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The Daily OrangeFeeling the heat
West Virginia's 3-2 start has some doubting new coach Bill Stewart
By Kyle Austin
Posted: 10/8/08, 12:22 AM EST Section: Sports
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"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."
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