MORGANTOWN– It is Christmas in September, this thing known as opening day in football.
It is a time when the searing heat of summer begins to let up, or so it seems, and when friends get together in, of all places, a parking lot to sear the present with the past, all the while sucking up a cold one while nibbling on pepperoni rolls or burgers or dogs.
It’s a rebirth, a right of passing … and running. Everyone is undefeated and what could be purer than that?
Home or away it doesn’t matter, although this idea of West Virginia opening on the road against a Power 5 opponent is getting a little bit prickly, seeing as it is the only Power 5 school to open on the road against a like-level school for three straight years now.
You’ve waited to see old classmates, whether they are from college or high school, you enjoy seeing your children playing with old friends’ children and you are thinking of the time gone by and what it meant and the time ahead and what it will mean to those children.
Football is a tradition at West Virginia, one that has carried on over the years through the very good and the very bad, from Old Mountaineer Field to Milan Puskar Stadium. It belongs to all West Virginians, even those who did or are attending Marshall.
On Saturday, the opener is Penn State with 105,000 or more on hand for the 7:30 p.m. kickoff and, if not there in the flesh, they will be there in spirit courtesy of NBC.
As the players look around Beaver Stadium and all that blue and white, they can appreciate the sparse beginning of WVU football, that began on Nov. 28, 1891, when its first team lost it’s only game of that season to Washington & Jefferson, 72-0, in a cow pasture converted into a football field.
The players will sense the history that runs both deep and one-sided toward Penn State, having won only nine times in 49 games. It is not a good record but as Morgantown’s Mike Oliverio pointed out on social media, there’s another way to look at it as Penn State has not beaten WVU in 30 years.
Of course, there will never be another opener like the one in 1980, a time when modern WVU football history began when Don Nehlen began his Hall of Fame run in Morgantown in a sparkling — and quite uncompleted — new stadium named Mountaineer Field, as it was the only one.
Such festivities, a nervous Nehlen on the makeshift stage with Gov. Rockefeller, with the helicopter flying in and bringing John Denver along to sing what has become the state anthem, “Country Roads.”
And what a gala opening this was as Robert Alexander ran for 187 yards and two touchdowns on 21 carriers as WVU sent the crowd of 51,050 home happy with a 41-27 victory over Cincinnati.
Every opener is special, of course, but some are more than others, and we are about to carry you down memory lane through some of the special moments opening day has delivered.
If the first opener in 1980 was the most special it was followed closely just two years later when in 1982, the Mountaineers traveled to Normal, Okla., for what was supposed to be another beating at the hands of the No. 9 Sooners. Only with Jeff Hostetler making his Mountaineer debut with 17 completions in 37 pass attempts for 321 yards and four touchdowns turned the day Sooner sour with a 41-27 victory.
Running back Jonathan Holifield, who seemed to enjoy opening day quite a bit, put on a huge display with 177 rushing yards and three touchdowns as WVU defeated Louisville, 52-13 in 1985, Nehlen’s program now firmly entrenched in the national scene.
They did not know how far and how fast the program would rise, also there was a hint of what was to come in the 1987 opener when a kid from Brashear High in Pittsburgh named Major Harris made a minor impact in his debut with just 3 of 9 completions for 52 yards and 10 carries for only 7 yards in his debut.
However, he displayed the big play ability that would separate him from the pack with a 40-yard second-quarter touchdown pass to Harvey Smith.
The next year, 1988, would be the magical year in which they went all the way behind Harris to the national championship game, offering a warning of what was to come in a 62-14 blowout of Bowling Green with 367 rushing yards.
In 1991, Pitt was the opening foe and that interested 68,041 paying customers, who got excited briefly with a 3-0 lead before the Panthers laid it to the Mountaineers, 34-3.
The next year was the only tie of the last 43 years as WVU and Miami played to a 29-29 tie , which really didn’t signify what the next year would hold, Nehlen’s second undefeated regular season in 1993.
