http://www.wvusports.com/page.cfm?story=32659&cat=exclusives
By John Antonik
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - West Virginia’s Dana Holgorsen admitted during last week’s Big 12 media day activities taking place at the Ford Center out in Frisco, Texas, that he has been officially kicked out of the Air Raid Club.
Hal Mumme, the father of the Air Raid, made that decision after watching Holgorsen’s Mountaineer offense complete just 10 passes in their season-ending 24-21 victory over Baylor last year.
If you go back and study Mumme’s offenses through the years, there were probably instances when his quarterbacks completed 10 passes in a single drive.
“Hal did come to my Baylor game, which was game 12, and we couldn’t throw the ball at all that game and he goes, ‘I really didn’t want to have to kick you out (of the Air Raid Club) but I’m going to have to kick you out,’” Holgorsen joked.
But Holgorsen was quick to point out that West Virginia DID win the game, which demonstrates his willingness to adapt and adjust in order to reach a successful outcome.
Holgorsen’s decision to run the football more frequently didn’t just happen - it was studied, evaluated and implemented after a lot of thought and consideration.
“You can’t just make the decision ‘I want to run the ball’ overnight,” Holgorsen explained. “It’s going to take some time and it took us a couple of years before we were any good at it. You just continue to improve with it.”
Holgorsen’s unique system is his own, but it incorporates many different influences beginning with Mumme and Mike Leach, and continuing with Kevin Sumlin, Mike Gundy, Joe Wickline and Ron Crook.
What you see today is some of Iowa Wesleyan, Valdosta State and Kentucky in Mumme, some of Minnesota, Purdue, Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Houston in Sumlin, some of Oklahoma State in Gundy and Wickline and some of Stanford in Crook.
And this is by no means unusual. Take Bear Bryant, for example.
Bryant ran an option offense for years when he coached at Maryland, Kentucky, Texas A&M and his during early days at Alabama.
But when he recruited quarterbacks Joe Namath and Ken Stabler to Alabama in the 1960s, he transitioned to more of a cutting-edge, modern passing-style attack.
Then, in the early 1970s when he thought his offense was getting stale, he sought out Texas coach Darrell Royal to learn Royal’s version of the wishbone and soon he began adding his own twists to it.
Eventually, Alabama returned to its dominant ways in the mid-1970s, capturing four Sugar Bowls during a five-season span from 1975-79.
Bryant adapted and adjusted based on his personnel and the ebbs and flows of the college game, which is exactly what Holgorsen is doing right now at West Virginia.
“I learned some good stuff at Oklahoma State, at Houston, too, me and Sumlin,” Holgorsen recalled. “The one thing we didn’t do at Tech was we didn’t run the ball at all. At Houston, a lot of the stuff we did was the up-tempo, motions and stuff like that, so we kind of got that stuff going there.
“At Oklahoma State it was a little bit more - and give Gundy a lot of credit for this - but just old-school, hand-in-the-dirt, Joe Wickline, run the ball, use a fullback … that was because of the personnel they had with Kendall Hunter,” Holgorsen noted. “I’ve taken some from that and Ron Crook - I give him a lot of credit four years ago coming in here and developing a mentality with our O-line with a lot of gap schemes and Stanford-type stuff.”
So, what is Holgorsen calling his version of the Air Raid these days?
“I don’t know, I haven’t named it,” he said.
More Holgorsen media day tidbits …
* Holgorsen on what he’s learned during his six seasons as a head coach at WVU.
“I’ve learned a lot, but I’m not getting into the details of what I’ve done right and what I’ve done wrong,” he said. “I think I’m in a good place right now. I like the direction of the program. That’s what is important.”
* Holgorsen on how he deals with staff turnover, a common occurrence in today’s game. His WVU staffs through the years have experienced a number of changes for a variety of reasons.
Holgorsen believes creating an atmosphere of stability is his No. 1 objective.
“We lost a couple of coaches based on the fact that we didn’t have stability. It is what it is,” he said. “I’m trying to get ahead on who we hire. I’m looking now to try and find replacements for guys (who get future opportunities). It’s going to happen in the profession when you have success, but I’m able to spend more time on it to develop an unofficial list of guys I think would be a good fit.”
Holgorsen listed some other strategies he’s adopting to keep his staffs intact.
