By Mickey Furfari
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN —
A friend recently brought to my attention that Bill Stewart has the second-best winning percentage among West Virginia University head coaches with more than one year in the position.
His 19-8 record for two full 9-4 seasons, plus that memorable 48-28 upset of No. 3-ranked Oklahoma in the 2008 Fiesta Bowl, gives him a reading of 70.3 percent.
You’d have to go all the way back to the early 1920s for a higher percentage. Coach Clarence Spears, who found time to practice some medicine, posted a four-year mark of 30-6-3 from 1921-24 for 80.8 percent.
Stewart, who opens WVU’s fall camp on Saturday, has coached at about a dozen different colleges, plus a stint as an assistant in the Canadian Football League. He joined the WVU coaching staff as an assistant coach shortly before the turn of the century.
Stewart has an outstanding coaching staff. Each of his nine assistants receives an annual base salary of at least $200,000. Their combined income is the highest in the school’s 118 years of intercollegiate football competition.
Thirty-one different head coaches served the university. Eleven held the reins just one year each.
Did you know that the average tenure of a head coach from the beginning to 1950 was a mere 2.4 years? Then the late Art “Pappy” Lewis held the post 10 years (1950-59), most of which was something of a golden era.
Hall of Famer Don Nehlen enjoyed the longest stay at 21 years, retiring after the 2000 season. He’s the winningest ever with a 149-93-4 record. That’s a winning percentage of .614.
Rich Rodriguez, who succeeded Nehlen, was head coach for seven years before leaving for Michigan. His record here was 60-28 for a winning percentage of .698.
Harry McCrory, who was head coach in 1895, had a 6-1 record for a best-ever .833 percentage. But he stayed just that one season.
WVU’s all-time winning percentage is .599 for an overall record of 682-450-45.
o o o o o
Fred S. “Jack” Simons of Morgantown will be posthumously inducted into the Ohio Valley Athletic Conference Legends organization later this month in Wheeling.
A native of New Cumberland, he was an outstanding running back/linebacker on WVU’s football team in 1920-21-22-23. He is a member of both the West Virginia Sports Hall of Fame and the WVU Sports Hall of Fame.
Simons was a starter for four years. He caught a pass from Nick Nardacci for the game-winning touchdown in the 21-13 victory over Gonzaga in the
1922 East-West Bowl.
That team had a 10-0-1 record and remains the only WVU undefeated-but-once-tied team in school history.
Simons was a well-known insurance executive here. He served as unpaid athletic director and football coach at St. Francis High School.
He died in 1997 at the age of 96.
