This is interesting. It brings back several memories long forgotten...

MSNsportsNET Wrote:Five Key Moments
By John Antonik for MSNsportsNET.com
May 22, 2008

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The Bowl Championship Series is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2008. Good, bad or indifferent the BCS has reaped millions for the 66 schools fortunate enough to be a part of it.

West Virginia University is one of those fortunate 66. The Mountaineers have had a long and rich football tradition with many great players and teams, yet an argument can be made that no school has benefited more from its association with the Bowl Championship Series than West Virginia.

Before 2005, the school had never enjoyed three straight years in the Top 10. Never had WVU won a major bowl game nor had a major national award winner. And never has West Virginia University enjoyed national recognition to the extent it is receiving today.

Presently, schools like East Carolina and Memphis desperately wanting to be a part of the BCS can point to West Virginia as an example of what can happen to a program that has access. Two weeks ago a Memphis television station reported that the University of Memphis and the Big East were in discussions about becoming the conference’s ninth football member. The story proved erroneous.

Similar stories have come up in North Carolina concerning East Carolina.

The purpose of this isn’t to examine the benefits of the BCS or to speculate on the future makeup of the Bowl Championship Series and its membership.

What I am presenting here is what I believe are five key historical events that led to West Virginia’s admission into the BCS party. The single most important of these came in 1977.


A rendering of what Old Mountaineer Field would have looked like with a 10,000-seat expansion.
WVU Sports Communications photo

Construction of Mountaineer Field

Old Mountaineer Field was literally falling apart in 1975. The stadium had just turned 50 and the school was forced to make a decision: either refurbish and expand Mountaineer Field or look for another place to build a new stadium.

The first proposal presented by the school included a $10 million renovation to the stadium that featured a 10,000-seat deck on the far side of the stadium. The local Elks Club had a better idea. Why not find a new place to build an even bigger stadium that can adequately accommodate 50,000 fans? The West Virginia Legislature was convinced that was the right thing to do and on the last day of the legislative session in 1977 approved a $60.3 million measure authorizing the financing for a $20 million football stadium and a $4.5 athletic shell building.

Part of the compromise was the construction of the Henderson Center at Marshall and three other new buildings at state colleges.

Gov. Jay Rockefeller ultimately had to intervene to settle disagreements within the school as to the best means to proceed. It was through Gov. Rockefeller’s tremendous foresight and political savvy that a new stadium was constructed in Evansdale and completed by 1980.

Had West Virginia chosen to remodel Old Mountaineer Field the chances were good that Don Nehlen would have never taken the West Virginia job.

Don Nehlen

Jim Carlen left for more money in 1969, Bobby Bowden was run out of town to Florida State in 1975 and Frank Cignetti was fired in 1979. The football program needed stability and the late Dick Martin believed Don Nehlen was the right man for the job.

“You needed someone that could relate to West Virginia and West Virginians,” the former AD once recalled. “I think you needed someone that was honest. The thing that came across to me most about Don was his sincerity and honesty, and I thought he could really relate to the players.”

Don Nehlen and West Virginia University were perfect fits. Nehlen spent 21 years at WVU, taking the school to a pair of major bowl games in 1988 and 1993. Nehlen’s longevity was proof that the school could keep a quality coach for the long haul.

“When I told (Bo Schembechler) I was going to take the West Virginia job he said, ‘Don, you’re crazy.’ He looked at our schedule and he saw Oklahoma on there. He saw Penn State and he saw Pitt,” said Nehlen.

“He said, ‘You’ve got about, four, five or six losses on here right away. Every coach that’s ever coached there if they win they leave and if they lose they get fired. I just think this is a big mistake. You’re making good money; we go to the Rose Bowl every year. In two or three years I’ll get you a good job."

“I said, ‘Coach I don’t think it’s lousy.’ I took a map and I drew a circle around Morgantown, West Virginia. I said. ‘Bo there is a ton of football players within 300 miles of Morgantown. I got a feeling I can get me 15 of those guys."

“I was confident that I was good.”

Metro Conference

West Virginia desperately wanted to be a member of an all-sports conference. The best chance of this happening came in 1950 when the Mountaineers joined a Southern Conference that included Duke, North Carolina, Wake Forest, Maryland and South Carolina. However, three years later in 1953 the North Carolina schools broke away to form the ACC.

West Virginia was left holding the bag. From that moment on the school was looking for a better alternative. In 1968, West Virginia left the Southern Conference to become an independent. That worked well for football but was a disaster for basketball because it no longer had access to the NCAA Tournament. A brief membership in the Eastern Collegiate Basketball League preceded WVU joining the Eastern 8. The Eastern 8 was later renamed the Atlantic 10.

