day after the Gonzaga victory. The journey home began on Friday, culminating with a Tuesday morning arrival back in Morgantown.

The total distance traveled by land was 6,685 miles, encompassing 13 days!

Fans in Morgantown and Pittsburgh were able to follow the action via special Western Union hookups. Stansbury was seated next to a telegraph operator and dictated a play-by-play account of the game, which was transmitted by radiophone to KDKA listeners in Pittsburgh.

Another listening area was set up in Morgantown with more than 1,000 fans in attendance.

What they heard was a game that turned increasingly worrisome in the fourth quarter. After WVU jumped out to a 21-0 lead, thanks to a couple Nardacci touchdowns, one on the ground and another thrown to Simons, and Meredith’s 75-yard interception return, Gonzaga turned strictly to passing to make things interesting.

Just as it did in blowing a 12-0 first-half lead in the Washington and Lee game, West Virginia’s defense was ill-equipped to handle Gonzaga’s aerial attack. Stockton completed 14 of his 27 pass attempts for 207 yards, setting up the Bulldogs’ two fourth-quarter scores on short runs by Stockton and Matt Bross.

Gonzaga had the ball again at the West Virginia 5-yard line when the Mountaineers took over on downs. Four running plays ended the game, a 21-13 Mountaineer victory.

West Virginia netted 235 yards rushing and added 122 through the air, while Gonzaga totaled 305 yards and made 16 first downs. The Mountaineers turned the ball over five times to Gonzaga’s three. An unusual 42 passes were attempted by both teams.

“This game was similar in many respects to other East-West contests,” Universal Service correspondent Darcie L. Darcie wrote. “The finished teamwork and individual brilliance of the East was pitted against the rugged strength and aggressiveness of the West, with the edge in favor of the East.

“Early in the first half and early in the second half, West Virginia looked like an honest-to-goodness championship team. The rest of the time they were on the defensive and in the final minutes of play it seemed inevitable that Gonzaga would put over a third touchdown, one which would cut the Eastern team’s lead to a single point. But the Mountaineers stiffened on their own 5-yard line and took the ball from Gonzaga on downs after three forward passes had been smeared.”

Darcie also commended the play of Nardacci, WVU’s great halfback.

“He alone could gain through the Gonzaga line at will and it was he that was at the bottom of the Mountaineers’ touchdowns,” he wrote. “His dashing drives off tackle, his brilliant dodging through broken fields, and his sweeping end runs were responsible for most of the yardage tallied by coach Spears’ men.”

The attendance was estimated to be 15,000 - far below pregame expectations. Not surprisingly, the San Diego East-West Christmas Classic went out of business soon afterward.

West Virginia did not field a football team good enough to reach another bowl game until 1937, but Spears’ ensuing elevens in 1923 and 1924 were actually considered stronger than his “22 team.

In 1923, the Mountaineers tied Penn State 13-13 in Yankee Stadium before suffering a stinging 7-2 season-ending loss in the mud to Washington & Jefferson, causing the Rose Bowl to pick Navy instead. In 1924, an early October defeat at Pitt removed West Virginia from Rose Bowl consideration with the selection committee eventually choosing Notre Dame to face Stanford.

The same rating system that ranked West Virginia seventh in 1922 had the Mountaineers seventh again in 1923 and fourth in 1924, behind only Notre Dame, Yale and California that year.

WVU’s only other appearance in these ratings came in 1925, one year after Spears left West Virginia to coach Minnesota. Ira Rodgers, with Spears’ players, lost just once, to Pitt, and finished the season with great victories over Boston College, Penn State and Washington & Jefferson to rank ninth nationally.

It was the only time in school history that WVU had four straight football teams considered by experts to rank among the top 10 in the country. And Spears, a star player and coach at Dartmouth, was the man responsible for its great success.

“Only those with the desire to succeed in life would be worth the time coaching,” Spears once said. “After all, blocking and tackling are the essential things in football and as much time as possible should be devoted to those particular things.”

He added, “If a team has a good grasp on the sound fundamentals of football, it won’t have to worry much about the things the other team will do.”

Spears said those words in 1957. Seven years later, he died in Jupiter, Florida.