MORGANTOWN — After West Virginia’s chance at a national football championship went down the drain when upset by Pitt in 2007, everything fell apart rapidly. While West Virginia was matched up against Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl, word came out that coach Rich Rodriguez was talking to Michigan. A few days later, he jumped ship and became Michigan’s head coach, leading a long, hard legal battle that ended up with Rodriguez having to live up to his $4 million buyout clause.

That sent athletic director Ed Pastilong off looking for a new coach, even though he had a Fiesta Bowl meeting with Oklahoma coming up.

“When he went to Michigan, I just think Billy Stewart executed one of the most phenomenal things I’d ever seen. We were in complete disarray and to play the best team in the country and beat them by 20 points,” Pastilong said.

As associate head coach, Stewart was given charge of the team.

“During that time we were talking to other coaches. There was some pretty good interest. We visited with a handful of them,” Pastilong said “I would go to the meetings every morning and sit in with the coaches. Not that I was interfering, but I wanted to observe and show them the administration was with them. I wanted them to know they weren’t alone in this.”

After one of those meetings, Stewart pulled Pastilong aside and said he’d like to be considered for the job.

“I told him he would be, but he didn’t realize he was going through an interview during those weeks. I was watching him and the more I watched him, the more I was impressed. He handled it so well. Then in Arizona, I’d go to practice. I wanted to be around the coaches. I watched him and the attitude of the players. I got to

thinking and said to myself, ‘If we win this game I’m going to offer him the job,’” Pastilong said.

“Now, if we lost, it probably would have been a whole different story. We would have continued on with our interviewing. That’s not to say he wouldn’t have been the head coach.”

Pastilong maintains that before the game he talked to President Mike Garrison. While many believe the decision was made that night in the emotion of victory, Pastilong says that wasn’t exactly the case.

“I had prepared a contract, in the event he won. The president had talked to a couple of key board members. It wasn’t like we just, ‘Hey, guess what?’ We had a plan in place and I thought it was a very good plan.

“People said emotion entered into it. It did. I’m not going to say it didn’t. But objectivity entered into it, too.”



The Basketball Mess

Gale Catlett had been a longtime, successful basketball coach at West Virginia until he simply ran out of gas in the 2002 season, a year in which he was sick and the team sicker, winning only one Big East game.

“Gale was a lot like Don Nehlen,” Pastilong said. “He was an athlete here. He had a long run, a great run. That one year we got off track, but again, it was 100 percent his call. If he said he wanted to hang on, I would have hung on with him.”

Pastilong does not fire coaches.

“My philosophy has been if the head coach is working hard and giving it all he’s got, you try to give him all the resources you can and then stand behind him,” Pastilong said. “I think that’s important. They’ll have some good years and there will be some years where they slip a little, but they’ll come back if they work at it and you are working with them.”

Catlett’s decision, coming before the end of the season, was a stunning one.

“He surprised me. He wasn’t feeling good that year. I think that entered into his decision. He had a situation with a player, which was a possible bad situation, but it was not the school and it was not Gale behind it. We were 100 percent cleared by the NCAA on that,” Pastilong said, referring to an investigation into Jonathan Hargett, a top recruit who played only that year.

West Virginia immediately turned to Bob Huggins as Catlett’s replacement. It seemed like a no-brainer.

“It was Bob’s job. President Hardesty and I and a couple of key people who were in the circle of making the selection, we all said Bob was the man. We never thought he would turn it down,” Pastilong said.

But when they went to Cincinnati to sign him, he said no.

“That set us back a bunch,” Pastilong said.

The Mountaineers turned next to Bobby Knight disciple Dan Dakich, who was a successful head coach at Bowling Green.

Dakich accepted the job, went through a Coliseum press conference, complete with the Pep Band in attendance.

Everything seemed perfect, except Dakich never signed his contract.

“After about the second day, I knew that wasn’t going to work. I just had that feeling,” Pastilong said. “I told Mona that one morning, I got up real early. I couldn’t sleep.”

Whatever it was, it ate at Pastilong enough that he wandered down to Dakich’s office.

“We’d given him a gold tie. When I saw that gold tie on his chair and the keys to his courtesy car on his desk, I called Mona and said, ‘My instincts are right. This is going to be a bad day.’”

It was. Dakich quit.

“I still remember we held the press conference outside the Coliseum, and we weren’t very smart. I remember addressing you guys, the sun was right in my face, it was about 90 degrees. At least I could have had the sun at my back and in a cooler spot. But we said we dropped the ball and we had to start over. That was the best way to handle it.”

As it was, John Beilein of Richmond was available and Pastilong saw him as a strong choice.

“It worked out pretty good because some of the players that were already here were of the type he could use in his style of play. Then all of a sudden a miracle occurred and Kevin Pittsnogle.”

Beilein revived WVU basketball, put them in the national picture, reached the Elite Eight only to lose in overtime to Louisville, won an NIT and then left for Michigan. Strangely, part of the reason he left was so much attention was being heaped upon Rodriguez, who wound up following him to Michigan.

Again, Pastilong was able to turn a bad situation into a good one and hired Huggins, a hugely successful but controversial coach.

After calling the athletic director at Kansas State for permission to talk to Huggins, Pastilong placed his call.

“Bobby, are you ready to come home?” he said.

“Absolutely,” answered Huggins.

“Come on over here and we’ll work out the particulars,” Pastilong said.

And as they say, the rest is history.



Tough Decisions

It wasn’t all as easy as getting Huggins to come home the second time. Earlier in his career, Pastilong became a villain along with President David Hardesty as they dropped five sports — the national championship rifle team, men’s indoor and outdoor track and field, men’s cross country and men’s tennis.

“There are 14 Division 1-A schools that are self supporting. Our board of governors had said to our administration because we were barely in the black that we had to increase revenues, maintain expenditures and maintain competitiveness,” Pastilong recalled. “That’s a pretty interesting charge.”

They put together a committee and decided the only way they could accomplish it was to drop some sports.

“The last person who wanted to cut sports was Ed Pastilong. I loved (track coach) Marty Pushkin. I did not want to drop track. But when it came down the realization was we were going to reduce expenditures, so we did it,” Pastilong said.

If they had allowed rifle to continue, with its history of 13 national championships and with its symbolic meaning in West Virginia, it probably would not have caused much of a problem.

But the sky caved in and there was a popular uprising.

“Any time you are dealing in something of that nature you know politics are going to get involved. It was popular for our political arena to get involved in that,” Pastilong said.

After much hasseling, the sport was brought back and the legislature even gave them $100,000 a year toward the sport.

“That’s the one line item we get from the state,” Pastilong said.



Facilities

If there is any really lasting legacy for Pastilong it may be out of the facilities that he brought in and improved during his time as athletic director, even as much as bringing Huggins home.

“One of the fortunate things for the department and our coaches is that I spent 14 years in operations and facilities manager, so I had an affinity and an appreciation for facilities. I understood the need and importance of having them and maintaining them,” he said.

While athletic director an indoor football facility was built along with suites for Mountaineer Field, as was the Cary Gymnastics Center, the Wrestling facility, the Dick Dlesk Soccer stadium, practice facilities in soccer while a new basketball practice facility that they say could be the nation’s best is under construction.

The Coliseum has been improved, both through asbestos removal and new study center and locker room facilities as has the Puskar Center with a state of the art weight room and study area and Hall of Fame.

Pastilong says his only regret is that he has yet been able to renovate the swimming facility.

Add that to the athletic endowment fund he started back when the athletic department lost its more than 270 tuition waivers, a fund that now is at more than $30 million, and it becomes obvious the Pastilong years were years of growth and success at WVU.

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.