MORGANTOWN — A few days now have passed and we can all step back and take a reasoned look at the West Virginia football program.
Too often, in the wake of the departure of West Virginia assistant coach Doc Holliday to Marshall as head football coach, the knee-jerk reaction called it a kick in the head for the Mountaineers, which might be more a hysterical reaction than a rational one.
Now don’t get this wrong, losing Doc Holliday was hardly anything found on head coach Bill Stewart’s wish list, but also do not misunderstand, it is not an indication that the West Virginia football program is crumbling from within.
Holliday was an outstanding assistant coach, to be sure, but to make it appear the entire future of the WVU program rested on his shoulders, or to surmise he was the head coach in waiting is just complete nonsense.
Let us begin with a few facts.
Holliday is 52 years old and has never been a head football coach.
There must be a reason.
Even here at WVU, he was in contention for the head coaching job at his alma mater and turned down in favor of Stewart.
To think they took Stewart over him and held onto him as “coach in waiting” is patently absurd, for they didn’t have to wait. They could have hired him immediately.
Add to that the fact Holliday exited West Virginia for the first time a year before Don Nehlen retired, obviously fully aware he would not be Nehlen’s replacement, having been outmaneuvered for the job by a younger, hotter assistant coach by the name of Rich Rodriguez.
So, it is safe to assume WVU, the school that knew him best, never saw him as a potential top-of-the-heap head football coach.
But, the doomsayers maintain, recruiting will crumble, WVU’s pipeline to the rich talent source that is Florida will dry up.
Well, let’s just take a look at that situation.
Since 1993, when WVU stunned the college football world and eked its way through an unbeaten regular season, what have been the best years for West Virginia football?
With Holliday on board recruiting Florida, the Mountaineers were rather ordinary though the final six years of the 1990s and it took them a couple of years under Rodriguez to get the talent into town that was needed to win.
And win he did. Following that disastrous 3-9 initial season with Nehlen’s — and Holliday’s — players, he won 9 games, a feat not accomplished since that 1993 season. Through three 11-victory
seasons that included three bowl wins, one a BCS bowl over Oklahoma, there was not one player around recruited by Holliday and most of the star players over the era were from outside Florida.
The list is long and glorious — Patrick White, Steve Slaton, Darius Reynard, Owen Schmitt, Ellis Lankster, Pat McAfee, Ryan Mundy, Dee McAnn, Chris Henry, Pac-Man Jones, Quincy Wilson.
None of them from Florida, none of them Holliday’s recruit.
This is not meant to knock Holliday or Florida players. Goodness knows, this year’s team would be nowhere without Jarrett Brown and Noel Devine, both out of Florida, but it is meant to point out that West Virginia is fully capable of surviving and thriving in the post-Doc Holliday era, just as it did in the first post-Doc Holliday era, a time when he was at North Carolina State and Florida.
As for the coaching aspect of the matter, Holliday’s on-field duties were hardly crucial, handling WVU’s fullback and tight ends, players who probably should have been used far more often and effectively in the WVU offense early in the season than they were.
Of course, only time will show just what effect, if any, Holliday’s departure has on the WVU program and on the Marshall program, just as it will show whether or not WVU erred in selecting Stewart over Holliday.
But to consider his departure as anything more than an assistant coach leaving to follow his dream of someday being a head coach is to look at it through a magnifying glass, which can make the common house fly appear a terrible creature if viewed with the same magnification.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
Bob Herzel
HERTZEL COLUMN - WVU will survive loss of Holliday
- Bob Herzel
-
-
HERTZEL COLUMN - God bless America
Perhaps the most welcome innovation in major league baseball in recent memory has been the introduction of a seventh-inning rendition of “God Bless America” while honoring an active member of the U.S. military.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Patrone finally gets his due
Lee Patrone says he remembers it vividly, even though more than 50 years have passed, and while it was the greatest accomplishment in his life it has nothing to do with the West Virginia University basketball career that has lifted him into the Class of 2012 that will be inducted into the Mountaineer Sports Hall of Fame in September.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: No doubt WVU made out well
There was a cold, ill wind blowing in from the north on Friday.
It was the kind of wind that blows whenever a Pitt man opens his mouth, as the Pittsburgh athletic director Steve Pederson did. -
Tears and memories: VIDEO
It was mid-Thursday afternoon at the Morgantown Event Center and the crowd stood mostly silently in line that wound out of the Events Hall and into the hallway toward the staircase.
A young lady was there holding a singular golden rose
“I wish,” Rebecca Durst said, “it could be gold and blue.” -
HERTZEL COLUMN: Stew fondly remembered by players
The tributes have poured in all week for Bill Stewart, the former West Virginia University football coach whose sudden and unexpected death from a heart attack at age 59 on Monday stunned the state, but it wasn’t the administrators or executives or politicians who really knew him.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: White right there with Hall of Famers
Back on New Year’s Eve, 2008, shortly after West Virginia University had edged North Carolina, 31-30, to win the Meineke Car Care Bowl, an attempt was made to put Mountaineer quarterback Patrick White into his proper historical perspective.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Pat Beilein follows in father’s path
In a day filled with the sorrow of former West Virginia University football coach Bill Stewart’s sudden and unexpected death, there was a ray of sunshine that managed to slip through, a happening that shows us all that even in death there is life and as one son grieves, as does Stewart’s son, Blaine, somewhere else a father basks in pride over his son.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN - Stewart’s gift was giving
It was the kind of cosmic happening that defies description. We all come across them from time to time, leaving us in a state of disbelief.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: This ‘Maniac’ makes music with Kilicli
Mike Martin wasn’t long removed from his New York roots, a somewhat rare import in these parts compared to the migration of New Jerseyites who matriculate at West Virginia University.
-
Van Zant fired as WVU baseball coach
West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck believes with a new coach and a new stadium the Mountaineers can compete with the likes of Texas and Oklahoma for the Big 12 baseball championship but understands it will not come easily or quickly.
- More Bob Herzel Headlines
-
HERTZEL COLUMN - God bless America