“Making the families feel better. Making the families feel a part of what we’re doing,” he said. “Making the assistant coaches accountable in what we want to do and build an environment that they want to be a part of. I think we’ve got good stability right now. I think we’ve got a collection of guys that are excited about being here. I think it’s showing in recruiting.
“You are always going to lose coaches, but you try to minimize that by increasing stability as much as you possibly can,” he said.
* Holgorsen admitted he’s a little bit envious of Mike Gundy’s mullet-style haircut, not so much the mullet itself, but the thick, Fabio-style hair the middle-aged Gundy currently possesses.
“He should perm it. I wouldn’t do it if I could - not that I can - but I’m a little envious that he can,” Holgorsen joked.
On a more serious note, Holgorsen said he is seeing a much more relaxed, much more confident Mike Gundy today instead of the younger Mike Gundy he first met seven years ago.
“He was where I probably was last year (coaching at the end of his contract) and give him all the credit in the world over the last seven years. That thing just keeps going,” Holgorsen said. “They develop players. They recruit well. He manages it well. He’s got outstanding discipline. I see a much more confident, relaxed CEO-type guy.”
Briefly …
* Fox Sports 1 college football analyst Joel Klatt believes West Virginia has assimilated well into the Big 12 culture, despite its geographical challenges.
“The travel takes its toll but there is no question West Virginia has done what it needs to do to be a force in the league,” Klatt said.
Since joining the Big 12 in 2012, West Virginia has made four bowl appearances and posted winning records in league play twice, including last year’s 7-2 record that tied Oklahoma State for second.
The Mountaineers have defeated every team in the league except Oklahoma, and has consistently won at home and on the road.
“What you don’t want to do is just come in and be a coattail rider and a bus rider,” Klatt, a former quarterback in the Big 12 at Colorado, said. “You want to come in and be a force to be reckoned with. They did that early and they had a little bit of a rough patch, but I think they’re doing that again.
“They go on the road and they win. They’re not just a home team. They’ve got one of the best home-field advantages in the conference and they recruit really well. I think Dana and everybody at West Virginia has done a heck of a job.”
Jake Spavital
* Everyone knows about Jake Spavital, the offensive strategist and play caller, but what is not so well known about him are his abilities as a recruiter - both in relating to prospects and evaluating them.
Bruce Feldman of FOX Sports explains, “A lot of times you get a really good offensive coordinator and they’re not known as a great recruiter and you look at some of the guys he’s gotten, whether it’s Kevin White at West Virginia or some of the guys he got to A&M or even some of the guys he got to Cal last year,” said Feldman.
Right at the top of Spavital’s list is replenishing the depth in the quarterbacks room behind starter Will Grier and backup Chris Chugunov.
Earlier this spring, Spavital signed junior college quarterback David Israel and he also landed Miami transfer Jack Allison, a former four-star prep prospect from Parrish, Florida.
Allison will sit out this season and will have three years to play three seasons at WVU.
“I think Jake’s done a great job of coming in and focusing hard on just quarterback recruitment,” Holgorsen said. “That’s one thing that I think was overlooked on my part just a little bit when it came to me being the coordinator and the quarterback coach, getting pulled in so many different directions, I don’t think I did a fantastic job of that.”
If you look at West Virginia’s success over the last 10-15 years, consider the number of top-shelf quarterbacks the Mountaineers have had during the time period, beginning with Big East Player of the Year Rasheed Marshall and continuing with Pat White, Jarrett Brown, Geno Smith, Clint Trickett and Skyler Howard.
That’s a pretty good run of quarterbacks anywhere.
Overall, Holgorsen sees his quarterbacks room in a much better place than it was as late as last spring.
“The room for the future, to me, looks really healthy, as healthy as it’s ever been,” he said. “I feel like we’ve got a good starter, a good backup, and then we’ve got a question mark at third.”
* When I was out in Texas last week for Big 12 media day I believe I saw somewhere that, collectively, the Big 12 has the youngest group of coaching staffs in the country at an average age of 46 ½ years old, and that includes 77-year-old Bill Snyder at Kansas State.
* From the outside looking in, it would appear Oklahoma is going to have a big drop off at the running back position with Joe Mixon and Samaje Perine off to the NFL, but Oklahoma is one of those places where they seem to reload, not replace.
