Feeling the heat
Bill Stewart, the first-year head coach of West Virginia, was asked last week if his team’s back-to-back losses in September caused him to turn more to his faith, a topic which Stewart has been outspoken about.
‘I’ve read Psalm 41 real strong this past week,’ was Stewart’s immediate reply on the Sep. 29 Big East teleconference. The biblical verse reads, in part: ‘All my enemies whisper together against me; they imagine the worst for me.’
Stewart isn’t impervious to the questions swirling about his position at the top of one of college football’s most prominent programs. He’s been under scrutiny of late because of an uncharacteristic 3-2 record the team holds heading into Saturday’s noon match-up with Syracuse in Morgantown, W. Va.
The questions, though, started before the season did. Stewart was an unconventional pick from the start, after spending most of his 30-year coaching career as an assistant coach for 11 different teams, most recently as a seven-year assistant at West Virginia. His only head coaching job was a three-year stint at Virginia Military Institute, which ended after an 8-25 record and an ugly controversy involving Stewart directing a racial slur at a black player.
Yet the 56-year-old coach worked his way into the top job at WVU after former head coach Rich Rodriguez resigned to take over at Michigan in December. Stewart was named interim head coach for the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 2. After the Mountaineers shocked No. 3 Oklahoma, 48-28, Stewart had the ‘interim’ title stripped the next day.
But some West Virginia faithful, who hoped for a high-profile hire, immediately started calling Stewart the wrong pick. Losses to East Carolina and Colorado in the first three games of the season only strengthened their arguments.
‘If you hired coach Don Shula (an NFL hall of fame coach), and he lost two games, people and the media start a debate,’ said David Alvarez, a WVU booster and president of a construction company. ‘Was this the right guy? Was that the wrong guy? That’s the beauty of America and the media and fans.’
For a team that finished in the top 10 of the national polls in each of the past three seasons – the only team to accomplish that feat – consecutive losses are all but unheard of. No matter that the Mountaineers lost many of its playmakers from a club that came within a hair of playing for the national championship.
‘We don’t have Owen Schmitt and Stevie Slaton,’ Stewart said on a conference call this week, referring to the graduation of the Mountaineers’ star fullback and running back, respectively. ‘We’ve got some talent. We’ve got some skill. We just have to let it grow, mature and develop.’
Where Stewart does have support, though, is in the people closest to him. In the days leading up to the Fiesta Bowl, Stewart refused to publicly campaign for the full-time job, hoping to avoid distractions. After the upset, the players took it upon themselves to politic for Stewart to be named head coach, voicing their support through the media after the game, led by quarterback Pat White.
It was an undeniable display of Stewart’s popularity among his players, which has endured throughout the rocky start this year. Stewart, affectionately known as ‘Coach Stew,’ has encouraged both of his quarterbacks to pursue their interests in other sports – Brown in basketball, White in baseball – ignoring the possibilities for injury that worry most head coaches.
His past co-workers have offered similar sentiments. Coaches who have worked with Stewart, from Florida State head coach Bobby Bowden to Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, lined up to offer their praise of the choice of the West Virginia native.
Herb Hand, who spent six years as an assistant at WVU with Stewart before leaving for a co-offensive coordinator job at Tulsa in 2006, said admiration for Stewart is due to his honest, straight-talking style.
‘You always felt like you could talk to the guy, and that’s something that you don’t find on every staff, either,’ Hand said. ‘If there is an issue, sometimes you’ve got to close the doors and sort it out … he’s a man’s man, in that regard.’
But all the regard in the world doesn’t mean much if you’re at the helm of a losing West Virginia season. Alvarez said a win over in-state rival Marshall in the team’s fourth game has quieted some of the Stewart’s doubters. But after the success Mountaineer fans enjoyed under Rodriguez, the bar is high.
‘West Virginia’s at a point in their program where if you don’t have an 11-win season, 12-win season, double-digit wins, it’s not acceptable for the fan base,’ Hand said. ‘And obviously for the coaching staff and the players even more so.’
That places the spotlight firmly on Bill Stewart, as he tries to tries to satisfy lofty expectations under intense scrutiny. It won’t be easy, but he knows that.
‘I fall short every day, believe me,’ Stewart said. ‘I try to be a good role model for these young men. I try to be a good role model for this university and for the state of West Virginia. That’s all I try to do. But there are trying times.’
Published on October 7, 2008 at 12:00 pm
