Nehlen stays close to program at WVU

Aug 23, 2023

Aug 29, 2023

By Neil Rudel

[email protected]

The last time Penn State played West Virginia was 1992, and the game featured Hall of Fame coaches on both sidelines.

One, of course, was Joe Paterno, known as one of the great coaches of all time.

The other was Don Nehlen, who gave West Virginia 21 seasons of excellent stability, led the Mountaineers to an unbeaten regular season in 1988 and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2005.

Nehlen, who went 149-93-4 at WVU and 202-128-8 in 30 years overall (including 53-35-4 in nine years at Bowling Green), retired from coaching in 2001.

At 87 years old, he still lives in Morgantown and follows the game closely.

“I go to most of the home games,” Nehlen said in a phone interview as the Mountaineers prepared to open their season Saturday night at Penn State (7:30 p.m., NBC), adding that he still drives. “I leave early and try to beat the traffic.”

As Nehlen watches Saturday night from the comfort of his living room, the memories of his friendship with Paterno will surface.

“Joe was a great friend,” he said. “He was a great guy and a great coach. He was so far ahead of everybody, and they were light years ahead of everybody in the East.”

Nehlen joked, “Anything we had, they had five of.”

Paterno was 25-2 against WVU, with both losses coming to Nehlen in Morgantown, once in 1984 (17-14) and the other in 1988 (51-30) when the game was stopped in the last minute after fans streamed onto the field.

“The first one was big,” Nehlen said. “I had only been here four years at that point. Any time you could beat Penn State was a big, big win.”

Nehlen takes great pride in his body of work — “when I came the program was in shambles, and when I left, we were pretty competitive with everybody” – but he’s also perplexed about the state of college sports.

As a member of the Big 12, West Virginia’s teams lead the nation in air miles.

“In football, the travel is not as bad as it sounds,” Nehlen said. “They get on a jet, and they’re there. It’s all the other sports that it’s a killer for … When we played Penn State, I got on a bus and it took us two and half hours. Now they get to Texas in two and a half hours on a jet.”

It bothers Nehlen even more that, at least for teams in the East such as WVU, Penn State and Pitt, “There’s no rivals.”

“It’s hard to get say Texas Tech or Baylor or Iowa State or Oklahoma State is your rival,” he said. “There’s nobody close. When we played Pitt all the time or Penn State all the time or Syracuse, that was different because our fans could get in the car and drive there, or our alums lived in those areas.

“Very few graduates of West Virginia live in Lubbock, Texas. But what are you going to do? It’s all money.”

The transfer portal is equally troubling. He’s fine with players getting a stipend but believes “I think there should be a limit.”

“They deserve to get paid,” he said. “(But) Getting a free education is a good deal, and $100 or $200 a month would be fine. (Nowadays) Kids are picking schools for the wrong reason … guys play for 2-3 schools. You turn on a Power-5 basketball game and some guys play for four schools. Give me a break. I don’t believe in that … What kind of transfer rules do we have? I just don’t buy it.”

Though that ship sailed long ago, he wishes all the Eastern schools would be together – “talk about people getting excited,” he said – and now awaits the Big Ten’s next expansion.

“It would be nice to throw all of us into a hat and start all over again,” he said. “UCLA and Southern Cal in the Big Ten? Who would have ever dreamt that? Of course, who would have dreamt we’d be in a league with Utah? People in Provo have no idea where Morgantown is.”

Nonetheless, it’s a new season, and Nehlen is hopeful Neal Brown – the fourth coach to follow in his footsteps — can find success.

His conduit to the staff is his son, Dan, the Mountaineers’ equipment manager since 1988 who started on the support staff as a student in 1981 under his dad.

“I’ll talk to him on the phone, and he gets the magazines and he’ll look at conferences and see where teams are picked and how many starters are coming back on teams we’ll play against,” Dan Nehlen said. “He analyzes, and if they don’t have a quarterback returning, he’ll say, ‘I don’t know how good they’re going to be.”’

Don Nehlen lost his wife four years ago, and football has helped that difficult transition.

“When he watches a game, he watches it differently than a normal person,” Dan Nehlen said. “He can look and see what’s going to happen and what’s going to work.”

And while coaching West Virginia, Don Nehlen did that better than anyone.

Rudel can be reached at 814-946-7527 or [email protected].

A league of his own

West Virginia football coaching records since 1970. Don Nehlen is at the head of the class.

Bobby Bowden (1970-75) 42-26-0

Frank Cignetti (1976-79) 17-27-0

Don Nehlen (1980-2000) 149-93-4

Rich Rodriguez (2001-07) 60-26-0

Bill Stewart (2008-10) 28-12-0

Dana Holgorsen (2011-18) 61-41-0

Neal Brown (2019-present) 22-25-0

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