Published: May 31, 2009 02:15 am      

Nostalgia rules during Jim Carlen’s night

Former WVU coach returns to Morgantown

MORGANTOWN — It was a nostalgic night. One where a group of athletes, some who hadn’t seen each other for 40 years or more, reminisced and realized that the bond they had formed back in the 1960s was still there.

It was also a night where some of them revealed to the large banquet audience at the Waterfront Place Hotel just how much coach Jim Carlen meant to them when they were student athletes at the university — and how much he had influenced their lives following graduation.

But it was, in actuality, Jim Carlen’s night.

And the former Mountaineer football coach, now just two months from being 76 years old, and having slowed down considerably from the fast pace he used to display, heard many fine remarks from his players. In fact they still had the same respect for him now that they had when he was one of the youngest coaches in the country — coming to WVU to succeed Gene Corum at the age of 33.

Gov. Joe Manchin, a young quarterback on Carlen’s first team who would have his career halted by injury before it ever really started, says he remembers well the first time the team members saw Carlen.

“We were waiting for the new coach to come and talk to us,” he said, “and this young man with a kind of funny hat and jacket came in. We thought he might be a recruit or a new assistant coach. But as soon as that hat came off, we knew things were going to change here.”

“My players knew I meant exactly what I said,” Carlen said.

Carlen said that people who made this banquet possible were givers.

“If a man has money, God expects you to give 10 percent,” he said. “You owe that. Not only your money but your time and your efforts.”

Carlen said that when he was here “I didn’t coach. I had assistants who coached. I didn’t play. I had players who played.

“I don’t know if you all realize ... just how far this state has come. We’re all talking about football, basketball, making money. I say if we would get our name right in the book ... for the Man ... then we will solve a bunch of problems,” Carlen said — a statement that drew a strong round of applause.

“My best friend when I was here was the father (John Manchin) of the (current) governor of the state. He would call me and say don’t be discouraged. He would call me and say everything is going to be all right.”

He praised the work of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

“I want to say that FCA is a dominant force in doing things right. I still go back to what I believe. If you get your faith with God right, you’ll make it. If you don’t, you won’t.”

He told the audience that “you have a golden thing going for you here. Forgive the former coach (Rich Rodriguez). God forgives.”

The late Tom Landry, the famed coach of the Dallas Cowboys, was the man who talked Carlen into starting a Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter at WVU more than 40 years ago.

John Mallory, outstanding defensive back during the Carlen era, said that Carlen always reminded him that the most important thing he would obtain at WVU would be his college degree.

Ken Juskowich, famed for his five field goals in a 15-0 victory over Pitt, said everyone had “a great deal of respect for Coach Carlen. We knew he would make us good football players and he would make us good people.”

All-American running back Garrett Ford said that he learned early that “only one person called the shots on that team, and that was Coach Carlen.”

Running back Bob Gresham, teary-eyed as he spoke, said that Carlen was “more than a coach. He was more like a father than I didn’t have. You are one of the biggest influences in my life.”

The former player who really moved the crowd was linebacker Dale Farley, who talked about living through bouts of alcoholism. “But I’m a Christian now. God has helped me through it ... I am a child of God.”

Shawn Frasher, director of the FCA chapter at WVU, gave the invocation. He also praised the fact that all but one of WVU’s head coaches allows the FCA to take part in spiritual relationships of Mountaineer athletes.

“Everything with the FCA is student motivated,” he said in giving a brief history of the FCA and its work on the WVU campus. “It’s not a small thing when the coaches welcome us to their field of play.”

E-mail John Veasey at jcveasey@timeswv.com.