'Nice guy' Stewart out to prove he can keep West Virginia on top

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"You are a weasel and a horrible journalist. ... I would honestly rather you didn't even mention WVU [anymore] even if you do have something good to say because coming from you it really doesn't mean much.
-- Andrew from Morgantown, W. Va., in an e-mail to me last month.

"Welcome to the beautiful hills of West Virginia! ... We're glad to have you."
-- Mountaineers coach Bill Stewart to me at a post-practice press conference last Tuesday.

MORGANTOWN, W. Va. -- It was not my intent to spend much of the past seven months bashing the West Virginia Mountaineers. It just kind of happened. In light of the program's controversial coaching change last winter, readers have been repeatedly asking my opinion about West Virginia's future -- and my honest answers have been admittedly pessimistic.

But as the hate mail from the Mountain State began piling up lately (Andrew's happened to be one of the cleaner ones), I decided I ought to look into the situation more closely. I wanted to get a first-hand look at the Mountaineers, in particular their improbable new head coach whose hiring touched off all this negativity in the first place. If nothing else, I'd heard he was a super nice guy. Bill Stewart did not disappoint.

Last January, following Rich Rodriguez's abrupt departure for Michigan, Stewart, the Mountaineers' jovial, 55-year-old tight ends and special teams coach, filled in as interim coach for West Virginia's 48-28 Fiesta Bowl upset of third-ranked Oklahoma. The even bigger stunner came several hours later, however, when school officials -- having previously pursued at least six high-profile candidates for their head-coaching vacancy -- suddenly reversed course and handed over the full-time reins to Stewart.

It reeked of other short-minded or spur-of-the-moment hires I'd observed in the past -- Miami promoting Larry Coker following Butch Davis' sudden departure; Michigan State retaining Bobby Williams after a Citrus Bowl upset of Florida, Indiana turning over Bob Knight's basketball program to assistant Mike Davis. None of those situations ended well. I said as much at the time.

Upon my arrival at West Virginia's Milan Puskar Center following the first of two Mountaineers practices on Tuesday, Stewart greeted me and another out-of-town reporter with the exceptionally warm welcome referenced above. I cringed just a little when he then said, "I know exactly who you are" -- but it turned out he was offering a compliment.

As best I could tell, Stewart (or "Coach Stew," as he's known here) had not the slightest idea he was greeting a writer who initially described his hiring as "a fitting and, most likely, disastrous end to ... one of the most dim-witted coaching searches I've ever witnessed," or later predicted that "the chances of [Stewart] maintaining the program's recent level of success are about as high as leaving a party at Lindsay Lohan's place with your fur coat in tact."

I could also tell by the end of our lunch together that Stewart's friendliness would not have diminished one iota even if he had read those clips. He's just that sunny. In response to a general question about his "naysayers" -- including several big-wig WVU boosters who publicly ridiculed his hiring -- Stewart offered the following assessment:

"We're in the greatest country in the world, one where [a critic's] opinion is not only welcomed -- it's almost expected and wanted," he said. "So if there's a booster here or there that doesn't like me being named coach, he's got the right to say that. But I also live in this same country, and these players and this staff live in this same country, and we have every right to prove the naysayers wrong."

This was not a case of the coach "spinning" a reporter. Nor was he going out of his way to be polite. It doesn't take long into a conversation with Stewart to realize his gleefully cheery demeanor is 100 percent genuine -- and extremely unusual for a major college football coach.

In a profession increasingly ruled by controlling, ego-driven multi-million dollar coaches, Coach Stew could easily be mistaken for a '50s TV character. He's an honest, blue-collar, West Virginian who spent the better part of 30 years bouncing around the coaching spectrum -- as an assistant at eight different schools, as the head coach at VMI for three seasons and as the offensive coordinator for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers -- who suddenly finds himself in charge of a BCS-caliber program (while being paid a MAC-level $800,000 salary). It's surreal, yet undeniably refreshing.

"People say I'm like a grandpa, I'm such a nice guy," said Stewart. "Well ... I am a nice guy. I've got emotions, too, and I get pissed like everyone else. But you can't let [the players] see that. You've got to be in control."

It was Stewart's ability to maintain control of the Mountaineers in those chaotic weeks following Rodriguez's Dec. 16 departure that earned him his self-professed dream job. While he deflects all credit for the Fiesta Bowl victory to the players, pointing to the fact only one player violated curfew during their seven-night stay in Scottsdale as a testament to their focus, West Virginia's star quarterback, Pat White, insists Stewart was "a great motivator." His chilling pregame speech quickly became the stuff of legend in Morgantown. ("LEAVE NO DOUBT TONIGHT" he bellows at its crescendo.)