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Stewart has ties to North Carolina
West Virginia coach was an assistant at UNC and is good friend of WFU's Grobe
AP File Photo
Coach Bill Stewart of West Virginia was the offensive line coach for 3 years at UNC.
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Published: December 23, 2008
Bill Stewart, West Virginia's football coach, is a Mountaineer to the core but has ACC roots that go back almost 30 years.
Stewart counts Coach Jim Grobe of Wake Forest, a fellow West Virginian, as his best friend, in coaching and out.
"We're two old West Virginia boys," Stewart said. "We worked together at Marshall. We worked together at Air Force. Jim and Holly (Grobe's wife), and Karen and Bill Stewart, you cut one, and the other bleeds. I can promise you that."
Stewart has spent 33 years in coaching, most of them as an assistant, and became West Virginia's coach last January. He worked at North Carolina twice, coaching the junior-varsity team in 1979 and then working the 1985, 1986 and 1987 seasons as the offensive-line coach under Dick Crum, whom he considers the best-organized football coach he has been around.
He also was the offensive-line coach under Gary Tranquill, a former offensive coordinator at UNC, in 1984 when Tranquill was the coach at Navy.
"I had a great time; I was under a tremendous head-football coach in Dick Crum, whom I absolutely loved and admired and still visit with monthly," Stewart said. "He and Shirley (Crum's wife) come through Morgantown on their way from their beach house to Ohio. They always stop and see us."
Stewart got to know ACC Commissioner John Swofford when Swofford was the athletics director at UNC and also knows current AD Dick Baddour and former and current basketball coaches Dean Smith and Roy Williams.
"I had a tremendous love for the Chapel Hill family," Stewart said. "We really got along at Carolina as a family. It was truly a family. The people were just so good. I really enjoyed my time there."
Stewart's new life and his old life will cross Saturday when West Virginia plays UNC in the Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte.
Stewart took over as West Virginia's coach after the 2007 regular season, when Rich Rodriguez left to become the coach at Michigan. He guided WVU to a 48-28 win over then-No. 3 Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl, one of the biggest wins in school history.
Stewart grew up in New Martinsville, W.Va., and spent one year at WVU before finishing college at Fairmont (W.Va.) State in 1973. Given a choice, he said he wouldn't want to coach anywhere but at West Virginia.
"It's been fast, but it's been fun," Stewart said of his first season. "I'm very honored and very proud and quite humble to be the head football coach. I'm a native of this state, and it has been a dream come true. It's been a real blessing.
"I don't come to work. I just come play a little boys' game every day, the game of football, and it's such a joy. Every day I come with a smile on my face. We work hard and we have fun."
Stewart considers two games crucial to West Virginia's 8-4 season -- a 24-3 loss at East Carolina in the second week of the season and a 17-14 overtime loss at Colorado the next week.
"We went into Greenville, and our young defensive players absolutely stunk the field up," Stewart said. "They figured out that day that we had to do more than just show up in the Old Gold and Blue.
"That was the best thing that could have happened to our guys. Now that's terrible to say about a loss, but (ECU) really humbled our young people and got our young men's attention."
After the loss at Colorado, Stewart saw tears in his players' eyes. He said that the scene in the locker room reminded him of one at Miami several years ago, after a tough loss dropped the Hurricanes to 1-4. Miami rebounded that season, and so did West Virginia this season.
Quarterback Pat White, one of 19 seniors, led the Mountaineers on a five-game winning streak that turned things around. West Virginia didn't win the Big East title as predicted in August, but Stewart is grateful for the chance at one more victory.
"We bonded as a football team," Stewart said. "Our football team came of age. The wake-up call in Greenville and the near win in Boulder made the moxie of this football team. It made us who we are today."
■ Bill Cole can be reached at bcole@wsjournal.com.
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