Schedules Tell The Story For Mountaineer Football Through The Years
July 25, 2023 04:02 PM | Football, Blog
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By: John Antonik
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Bob Hertzel, our local prodigious producer of prose, got me thinking again.
Recently, Hertz posted a story about West Virginia football facing the third-toughest Power 5 schedule in the country this year, which has seemingly becoming a common theme during Neal Brown's tenure here in Morgantown.
Last year's slate that included national runner-up TCU and 11 Power 5 opponents was ranked the second-most difficult in the country by the website Power Rankings Guru, which is probably a more popular read with West Virginia and Colorado fans than it is with those supporting Eastern Michigan, FIU, San Jose State, Air Force and Toledo football.
At any rate, what constitutes a difficult schedule?
Is it having a bunch of nationally ranked and top-10 teams on it?
Dana Holgorsen's Mountaineers faced four top-10-ranked teams in 2014, including Alabama, which finished the year 12-2, to open the season. Art Lewis' 1959 squad once played four top-20 opponents in a row late in the season, including undefeated national-champion Syracuse, and the following year he was scouting for the Pittsburgh Steelers. By the way, Pappy got coaxed into playing tougher schedules when his teams in the mid-1950s were being criticized nationally for beating up on weak Southern Conference opponents.
Is it having a lot of teams with winning records on it?
Brown's Mountaineers played eight teams with winning records in 2021 and Holgorsen's squad once played nine in 2012.
Bill Stewart's 2009 team opposed 10 with winning records, including back-to-back Big East games against top-10 foes Cincinnati and Pitt. Surprisingly, of the 40 games that Stew coached at West Virginia from the 2008 Fiesta Bowl through the 2010 season, 26 of them were against teams with winning records. The only bad team Stewart's Mountaineers played was 2-11 UNLV in 2010, and his only bad loss was an overtime defeat at 5-7 Colorado during his first season in 2008. Incidentally, that East Carolina team that he lost to in 2008 won nine games that season, but those minor details frequently get lost to history.
In 1925, seven of the nine teams Rat Rodgers' Mountaineers faced boasted winning records, the eighth being 4-4-1 Penn State and the ninth being 5-5 Washington & Lee. Ira Rodgers coached WVU to an 8-1 record in 1925.
I'd say that's a pretty daunting schedule.
Rodgers played two undefeated teams in 1927, Pitt and Washington & Jefferson, and two more in 1929 – Duquesne and Fordham. Mont McIntire also played a pair of undefeated teams in 1920 – Pitt and Princeton – and the next year he was coaching the Phillips University football squad in Enid, Oklahoma.
Twenty-five of the 44 teams Frank Cignetti faced during his four-year WVU tenure owned winning records, including eight that won 10 games or more. But don't mention that to Gene Corum, whose first football squad at West Virginia in 1960 owns the dubious distinction of being the only one in school history to go winless against a schedule that included eight teams with winning records and a combined winning percentage of .584.
Of course, there are lots of different directions you can go with this - who you play, where you play and when you play? - but to keep things simple, let's just analyze those seasons when West Virginia played winning football teams, regardless of their level or national reputation.
For example, how many people today know that Army was once the Alabama of college football in the 1940s and early 1950s, or that tiny Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, once went undefeated in 1919 and counted a major victory over West Virginia in Charleston?
In that game, McIntire chose to let an assistant coach the team while he scouted archrival Washington & Jefferson, resulting in the "Praying Colonels" becoming a national sensation that year.
According to Grantland Rice, in Allison Danzig's 1956 book "The History of American Football: It's Great Teams, Players and Coaches," it wasn't a victory over Harvard but rather the West Virginia win that put Centre College football on the map.
"Back in 1919, West Virginia, with big Ira Rodgers passing and running, beat a pretty good Princeton team. Walter Camp offered the opinion that West Virginia's offense was almost unstoppable, and that Rodgers was one of the most efficient backs he had ever seen," Rice recalled in 1946. "Naturally, there was terrific shock when little Centre not only stopped Rodgers, but beat West Virginia, 14-6, and later (Bo) McMillin and Centre beat a good Harvard team."
It was also during the West Virginia game when Centre earned its nickname "Praying Colonels" after the team was observed kneeling in prayer on the field during halftime intermission while trailing 6-0.