First-year coach Lincoln Riley believes he’s got plenty of candidates to do just that, beginning with 6-foot-2-inch, 223-pound Rodney Anderson from Katy, Texas.
“We’ve got kind of a unique group,” Riley said. “Rodney Anderson comes to mind. Obviously, he missed the last two years because of injuries, so he’s had to fight through a ton. He’s a great, great worker. He stacks up there physically as good as anybody we’ve had at that position, including Joe and Samaje.”
There is Abdul Adams, a 5-foot-11-inch, 205-pounder from Landover, Maryland, who got work last year as a third-down back for the Sooners, there’s JC transfer Marcelius Sutton and two touted high school prospects, Trey Sermon and Kennedy Brooks, Riley can look to as well.
In other words, just because Mixon and Perine are no longer in Norman that doesn’t mean Oklahoma will abandon its running game.
“It’s as wide open as it can be,” Riley said. “We’ll play the best guy whether it’s one guy getting most of the carries, two guys like last year, or even as much as three or four.”
* I know new Texas coach Tom Herman is the hot name in college football right now. And his two-year record at Houston is certainly eye catching, considering he won 13 of 14 games his first season there and defeated Florida State, 38-24, in the Peach Bowl. Then, last year, he followed that up with a season-opening victory over Oklahoma before knocking Louisville out of playoff contention later in the year - both big victories coming at home.
But he also suffered losses to Navy, SMU and Memphis before packing his bags for Austin.
Now compare what Herman has done in two short seasons as Houston’s head coach to what Charlie Strong had accomplished when Texas hired him prior to the 2014 season.
Strong won two Big East championships while at Louisville, went 23-3 during his final two seasons there, which included an impressive 33-23 victory over Florida in the Sugar Bowl. Before that, Strong spent a number of years in the SEC as a defensive coordinator at South Carolina and Florida before landing his first head coaching gig in 2010 at age 50.
Strong’s three-year tenure at Texas was considered a failure, but all indications point to him leaving Herman with a strong nucleus of players to work with this season.
Will Strong get any credit for this, or will all of the credit go to Herman if he enjoys immediate success in Austin?
Based on his remarks during last week’s Big 12 media day, it looks like Herman is already laying the groundwork to get the credit, should success come his way immediately.
“I know it went through a tremendous storm, if you will, from Coach (Mack) Brown’s departure to now,” he said. “We’re talking about a Hall of Fame coach leaving, a Hall of Fame athletic director leaving, a president leaving, a new president coming in, a new AD getting hired, a new AD leaving, a new interim AD leaving, the next head coach leaving and not having success. So, I think a lot of non-continuity, if that’s a word, there just wasn’t any stability from the top down.”
Herman is also well-schooled in the program’s recent gridiron struggles.
“Since the class of 2018, these 16-year-old kids that we are recruiting - since they were two-years-old, they’ve seen two winning Texas football seasons, two; and they’ve seen four losing Texas football seasons,” he said. “So, the Texas they know is a lot different than the Texas that people in my generation know. So, it’s our job to show them what Texas is capable of, what Texas has been in the past, and what we’re planning on being again in the future.”
Herman, Riley and Baylor’s Matt Ruhle have already received strong endorsements from Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby, who called them “superstars, each one in their own right” during his opening remarks at this year’s media day.
All three have challenging jobs for different reasons.
It will be interesting watching their development in the Big 12 in the coming years.
Andrew Caridi
* And finally, a big shout out to Andrew Caridi, who earlier this week landed a job as the play-by-play voice of Shepherd University Rams football and men’s basketball for 95.9 The Big Dawg and bigdawgfm.com!
Andrew got his start calling WVU hockey games at U-92 before branching out to describe West Virginia University men’s and women’s soccer, volleyball and wrestling action on our free web streams available at WVUsports.com.
He also served as our correspondent out in San Jose, California, during women’s soccer’s run to the national championship game last season.
Most recently, Andrew called West Virginia Black Bears games on the MetroNews Radio Network.
Of course, Andrew is the son of our very own Tony Caridi.
It’s never a bad thing getting more Caridis behind a microphone!
Great job Andrew!
In the meantime, I hope everyone has a great weekend.
Don’t forget, fall camp opens on Sunday.
By John Antonik
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - West Virginia’s Dana Holgorsen admitted during last week’s Big 12 media day activities taking place at the Ford Center out in Frisco, Texas, that he has been officially kicked out of the Air Raid Club.
