COLUMN: Nehlen gave Stewart chance to come home

By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian

MORGANTOWN August 21, 2008 09:42 pm

— When they write the history of West Virginia University football, Don Nehlen will obviously play a key role, having won more games as coach at the school than any other man and twice stringing together unbeaten regular seasons.
When Nehlen retired after the 2000 season, we all thought we could put a -30- on it, -30- being the old-time newspaper symbol that the story had come to an end, but it seems that not long before Nehlen left he began one final chapter — The Bill Stewart Era of West Virginia Football.
While Mike Garrison in the end will be given credit — or be blamed, depending upon how it works out — for hiring Stewart, it was Nehlen who threw everything into motion when he hired Stewart as an assistant coach for his final season.
Certainly Stewart understands the significance of Nehlen’s action.
“He saved my professional life and brought me home,” said Stewart, a Fairmont State University graduate who was brought back to West Virginia from the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League. “I will forever be indebted. Don Nehlen is, always has been and always will be West Virginia football. Any coach — Billy Stewart at the top — who ever thinks different is an absolute buffoon.”
So how did it come about that Nehlen would uncover this coaching vagabond whose resume had taken him to from Fairmont State to Sisterville High, to Salem, North Carolina, William and Mary (which will count as only one stop on his resume), to Navy, North Carolina, Arizona State, Air Force, VMI, the Montreal Allouettes and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers?
“No. 1, I knew he wanted to get back to West Virginia in the worst way,” Nehlen said Friday morning. “When you have a good coach who wants to be where you are it’s a plus.”
Sound reasoning.
Oh, there was one other thing.
“At the time we could not pay him a lot of money, but he didn’t care what he would be paid,” Nehlen said.
Indeed, times were different then at West Virginia. Consider that today three WVU assistants earn the equivalent of what Nehlen’s entire staff — including himself — made then.
But while working cheap and wanting to return home from Winnipeg, which is about as far away as you can get without speaking a foreign language, are nice attributes, it helps if you can coach.
Nehlen had no face-to-face knowledge of Stewart’s coaching abilities, knowing him by reputation only.
Coaches, however, have this little network of theirs and, considering that Stewart had coached everywhere but Notre Dame and Whatsamatter U. of Rocky and Bullwinkle fame, Nehlen had people with whom he could check.
First he went to Fisher DeBerry, an old, dear friend who was coaching at Air Force and who had Stewart on his staff for four years, winning the Liberty Bowl two of three times. DeBerry, like Nehlen, was a former president of the American Football Coaches Association.
Then he went to Dick Crum, the former Miami of Ohio coach who hired Stewart at North Carolina in the 1980s.
“Both of them said he was a great coach,” Nehlen remembered. “When those guys say something like that, it was good enough for me. Besides, he was a perfect fit for me.”
So Nehlen brought Stewart in to coach his quarterbacks. You might remember that was the year when quarterback Brad Lewis went off in the Music City Bowl and destroyed Mississippi in Nehlen’s final game as coach, much as the Mountaineers went off in destroying Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl in Stewart’s first game as WVU coach.
Nehlen, of course, retired at the end of that season, his back aching and not happy with the support he was getting from the administration.
“The last four years we did start to slip because the administration would not do anything,” Nehlen said. “When I got there anything I wanted I got but after a while people get tired.”
Stewart understands the situation Nehlen was in then, having seen it first hand and he wants people to make sure they don’t forget what he meant to the school and the program.
“Don Nehlen put the Mountain State on the map with the ‘Flying WV’ and the people of this state should forever be greatful. This guy turned us into a national power. This guy is what West Virginia football is all about.
“You come in here and win as many games as that man did … you win 200 games at West Virginia and Bowling Green, are you kidding me? This is not Notre Dame and Ohio State. Don Nehlen Drive isn’t enough. There should be a statue of him.”
Perhaps, after a few years of winning under Stewart, they could build that statue of the two of them, arms around each other’s shoulder, for in a way they belong together, as similar as they are in substance and style and as much as Nehlen has meant to Stewart’s career.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.