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Post by elp525 on Jul 2, 2009 7:46:49 GMT -5
Which SEC school nearly pulled WVU head coach Don Nehlen away from the Mountaineers after the 1981 season?
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Post by elp525 on Jul 31, 2009 10:46:12 GMT -5
I guess I stumped everyone with this question. Here is the answer.........
After defeating the highly-favored Florida Gators in the 1981 Peach Bowl, WVU's Don Nehlen was sought out by the South Carolina Gamecocks to become that team's new head football coach. Former Mountaineer head coach Jim Carlen had resigned at USC after the 1981 season, and Nehlen admitted that he was prepared to leave for South Carolina and take the job in the SEC. But two things happened that changed his mind. First, then-Governor Jay Rockefeller made a plea to Nehlen, telling him ‘every single time we have a winning season our coach leaves and when we don’t do well he gets fired. If you leave West Virginia now I don’t think we’ll ever be able to build a program.’ Secondly, the South Carolina president’s hard selling also swayed Nehlen to remain at WVU. “(The South Carolina president) wanted me to come immediately and I told him, ‘I am not going to leave West Virginia without getting in front of my team and telling them exactly why I’m leaving because these kids have been beaten up and they are not going to read in the newspaper that I ran for a couple of bucks,’” Nehlen said. “He got all bent out of shape and he kept calling me and calling me." Don Nehlen would of course stay, and he would coach the Mountaineers for 21 years before retiring after the 2000 season.
*I will post the next WVU Football Trivia question tomorrow to kick off August.
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