Photo by: David Miller
Pat White Set to Be Immortalized This Saturday
September 01, 2026 05:31 PM | Football
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia University is retiring Pat White's No. 5 on Saturday morning during an on-field ceremony prior to the Mountaineers' season-opening game against Coastal Carolina.
Per Pat's blessing, the official retirement will come at the end of the season when senior wide receiver Jaden Bray concludes his Mountaineer playing career.
After that, there will be no more 5s running around out there in gold and blue.
As far as jersey numbers go, White becomes the seventh West Virginia football player to have his number retired and his name will become the eighth to go up on the stadium wall, joining most of the school's other all-time greats.
The one obvious omission is Pro Football Hall of Famer Joe Stydahar, considered among the greatest tackles in NFL history playing on the legendary Chicago Bears teams coached by George Halas in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Later as a coach, Stydahar led the Los Angeles Rams to the 1951 NFL championship before becoming the first Mountaineer in school history to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1973.
The first Mountaineer gridder to have his number retired was Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker Sam Huff, whose No. 75 was immortalized in 2005 prior to West Virginia's Nov. 24 game against Pitt.
That's roughly 50 years after Huff's Mountaineer playing career ended in 1955.
The great Ira Errett Rodgers, voted one of the 22 greatest college football players of the first century in 1969, had his jersey number 21 placed on the stadium wall posthumously before the start of the 2009 football season without an official on-field dedication ceremony.
The wait for Rodgers exceeded his life by 46 years and happened 90 years after his consensus All-America season in 1919.
The next West Virginia University great to have his number retired was 1955 consensus All-American and College Football Hall of Fame inductee Bruce Bosely, whose number 77 went out of circulation in 2016.
After that, the jersey retirements and on-field ceremonies happened in bunches.
West Virginia officially retired the numbers of College Football Hall of Famers Darryl Talley (90) and Major Harris (9) one month apart in 2021, and then Pro Football Hall of Famer Chuck Howley's No. 66 was decommissioned in 2023 - two weeks before Hall of Fame coach Don Nehlen's name was put on the stadium wall prior to the Cincinnati game played here on Nov. 18.
The Bearcats provided an appropriate bookend to Nehlen's West Virginia University legacy considering Cincinnati was his first opponent in the first game ever played in the current stadium on Saturday, Sept. 6, 1980.
Which brings us back to White, whose wait will be five years shorter than the 23 years it took for WVU to immortalize Nehlen. It's 14 years faster than Harris was required to wait, and 21 years quicker than it took for Talley's number to be retirement.
Comparatively speaking, White is far younger than West Virginia's other football immortals, which speaks to what he accomplished during his amazing four seasons playing here.
Called the "greatest winner in college football history" by his late coach Bill Stewart, White became the first quarterback in the sport to win four consecutive bowl games and was the only one to do so under the game's previous format.
During his weekly news conference on Tuesday, White's first Mountaineer coach, Rich Rodriguez, recalled his performance against Georgia in the 2006 Nokia Sugar Bowl played in the Georgia Dome that year.
"He was just a freshman, and he was calmer than I was," Rodriguez laughed.
Earlier today, White was asked to define a winner. He took a long pause to formulate a response, as he frequently did when answsering questions as a player, and then replied.
"A team player," he began, adding, "someone who enjoys every moment of the process whether it be practice, film or downtime, and one who sets out to have fun. Just give everything you've got for every opportunity that you get.
"For me, that's a winner."
White engineered two of the greatest bowl-game victories in school history against Georgia in the 2006 Nokia Sugar Bowl and against Oklahoma in the 2008 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, leading to an unmatched 35-8 record over his four-year college career.
The Pat White bowl performance that will forever stick in my mind was against Georgia Tech in the 2007 Gator Bowl, which probably ranks third on the list of his most memorable bowl victories.
The other contender, of course, is the comeback win over North Carolina in the 2008 Meineke Bowl in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Nevertheless, early in the second quarter of the Gator Bowl, Pat was blindsided by a Georgia Tech defensive end and absorbed one of the hardest hits he ever took in a college football game.
Years later, Pat said there were others that were more painful, but this one was out in the open for everyone to see. When he was being helped off the field, I thought there was no way in the world that he was going to play another snap for the Mountaineers that afternoon.
But not only did he finish the game, helping West Virginia rally from 18 points down in the third quarter, he also carried the football on literally every play in the fourth quarter to run out the clock in a 38-35 Mountaineer victory.
In team sports, the No. 1 objective is to win, and nobody here did that better than Pat White did.
Fans are encouraged to wear white in his honor and to be in their seats by 11:30 a.m. in time for the official number retirement ceremony, expected to get underway at approximately 11:45 am.
Incidentally, the reason the jersey retirement is not happening during halftime, as some have suggested on social media, is because Pat will be pretty busy getting the Mountaineer quarterbacks ready for the second half of Saturday's football game.
That's what winners do!
