http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07331/837015-144.stm
Until Don Nehlen arrived on the scene, there wasn't much brawl in the 'Backyard Brawl'
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
By Chuck Finder, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
When he arrived in 1980 at what was then a weed-infested way station for college football, a stop from where Bobby Bowden steamed south, the new coach looked elsewhere with envy. He drew a target on the far side of the Mason-Dixon Line. He pointed 75 miles north as his program's objective, directive, drive.
Pitt was it.
"I didn't come here to win a few games and run for the big dollars," Don Nehlen recalled the other day. "And the team we wanted to beat was Pitt, because they were at the very top. Pitt was the team we set our sights on. Pitt was my bull's-eye.
"I knew it would take us a long time probably to catch them."
Like, oh, a whole three years.
But that's getting ahead of the story, perhaps even simplifying the complex tale, about how once woebegone West Virginia made more of a fight of this Backyard Brawl that turns 100 Saturday night in new Mountaineer Field -- The House That Don Nehlen Built. And Rebuilt. And Rebuilt.
Let's go back to 1980, when a former Bowling Green coach and Michigan assistant hit Morgantown, W.Va., wiped his feet and turned his gaze northward.
Pitt at the time held a commanding series lead, 49-22-1, and a more fervent dislike for Penn State. Pitt had beaten its closest geographic foe six of the previous seven years, sweeping the 1970s after Bowden left for Florida State. Pitt won all four against Frank Cignetti's teams by a cumulative 144-43. Some rivalry.
Some West Virginia.
"The year before I got here, they lost to Richmond," Nehlen said.
Well, allow this College Football Hall of Fame coach a little margin for error: The Mountaineers didn't exactly lose to Richmond of the Southern Conference, but they didn't win by any more than two points in each of the previous two Spiders conquests. So you get the picture of that tangled web at West Virginia.
"When I came here, they had a poll of the 10 worst college football teams in America, and West Virginia was one of them -- which didn't make me very happy," continued Nehlen, who still lives near Morgantown. "Anyway, I wanted to try to find a way to put our program where Pitt was. Pitt had Hugh Green, Danny Marino and [Rickey] Jackson. They had so many good players, it was unbelievable."
In Nehlen's inaugural 1980 date with mighty Pitt, his Mountaineers absorbed a 42-14 throttling from a Jackie Sherrill constellation of 12 future NFL starters and four College or Pro Football Hall of Famers (Green, Jimbo Covert, Mark May and Marino). The next fall, Pitt prevailed, 17-0.
Finally, in '82, the week after West Virginia blew out Richmond on their way to Nehlen's second consecutive nine-victory season, they measured up pretty closely to Pitt in a 16-13 loss in Pitt Stadium.
"In '82, we lost by a whisker," Nehlen recalled of the team quarterbacked by Jeff Hostetler, his future son-in-law and the Penn State transfer who helped to change the program's fortunes. "We missed a field goal that could have tied it. We even led for a while, and we were an average football team."
Nehlen's Mountaineers proved to be better than average through most of his 21 seasons, and they especially left a lasting legacy on the Backyard Brawl. For the series has turned, and drastically, since Nehlen came to it. Remember that 52-22-1 Pitt lead through the first 75 confrontations? Look at it now.
Starting with his inaugural victory in the series, 24-21 in '83, West Virginia has owned the Brawl much of the past quarter-century or so: 15-7-2, including victories in 11 of the past 15 -- with Nehlen handing off the baton to former nickel back Rich Rodriguez.
And he owes such success to, well, Pitt.
"Most of my friends told me I was crazy [to take the West Virginia job], including coach [Bo] Schembechler," Nehlen said of the late Michigan coach. " 'If you win, you leave. If you lose, you get fired.' At the time, it made a lot of sense.
"I drew a 300-mile circle around Morgantown. That included Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. I told myself, 'Man, oh man, if I can't recruit 15 kids a year from that area, something's wrong with me.' "
So he and his Mountaineers staff recruited that circle, including tackle Brian Jozwiak from suburban D.C. and such Pittsburghers as Major Harris and Marc Bulger. They recruited parts of Western Pennsylvania that were historically theirs as well, such as Greene and Fayette counties which produced folks such as defensive tackle John Thornton. They recruited Florida, too.
They coached them hard. They put them through a sturdy strength program. They played a potent defense and a cautious offense. They used these blocks to construct a program that numbered just eight bowls and 55 weeks in the AP poll over the program's 85 years before Nehlen's arrival. In his 21 years, he took them to 13 bowls and 101 weeks in the AP poll and two national championship chances -- 1988 and '93. He credited then-president Gordon Gee, now at Ohio State, and the administration with helping to build a winner.
"We built the stadium. Then we expanded the stadium. And expanded the stadium," Nehlen said of the stadium that was under way upon his arrival. "When I left West Virginia, they had the best football facilities in the country. When I came, they were the worst."
Mountaineer Field, expanding yet again under Rodriguez, will play host to Brawl No. 100 Saturday.
"I don't know if the rivalry is as big as it used to be," Nehlen said. "We're in the same league now; when I came here, we were both independents. And Pitt's program, starting in the middle '80s after Foge [Fazio] ... it started to go down. It was so up and down. We were able to get the upper hand on them a little bit.
"I think Pitt has a tough road to hoe. I think when they tore that [Pitt] stadium down, that was a big mistake. It's very hard to create a college atmosphere in a pro stadium. I know one thing: If a high school player comes down here for a football game, and the next week he goes to a Pitt game, I know where he's going to school. They don't have the following we have. ... That makes it tough for Pitt to catch us.
"I like [Pitt coach] Dave Wannstedt. I hope they can get that thing going, because the [Big East] needs them bad. The greatest thing in the world would be if Pitt and Syracuse all of a sudden could be dynamite, then you have a league."
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Until Don Nehlen arrived on the scene, there wasn't much brawl in the 'Backyard Brawl