Greasy Neale's Washington & Jefferson team received national fame in 1922 for beating West Virginia 13-0 to complete an undefeated regular season and then tying Cal in the Rose Bowl. That was the first time Clarence Spears coached against West Virginia's fiercest rival, and he got a point-by-point critique of his strategy from WVU alum and football know-it-all Fielding Yost, who was in town to watch the game. Harry Stansbury later said that the two "hated each other cordially."
Bob Higgins once led West Virginia Wesleyan to a 9-2 record with regular season victories coming against Navy, Syracuse and Kentucky before upsetting SMU in the 1925 Cotton Bowl. One of his two defeats came at the hands of Spears' powerhouse Mountaineer team, which was a seven-point loss at Pitt away from earning a bid to the Rose Bowl.
And then there was Davis & Elkins coach Cam Henderson, who once used a bunch of ringers to stun West Virginia 7-0 to open the 1928 season. That Mountaineer team, by the way, was the only one to defeat Jock Sutherland's Pitt Panthers and later frequently returned to campus for reunions commemorating that great achievement.
Just because Yale, Alabama, Princeton, Notre Dame, Michigan, USC, Harvard, Ohio State or Oklahoma are not on the schedule doesn't mean that it is not difficult.
Therefore, based on opponent winning percentage, the 1929 slate must be considered the most difficult in school history. That year, Rodgers' Mountaineers played eight teams with winning records, including 9-0-1 Duquesne and 7-0-2 Fordham. Pitt, which lost to USC in the Rose Bowl, went 9-1 and Detroit posted a 7-1-1 record against a strong independent schedule that included West Virginia, Michigan State, Oregon State and Georgetown.
Georgetown, then an annual WVU foe and a strong Eastern contender, won five, tied two and lost two, as did Washington & Jefferson before the Presidents began de-emphasizing their grid program in the early 1930s.
The combined record of West Virginia's 10 opponents that year was 63-21-12 for an amazing .719 winning percentage. The worst team on WVU's 1929 slate - 4-6 West Virginia Wesleyan - boasted the best opposing player, Pro Football Hall of Famer Cliff "Gip" Battles.
Rodgers faced another brutal schedule in 1930 before hanging up the whistle to concentrate on coaching the WVU baseball team.
Thirteen years prior, McIntire brought national glory to West Virginia in 1917 when his team snapped Gil Dobie's 12-YEAR WINNING STREAK with a 7-0 victory at Navy. The Midshipmen, that year, were part of a grid docket that included Pop Warner's 9-0 Pitt Panthers, 7-1-1 Rutgers, which featured the nationally known athlete, entertainer and activist Paul Robeson, 6-2-1 Virginia Tech, 7-3 Washington & Jefferson and 6-2-1 NC State.
One of the weakest teams on the '17 schedule was the famous Carlisle Indian School team playing its final season before disbanding. Jim Thorpe once earned national fame while playing there.
What Rodgers' team did in 1925 by winning eight of nine games against the schedule it faced is probably the most impressive feat in school history. West Virginia was an eight-point loss at Pitt away from going undefeated against opponents that combined to win 68.3% of their games that year. For the record, Allegheny was 5-3, Davis & Elkins 7-3, Pitt 8-1, Grove City 7-1, West Virginia Wesleyan 5-3, Washington & Lee 5-5, Boston College 6-2, Penn State 4-4-1 and Washington & Jefferson 6-2-1 in 1925.
In the modern era of WVU football, the most difficult schedule was probably played by Corum's 1963 squad. That year, the Mountaineers opened against Cotton Bowl-bound and Roger Staubach-led Navy, and two weeks later, faced an Oregon team featuring Mel Renfro that won seven, lost three, tied one and defeated SMU in the Sun Bowl. Gene Corum's 1963 foes won 63.6% of their games.
Fourth-ranked Pitt didn't play in a bowl game that year, but it won nine of its 10 games against an intersectional schedule that included UCLA, Washington, Cal, Notre Dame and Miami, Florida. The '63 WVU slate also featured games against 7-3 Penn State, 8-2 Syracuse and 8-2 Virginia Tech.
Worth mentioning are the 1938 schedule against opponents that won 67% of their games, the 1927 slate with a 66.1% winning percentage and a 1934 docket featuring teams that won 65.2% of its games.
McIntire (63% opponents' winning percentage) and Charles "Trusty" Tallman (60.5%) coached against the highest percentage of winning football teams. On the other end of the spectrum were Jim Carlen (47.6%) and Bobby Bowden (49.4%) when West Virginia was transitioning out of the Southern Conference.
In closing, wasn't it Bill Parcells who once said, "you are what your record says you are?"