So be on time and join us in saluting a great college football player and help us celebrate one of the greatest eras of winning football in Mountaineer sports history.
Per Pat's blessing, the official retirement will come at the end of the season when senior wide receiver Jaden Bray concludes his Mountaineer playing career.
After that, there will be no more 5s running around out there in gold and blue.
As far as jersey numbers go, White becomes the seventh West Virginia football player to have his number retired and his name will become the eighth to go up on the stadium wall, joining most of the school's other all-time greats.
The one obvious omission is Pro Football Hall of Famer Joe Stydahar, considered among the greatest tackles in NFL history playing on the legendary Chicago Bears teams coached by George Halas in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Later as a coach, Stydahar led the Los Angeles Rams to the 1951 NFL championship before becoming the first Mountaineer in school history to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1973.
The first Mountaineer gridder to have his number retired was Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker Sam Huff, whose No. 75 was immortalized in 2005 prior to West Virginia's Nov. 24 game against Pitt.
That's roughly 50 years after Huff's Mountaineer playing career ended in 1955.
The great Ira Errett Rodgers, voted one of the 22 greatest college football players of the first century in 1969, had his jersey number 21 placed on the stadium wall posthumously before the start of the 2009 football season without an official on-field dedication ceremony.
The wait for Rodgers exceeded his life by 46 years and happened 90 years after his consensus All-America season in 1919.
The next West Virginia University great to have his number retired was 1955 consensus All-American and College Football Hall of Fame inductee Bruce Bosely, whose number 77 went out of circulation in 2016.
After that, the jersey retirements and on-field ceremonies happened in bunches.
West Virginia officially retired the numbers of College Football Hall of Famers Darryl Talley (90) and Major Harris (9) one month apart in 2021, and then Pro Football Hall of Famer Chuck Howley's No. 66 was decommissioned in 2023 - two weeks before Hall of Fame coach Don Nehlen's name was put on the stadium wall prior to the Cincinnati game played here on Nov. 18.
The Bearcats provided an appropriate bookend to Nehlen's West Virginia University legacy considering Cincinnati was his first opponent in the first game ever played in the current stadium on Saturday, Sept. 6, 1980.
Which brings us back to White, whose wait will be five years shorter than the 23 years it took for WVU to immortalize Nehlen. It's 14 years faster than Harris was required to wait, and 21 years quicker than it took for Talley's number to be retirement.
Comparatively speaking, White is far younger than West Virginia's other football immortals, which speaks to what he accomplished during his amazing four seasons playing here.
Called the "greatest winner in college football history" by his late coach Bill Stewart, White became the first quarterback in the sport to win four consecutive bowl games and was the only one to do so under the game's previous format.
During his weekly news conference on Tuesday, White's first Mountaineer coach, Rich Rodriguez, recalled his performance against Georgia in the 2006 Nokia Sugar Bowl played in the Georgia Dome that year.
"He was just a freshman, and he was calmer than I was," Rodriguez laughed.
Earlier today, White was asked to define a winner. He took a long pause to formulate a response, as he frequently did when answsering questions as a player, and then replied.
"A team player," he began, adding, "someone who enjoys every moment of the process whether it be practice, film or downtime, and one who sets out to have fun. Just give everything you've got for every opportunity that you get.
"For me, that's a winner."
White engineered two of the greatest bowl-game victories in school history against Georgia in the 2006 Nokia Sugar Bowl and against Oklahoma in the 2008 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, leading to an unmatched 35-8 record over his four-year college career.
The Pat White bowl performance that will forever stick in my mind was against Georgia Tech in the 2007 Gator Bowl, which probably ranks third on the list of his most memorable bowl victories.
The other contender, of course, is the comeback win over North Carolina in the 2008 Meineke Bowl in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Nevertheless, early in the second quarter of the Gator Bowl, Pat was blindsided by a Georgia Tech defensive end and absorbed one of the hardest hits he ever took in a college football game.
Years later, Pat said there were others that were more painful, but this one was out in the open for everyone to see. When he was being helped off the field, I thought there was no way in the world that he was going to play another snap for the Mountaineers that afternoon.
But not only did he finish the game, helping West Virginia rally from 18 points down in the third quarter, he also carried the football on literally every play in the fourth quarter to run out the clock in a 38-35 Mountaineer victory.
In team sports, the No. 1 objective is to win, and nobody here did that better than Pat White did.
Fans are encouraged to wear white in his honor and to be in their seats by 11:30 a.m. in time for the official number retirement ceremony, expected to get underway at approximately 11:45 am.
Incidentally, the reason the jersey retirement is not happening during halftime, as some have suggested on social media, is because Pat will be pretty busy getting the Mountaineer quarterbacks ready for the second half of Saturday's football game.
That's what winners do!
So be on time and join us in saluting a great college football player and help us celebrate one of the greatest eras of winning football in Mountaineer sports history.
Players Mentioned
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