By the mid 1980s, West Virginia was approached by the Metro Conference which then included Florida State, Cincinnati, Virginia Tech, South Carolina, Louisville and Memphis. It would have been a major improvement for basketball.

“The media and a good number of West Virginia fans were for going,” remembered veteran sportswriter Mickey Furfari. “Metro Conference representatives even made a visit to the West Virginia University campus.’

West Virginia Athletic Director Fred Schaus wasn’t convinced. He didn’t want to eliminate longstanding relationships with Eastern rivals Pitt, Penn State, Rutgers and Temple, and he didn’t believe a conference with a geographical makeup of the Metro Conference would be economically feasible. How would the school be able to pay for the volleyball and track teams to compete at faraway places likes Memphis or Southern Mississippi?

WVU fans were upset but Schaus made the right choice.

Penn State Joins Big Ten

Mickey Furfari sat on the scoop of his life when Penn State Athletic Director Jim Tarman made a casual comment to Furfari at a Penn State-West Virginia basketball game.

“Mickey this time next year we may be in the Big Ten,” Tarman said.

“Do you really think so,” answered Furfari.

“Maybe.”

Furfari chose to wait and see what happened.

“I missed the scoop of my life,” Furfari laughed. “Less than a year later Penn State announced it was joining the Big Ten Conference.”

Joe Paterno unsuccessfully tried to form an Eastern all-sports conference in 1982 that would have included the service academies and also possibly the University of Maryland. The stumbling block proved to be revenue sharing. Fed up with the politics, Penn State decided to look elsewhere and the status quo was finished.

Penn State’s move to the Big Ten was the first domino to fall. Florida State went to the ACC and South Carolina and Arkansas were plucked up by the SEC. The Big East, looking to protect its football-playing basketball schools, opted to create a separate football conference with its centerpiece school being Miami.

In 1991, the Big East added West Virginia, Virginia Tech, Rutgers and Temple as football-only members. It was an important first step for West Virginia University.


Coach Don Nehlen guided West Virginia to a pair of undefeated seasons in 1988 and 1993.
WVU Sports Communications photo

1994 Nokia Sugar Bowl

Television revenue was forcing the Big East to make some difficult choices by the mid 1990s. A substantial television offer from CBS was on the table for the conference to consider. The caveat was that it was football driven, forcing the conference to take an introspective look at its membership. The ultimate conclusion was to invite West Virginia and Rutgers as full-fledged members and include Notre Dame in all sports with the exception of football.

Virginia Tech and Temple remained provisional members.

Rutgers, despite its lack of a football tradition, was a no-brainer for the Big East with its close proximity to New York City. Notre Dame gave the Big East a marquee partner in Olympic sports and could also be leveraged in bowl negotiations.

So, why did the conference choose West Virginia instead of Virginia Tech or Temple?

The Mountaineers had an outstanding run of success in the 1980s under Don Nehlen and was developing a tradition of traveling well to bowl games. Still, the geography of the school and its lack of television markets made it a risk. Tipping the balance was West Virginia’s second undefeated, untied regular season within a five-year span in 1993 and the school’s invitation to the 1994 Nokia Sugar Bowl in New Orleans to face Florida.

Although many things needed to happen, a victory over Florida in the Sugar Bowl could have given the Mountaineers a possible claim to the national championship. Of course West Virginia lost the game in convincing fashion but its on-field success in football made it more appealing than Virginia Tech, still getting its program started under Frank Beamer, and Temple, a perennial loser.

Virginia Tech later became the 14th member of the Big East and eventually found a more suitable home in the ACC when the league raided Big East members Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech with the purpose of creating an ACC football championship game. The Hokies became the compromise choice when a consensus couldn’t be reached on Syracuse.

As for Temple, attendance and performance factors forced the Big East to discontinue its football relationship with the Owls in 2004. In many ways Temple and West Virginia were in very similar situations in the 1970s.

The Owls, like West Virginia, had had pockets of success in their football history. In fact, former Navy coach Wayne Hardin fielded stronger teams in the late 1970s tan West Virginia did. But in the 1980s Temple made a series of poor coaching hires and didn’t have the resources to keep its football program competitive with its Eastern counterparts.

West Virginia, through amazing foresight, great timing and some good fortune, was able to navigate the stormy waters. Today, a 10-year membership in a BCS Conference has helped elevate West Virginia University into one of the most respected football programs in the country.

If WVU had joined the Metro they would have been around for FSU's rise to national prominence, and it might have sped up their own.

But since it didn't happen, it's all speculation...