WVU’s Nehlen to be Enshrined in Inaugural National High School Football Hall of Fame Class
July 21, 2023 01:00 PM | Football, Blog
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By: John Antonik
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – They are running out of Halls of Fame to put Don Nehlen in. On Sunday, July 30, Nehlen and 21 others will be officially inducted into the National High School Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
The enshrinement ceremonies will begin at 3 p.m. in Umstaddt Hall, which is just down the street from the Pro Football Hall of Fame in downtown Canton.
This inaugural group reads like a Who's Who of high school football, featuring such star players as Jim Brown, Archie Griffin, Archie, Peyton, Eli and Cooper Manning, Chris Spielman, Bernie Kosar, Marion Motley and Marcus DuPree.
Joining Nehlen from the coaching ranks are Massillon High coach Paul Brown, Glenville High coach Ted Ginn Sr. and Canton McKinley coach Thom McDaniels.
This year's class is full of Buckeye State performers, particularly from powerhouse programs Massillon and Canton McKinley.
Nehlen spent most of his coaching career in the collegiate ranks, but he got his head coaching start at Canton South High in 1959 as a wet-behind-the-ears, 23-year-old. The South program was coming off a winless campaign in 1958 and had suffered multiple losing seasons in a row prior to Nehlen's hiring.
"I got the job because nobody wanted it," Nehlen recalled earlier this week. "My first year at Canton South we won four and lost four and they thought I was Knute Rockne. To win four games at Canton South at that time, they were thrilled to death.
"Then, the next year we won more and the next year we won even more and the last year we came within a whisker of going undefeated," he said.
That was in 1962 when Canton South lost an early season game to Louisville before ending the year with a 53-0 blowout victory over Jackson High under the lights at Central Catholic Stadium. Nehlen's team was beating the Polar Bears so badly that they shut off the lights with four minutes still to play. The victory gave the Wildcats a Class AA championship.
The following year, Nehlen left the high school ranks to coach the backfield at the University of Cincinnati, but that lasted only one season before he got an offer he couldn't refuse – the head coaching job at Canton McKinley High.
McKinley had its grid program shut down for one season in 1962 for illegal recruiting and was looking for a coach to revive its great football tradition. Don Nehlen pictured with Hall of Fame LB Darryl Talley
"I knew at Cincinnati we were in trouble, and I didn't think the program was going to do it and Canton McKinley at that time was probably the second-best high school job in the country," he said. "I had 14 coaches and a budget of $100,000, and I taught one class. I mean, it was a big-time high school job."
At Canton South, Nehlen did everything from lining the field to coaching multiple sports to teaching several classes. One summer, he even supervised the Timken Roller Bearing Company recreational baseball league.
"I ran all of their Little League, Colt League and Pony League teams," he said. "I also played for the Timken Roller Bearing Company baseball team and was the youngest player in the Class A League in Canton, Ohio."
Five years later, Nehlen went from that into a pressure-cooker situation at McKinley High.
"The McKinley job, there was such great tradition there, even though they didn't get to play the year before. McKinley always had great athletic teams and they were used to winning," Nehlen said. "So when the superintendent hired me, he said, 'Hey Don, if you win six games, we're in trouble, and if you win seven, we won't have a lot of friends, but I think we can keep our jobs.' He said 'WE.'"
Nehlen got the Bulldogs off to a great start with early season victories over Warren, Steubenville and Alliance while climbing to No. 2 in the state's AP poll. Sitting at No. 1 was Massillon, coached by Earle Bruce. Massillon was the high school job Nehlen considered the best in the country at the time.
The two teams met at the end of the season at Massillon's Tiger Stadium in one of the epic clashes in Ohio high school football history.
More than 5,000 people showed up for the bonfire the night before, and nearly 23,000 stuffed themselves inside Tiger Stadium on Saturday afternoon with many thousands more watching on local ABC-TV station WEWS.
Both teams were undefeated and seeking another state title - Massillon was gunning for its 20th and McKinley was going for its eighth.
Nehlen used a powerful ground attack to outscore his opponents by an average of nearly 34 points per game, while Bruce, also in his first year at Massillon, employed a Wing T system and benefited from having 12 key performers returning from the Tigers' 9-1 team that finished second to Niles High in the state's AP poll.
McKinley jumped out to a 14-0 lead before Massillon rallied behind backup quarterback Dave Sheegog for a come-from-behind 20-14 victory.
"They beat us in the last 30 seconds," Nehlen said of a game he still vividly recalls nearly 60 years later. "After they scored, they kicked off and we got the ball down to about the 10-yard-line and the clock ran out. That was a big-time high school football game."
On Monday afternoon, two days after the game, the local Massillon paper devoted two full pages of commentary and photos to the great Tiger victory. Chuck Hess Jr., writing for The Evening Independent, called Massillon's win over McKinley "the greatest of them all."
It's a game some old-timers in Canton and Massillon still talk about today. Soon afterward, many doors opened for Nehlen to return to college football.
"It was very difficult for me to leave McKinley," he noted. "That was a great high school job, and I fretted over the decision to leave. Believe it or not, I turned down the backfield coaching position at Ohio State.
"(Future Marshall coach) Frank Elwood left Ohio State and Woody (Hayes) offered me that job and Bowling Green offered me the defensive coordinator job at $3,000 less than Ohio State and I picked Bowling Green. My dad told me, 'I always knew you weren't very smart.' That's what he told me."
Had Nehlen accepted Hayes' offer, he could have been on the same Ohio State coaching staff in 1968 that included future head coaches Earle Bruce, Lou Holtz, Bill Mallory and George Chaump.
After 1964, Nehlen never returned to the high school ranks, instead embarking upon a College Football Hall of Fame head coaching career at Bowling Green and West Virginia University, where he led the Mountaineers to undefeated regular seasons in 1988 and 1993.
Much like he did at Canton South in 1959 and at Canton McKinley in 1964, Don Nehlen used endless energy, enthusiasm, and positivity to rejuvenate West Virginia football. The Mountaineer fanbase in the late 1970s was experiencing a wide range of emotions from anger to disappointment, discouragement, disillusionment and even ambivalence when Nehlen took over. He changed things immediately, lifting up an entire state in the process.
"My biggest strength as a coach was my ability to get kids excited about playing football," Nehlen admitted.
Those seeds were sewn during the six years he coached high school football, the one year spent as an assistant at Mansfield High, the four spent at Canton South and that one unforgettable season he coached Canton McKinley in 1964.
About 10 years ago, Nehlen was invited to return to Canton for a little get-together of former players, boosters and supporters. He thought it was going to be a quaint gathering of about a dozen or so players and their wives, perhaps even one or two old Lincoln High teammates.
Instead, the small gathering he expected was a 200-plus-person welcome home at McCall's Restaurant and Banquet Center, including some who came from as far away as Florida and Wisconsin. It was a great, big thank you for what he did as a football coach to help everyone in the community feel a little bit better about themselves.
"He woke up a sleeping giant, not just with the team, but within the community. He brought the community together like no other time," Nehlen's best Canton South player, Frank Dugan, told the group.
Sounds pretty familiar, doesn't it?
The old ball coach was moved to tears.
"It was unbelievable," he recalled.
An unbelievable turnout for an unbelievable man who has accomplished many unbelievable things throughout his life.