That undefeated regular season ended in the ashes of a 41-7 bowl loss to Florida, and the next year, it got the Mountaineers into the Kickoff Classic at Giants Stadium against Nebraska; a Nebraska team that was one of the best college football teams ever.
It humbled WVU, 31-0, with quarterback Tommie Frazier gaining 130 rushing yards and All-American tailback Lawrence Phillips adding 126 while the Mountaineers could rush for only 7 net yards against the Husker defense.
It took WVU a couple of years to get over it before unveiling an All-American weapon of their own in the memorable 1996 opener at Pitt in which Amos Zereoue took his first collegiate carry 69 yards for a touchdown en route to a 137-yard performance on just 12 carries in a 34-0 mismatch.
Lost in all of that was another debut that would haunt Pitt as its own native Marc Bulger played the last few minutes at quarterback and completed his first pass of 9 yards to Morgantown’s own Donnie Quisenberry.
In 1997, WVU hosted downstate rival Marshall and Hall of Fame receiver Randy Moss for the first time in 74 yards and survived, 42-31, in a game that entertained a crowd of 65,492 as Zereoue rushed for 174 yards and three touchdowns on 27 carries while Moss caught seven passes from Chad Pennington for 85 yards and two TDs.
The 1998 opener was much anticipated as No. 1 Ohio State was coming to town and Nehlen had a team he thought was capable of winning the national championship. A crowd of 68,409 crammed its way into Mountaineer Field for a home opener record, but the Buckeyes ruined it all by winning 34-17.
Nehlen would later say he wished he had not scheduled that game as the opener as his team never really recovered from the loss.
The 1999 opener was played in Charlotte against East Carolina and was notable in that it was the debut for Avon Cobourne, who would become WVU’s all-time leading rusher. Cobourne would score his first Mountaineer touchdown and lead WVU with 82 rushing yards but the Pirates upset WVU, 30-23.
In 2001, WVU football changed as Nehlen was replaced by WVU alum Rich Rodriguez, whose debut was a sign of how much work he had to put in his program, losing 34-10 at Boston College. It also wound up being the debut for Rasheed Marshall, who would be the QB he could use to run his offense.
In 2004, WVU would make amends for that loss to East Carolina in a big way with a home opener in which they won 56-23 while Kay-Jay Harris shattered the then school rushing record with a 337-yard, four-touchdown performance in which he averaged 13.5 yards per carry. The Mountaineers would run up 478 rushing yards that day.
The next year, 2005, the rare Sunday opener would be even more meaningful as a backup quarterback named Patrick White debuted while rushing for 20 yards on six carries and completing 3 of 6 passes for 63 yards in a 15-7 at Syracuse.
Rodriguez would get White in the lineup full time after starter Adam Bednarik was injured in the Louisville game in med-yard, leading to him teaming up with Steve Slaton, and one of the great eras in WVU football was born.
As if to emphasize it, the 2006 opener at home against Marshall drew 61,077 yards and WVU won, 42-10, with Slaton rushing 33 times for 203 yards and two scores and while completing 10 of 14 passes for 168 yards and 2 TDs.
In 2008, there were 60,566 on hand to welcome Bill Stewart as a full-time head coach after his stirring upset of Oklahoma as interim coach in the Fiesta Bowl the previous year and WVU pounded Villanova, 48-21, with White completing 25 of 33 passes for 208 yards and five touchdowns.
In 2011, with the program caught up in swirling controversy as Stewart was forced out and Dana Holgorsen was named coach, WVU used Marshall as its opening day foe to debut Holgorsen, who won 34-13. WVU rushed for just 4 net yards but Geno Smith showed off what he liked about the new offense with 26 completions in 35 attempts for 249 yards and two touchdowns.
The next year, with everyone comfortable in the new offense, WVU laid 69 points on Marshall as Smith completed 32 of 36 passes and threw as many touchdowns as incompletions while passing for 323 yards.
In 2014, WVU went to Atlanta to face No. 2 Alabama, put up a decent show but fell, 33-22, again over scheduling.
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