Most West Virginia University football fans had no real clue on what to expect from the Mountaineers during the 2009 season.
Bill Stewart was beginning his second year as the Mountaineer coach. The team was going with a new quarterback in Jarrett Brown, and there was a lot of inexperience with the team’s offensive line.
Now, more than three months later, Stewart’s Mountaineers have posted a 9-3 record. Jarrett Brown has come through well in the quarterback role despite suffering a midseason concussion, and the Mountaineer defense has shone brightly when it had to as the offense has gained valuable experience for next year. If the defense had stayed healthy all year, the record could have been even better than it is.
And the team has been rewarded for its outstanding season with a trip to the Gator Bowl, where it has been three times in the past six years, to face Florida State.
As everyone must know by now, former WVU coach Bobby Bowden will be closing out his coaching career — at the age of 80 — in the New Year’s Day bowl game. Thus the 2010 Gator Bowl probably will be the most publicized of all the games — at least those played before Jan. 7, when Alabama, coached by Marion County’s Nick Saban, tangles with the University of Texas for the national title.
Bobby Bowden’s farewell game will bring most all of the national attention to the Florida State coach who owns the second most victories in major college football history. Only Joe Paterno has more. And the game may establish a new all-time Gator Bowl attendance record as 6,000 seats will be added to the stadium, bring the seating capacity up to 83,500. All the original tickets were sold the day they went on sale.
This game will match two of the most genuinely “nice guys” in the college football coaching world. Bowden’s all-around class has been well known for years. But Stewart doesn’t rank far behind him. Bowden has just been around much longer. The 57-year-old Stewart was just an infant when Bowden began his coaching career.
Another interesting factor about the game is that Stewart was a freshman walk-on in Bowden’s first year as the head coach at WVU, although he transferred to Fairmont State the next year. Stewart said that under Bobby Bowden, he learned what leadership was all about and what being a human being was all about.
But all the attention on Jan. 1 will be on Bowden. And let him get all the attention he deserves. Anyone with 388 major college football victories to his credit is most deserving of such hoop-la. Bowden has been one of the nation’s outstanding coaches, and West Virginia should be most appreciative that he was a Mountaineer for nine years, counting his days as an assistant — although never fully appreciated.
This West Virginia team came mighty close to an 11-win season. One bad quarter with several unfortunate turnovers did the Gold and Blue in against Auburn. And three bad quarters in the South Florida game — well, the Bulls definitely have a jinx over the Mountaineers. But the Mountaineers came extremely close to upsetting undefeated Cincinnati, losing by just three points on the road. In looking back, that stands as one of the team’s more impressive performances.
Everyone knows the Mountaineers scored more than 30 points in each of their first five games but never hit the 30 mark in their last seven. But they produced a 4-1 record early and a 5-2 record late — squeezing past Connecticut by a 28-24 score; Louisville by 17-9; strong Pitt on a last-second field goal, 19-16; and Rutgers also by a field goal, 24-21. A win is a win is a win, and WVU managed to pull out some close ones in 2009. Victories by four points count as much as wins by 40.
We think congratulations are in order to coach Bill Stewart, his staff and players and everyone connected with making the 2009 Gator Bowl season one that most other schools in the country would surely have enjoyed having.
Opinion
Gator Bowl outstanding reward for Mountaineers
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