Hal Mumme, the father of the Air Raid, made that decision after watching Holgorsen’s Mountaineer offense complete just 10 passes in their season-ending 24-21 victory over Baylor last year.
If you go back and study Mumme’s offenses through the years, there were probably instances when his quarterbacks completed 10 passes in a single drive.
“Hal did come to my Baylor game, which was game 12, and we couldn’t throw the ball at all that game and he goes, ‘I really didn’t want to have to kick you out (of the Air Raid Club) but I’m going to have to kick you out,’” Holgorsen joked.
But Holgorsen was quick to point out that West Virginia DID win the game, which demonstrates his willingness to adapt and adjust in order to reach a successful outcome.
Holgorsen’s decision to run the football more frequently didn’t just happen - it was studied, evaluated and implemented after a lot of thought and consideration.
“You can’t just make the decision ‘I want to run the ball’ overnight,” Holgorsen explained. “It’s going to take some time and it took us a couple of years before we were any good at it. You just continue to improve with it.”
Holgorsen’s unique system is his own, but it incorporates many different influences beginning with Mumme and Mike Leach, and continuing with Kevin Sumlin, Mike Gundy, Joe Wickline and Ron Crook.
What you see today is some of Iowa Wesleyan, Valdosta State and Kentucky in Mumme, some of Minnesota, Purdue, Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Houston in Sumlin, some of Oklahoma State in Gundy and Wickline and some of Stanford in Crook.
And this is by no means unusual. Take Bear Bryant, for example.
Bryant ran an option offense for years when he coached at Maryland, Kentucky, Texas A&M and his during early days at Alabama.
But when he recruited quarterbacks Joe Namath and Ken Stabler to Alabama in the 1960s, he transitioned to more of a cutting-edge, modern passing-style attack.
Then, in the early 1970s when he thought his offense was getting stale, he sought out Texas coach Darrell Royal to learn Royal’s version of the wishbone and soon he began adding his own twists to it.
Eventually, Alabama returned to its dominant ways in the mid-1970s, capturing four Sugar Bowls during a five-season span from 1975-79.
Bryant adapted and adjusted based on his personnel and the ebbs and flows of the college game, which is exactly what Holgorsen is doing right now at West Virginia.
“I learned some good stuff at Oklahoma State, at Houston, too, me and Sumlin,” Holgorsen recalled. “The one thing we didn’t do at Tech was we didn’t run the ball at all. At Houston, a lot of the stuff we did was the up-tempo, motions and stuff like that, so we kind of got that stuff going there.
“At Oklahoma State it was a little bit more - and give Gundy a lot of credit for this - but just old-school, hand-in-the-dirt, Joe Wickline, run the ball, use a fullback … that was because of the personnel they had with Kendall Hunter,” Holgorsen noted. “I’ve taken some from that and Ron Crook - I give him a lot of credit four years ago coming in here and developing a mentality with our O-line with a lot of gap schemes and Stanford-type stuff.”
So, what is Holgorsen calling his version of the Air Raid these days?
“I don’t know, I haven’t named it,” he said.
More Holgorsen media day tidbits …
* Holgorsen on what he’s learned during his six seasons as a head coach at WVU.
“I’ve learned a lot, but I’m not getting into the details of what I’ve done right and what I’ve done wrong,” he said. “I think I’m in a good place right now. I like the direction of the program. That’s what is important.”
* Holgorsen on how he deals with staff turnover, a common occurrence in today’s game. His WVU staffs through the years have experienced a number of changes for a variety of reasons.
Holgorsen believes creating an atmosphere of stability is his No. 1 objective.
“We lost a couple of coaches based on the fact that we didn’t have stability. It is what it is,” he said. “I’m trying to get ahead on who we hire. I’m looking now to try and find replacements for guys (who get future opportunities). It’s going to happen in the profession when you have success, but I’m able to spend more time on it to develop an unofficial list of guys I think would be a good fit.”
Holgorsen listed some other strategies he’s adopting to keep his staffs intact.
“Making the families feel better. Making the families feel a part of what we’re doing,” he said. “Making the assistant coaches accountable in what we want to do and build an environment that they want to be a part of. I think we’ve got good stability right now. I think we’ve got a collection of guys that are excited about being here. I think it’s showing in recruiting.
