The Only Game in Morgantown Is a Good One : West Virginia Football Team Is 12th Ranked and the State’s Center of Attention

This is a town with little to commend it other than the green waters of the Monongahela River and the 63,500 seats of Mountaineer Field.

But on a football Saturday, West Virginia fans like to note, the crowd in the stadium rivals the population of Charleston, the state’s capital and largest city.

And although Morgantown is located near the northern boundary of the state, 77 miles from Pittsburgh, there is a convincing argument that Mountaineer Field is at the emotional epicenter of West Virginia.

West Virginia football, in the estimate of some, is an antidote to some of the troubles of a state with a population of less than 2 million and an unemployment rate of 9%, well above the national average.

“We’re the source of pride in the state,” said Don Nehlen, coach of the Mountaineer team, which is ranked 12th by Associated Press.

“When we win, everybody wins. . . . They say that when we beat Oklahoma (in 1982), every coal miner in this state was going nuts. . . . People just have a great deal of pride in this football team.”

In sharp contrast to Cal State Fullerton, which plays West Virginia at Mountaineer Field today, the Mountaineers have a following whose attention is nearly undivided.

“We have no Los Angeles Raiders, we have no Los Angeles Lakers. We have no pro anything,” Nehlen said. “In the entire state, we have only one Division I, major-college team and that’s us. And we play a big-time schedule, so consequently everybody in the state follows us and and we’ve built the program to the point now that if you’re not in Morgantown Saturday, you’re not with it, so to speak.”

Although a following loyal enough to purchase 35,000 season tickets this year might belie it, West Virginia’s success has been solid but rarely spectacular.

In 94 years of football history, the Mountaineers have had one undefeated season (1922) and made only one appearance in a New Year’s Day bowl game, the 1954 Sugar Bowl.

For the most part, the Mountaineers have played in the shadow of Pitt and Penn State, trying to compete against those teams on the field and on the talent-laden recruiting ground of Pennsylvania.

Competing against those schools for players is essential, Nehlen said, because West Virginia doesn’t produce enough talent to put together a national-quality team.

“When I fly over this state, all I see is mountains and trees,” Nehlen said. “I hardly ever see houses. There are a lot of mountains and trees--and none of them carry footballs.”

This, then, is not a team of home-grown talent. Only 25 players on this year’s team are from West Virginia. Thirty-seven are from Pennsylvania and another 43 from the states of Florida, New Jersey and Ohio.

But this might be the year West Virginia moves to the top of the class in the East.

West Virginia was 6-6 last year, but the losses were to Ohio State, Maryland, Pitt, Penn State, Syracuse and Oklahoma State in the Sun Bowl. Five of those losses were by five or fewer points.

Most of that team is back, with all but five starters returning for 1988. The key might be quarterback Major Harris, whose 1,200 passing yards and 615 rushing yards rushing as a freshman last season gained him almost as much notoriety as his rapping ability, which has been featured on television sportscasts.

Whether this team will live up to the expectations is, of course, impossible to know.

Whether a West Virginia team could win a national championship is another question.

“Well, We play enough good teams that if we went undefeated, I think we would have a chance, as long as a so-called giant lost a game or two,” Nehlen said. “I don’t think if USC was undefeated, or Nebraska was undefeated, or Ohio State was undefeated, we could (be ranked No. 1).

“We’re a little bit like Brigham Young (in 1984). Everything that had to go right for them went right. I think everything would have to go right for us also.”

Much of the credit for West Virginia’s success is assigned to Nehlen, who, with a 62-14 victory last Saturday over Bowling Green (his alma mater), became the winningest coach in Mountaineer history. His career record is 59-35-1.

West Virginia had good teams before Nehlen arrived--in particular, a 10-1 team under Jim Carlen in 1969 and a 9-3 team under Bobby Bowden in 1975.

But when Nehlen came in 1980, after three years as an assistant at Michigan, the Mountaineers were coming off four consecutive losing seasons under Frank Cignetti.

He came at a good time.

Nehlen’s first season was also the first season of the new Mountaineer Field, which replaced a now-demolished 38,000-seat stadium.

In his first season, the Mountaineers went 6-6. The next three seasons, they finished 9-3 and earned bowl bids.

Nehlen’s popularity was evidenced by the volume of calls to The Don Nehlen Statewide Sportsline, a radio show hosted by Tony Caridi on a 30-station network.

Even now, the phone lines for the show still are busy for the entire two-hour show, with people sometimes waiting 30 minutes to get on, if they get on at all.

“He became this great, great figure, almost a demagogue,” Caridi said.

The show developed a reputation as being almost comically devoid of criticism.

“We very seldom get a call saying you ought to run the single wing or you ought to resign or you ought to do this,” Nehlen said.

Callers would often call without any question at all.

“People just want to talk to him,” Caridi said. “People would call not so much to talk about a particular player. They would say, ‘I just want to thank you for being in the state of West Virginia and what you’ve done for the state of West Virginia.’ People just called to thank him.”

West Virginia might have lost Nehlen last year had he been offered the Ohio State job, which went to John Cooper, formerly of Arizona State.

“I wasn’t as close as most people may think (to getting the job),” Nehlen said. “But I guess I was No. 1 or 2. And I obviously wasn’t No. 1.”

Nehlen likely would have gone to Ohio State, but unlike Bowden, who jumped to Florida State after his best season, Nehlen said he may well stay.

“It’s not the same job as when Carlen and Bowden were here,” he said. “They didn’t have that stadium.”