“You are always going to lose coaches, but you try to minimize that by increasing stability as much as you possibly can,” he said.
* Holgorsen admitted he’s a little bit envious of Mike Gundy’s mullet-style haircut, not so much the mullet itself, but the thick, Fabio-style hair the middle-aged Gundy currently possesses.
“He should perm it. I wouldn’t do it if I could - not that I can - but I’m a little envious that he can,” Holgorsen joked.
On a more serious note, Holgorsen said he is seeing a much more relaxed, much more confident Mike Gundy today instead of the younger Mike Gundy he first met seven years ago.
“He was where I probably was last year (coaching at the end of his contract) and give him all the credit in the world over the last seven years. That thing just keeps going,” Holgorsen said. “They develop players. They recruit well. He manages it well. He’s got outstanding discipline. I see a much more confident, relaxed CEO-type guy.”
Briefly …
* Fox Sports 1 college football analyst Joel Klatt believes West Virginia has assimilated well into the Big 12 culture, despite its geographical challenges.
“The travel takes its toll but there is no question West Virginia has done what it needs to do to be a force in the league,” Klatt said.
Since joining the Big 12 in 2012, West Virginia has made four bowl appearances and posted winning records in league play twice, including last year’s 7-2 record that tied Oklahoma State for second.
The Mountaineers have defeated every team in the league except Oklahoma, and has consistently won at home and on the road.
“What you don’t want to do is just come in and be a coattail rider and a bus rider,” Klatt, a former quarterback in the Big 12 at Colorado, said. “You want to come in and be a force to be reckoned with. They did that early and they had a little bit of a rough patch, but I think they’re doing that again.
“They go on the road and they win. They’re not just a home team. They’ve got one of the best home-field advantages in the conference and they recruit really well. I think Dana and everybody at West Virginia has done a heck of a job.”
Jake Spavital
* Everyone knows about Jake Spavital, the offensive strategist and play caller, but what is not so well known about him are his abilities as a recruiter - both in relating to prospects and evaluating them.
Bruce Feldman of FOX Sports explains, “A lot of times you get a really good offensive coordinator and they’re not known as a great recruiter and you look at some of the guys he’s gotten, whether it’s Kevin White at West Virginia or some of the guys he got to A&M or even some of the guys he got to Cal last year,” said Feldman.
Right at the top of Spavital’s list is replenishing the depth in the quarterbacks room behind starter Will Grier and backup Chris Chugunov.
Earlier this spring, Spavital signed junior college quarterback David Israel and he also landed Miami transfer Jack Allison, a former four-star prep prospect from Parrish, Florida.
Allison will sit out this season and will have three years to play three seasons at WVU.
“I think Jake’s done a great job of coming in and focusing hard on just quarterback recruitment,” Holgorsen said. “That’s one thing that I think was overlooked on my part just a little bit when it came to me being the coordinator and the quarterback coach, getting pulled in so many different directions, I don’t think I did a fantastic job of that.”
If you look at West Virginia’s success over the last 10-15 years, consider the number of top-shelf quarterbacks the Mountaineers have had during the time period, beginning with Big East Player of the Year Rasheed Marshall and continuing with Pat White, Jarrett Brown, Geno Smith, Clint Trickett and Skyler Howard.
That’s a pretty good run of quarterbacks anywhere.
Overall, Holgorsen sees his quarterbacks room in a much better place than it was as late as last spring.
“The room for the future, to me, looks really healthy, as healthy as it’s ever been,” he said. “I feel like we’ve got a good starter, a good backup, and then we’ve got a question mark at third.”
* When I was out in Texas last week for Big 12 media day I believe I saw somewhere that, collectively, the Big 12 has the youngest group of coaching staffs in the country at an average age of 46 ½ years old, and that includes 77-year-old Bill Snyder at Kansas State.
* From the outside looking in, it would appear Oklahoma is going to have a big drop off at the running back position with Joe Mixon and Samaje Perine off to the NFL, but Oklahoma is one of those places where they seem to reload, not replace.
First-year coach Lincoln Riley believes he’s got plenty of candidates to do just that, beginning with 6-foot-2-inch, 223-pound Rodney Anderson from Katy, Texas.
“We’ve got kind of a unique group,” Riley said. “Rodney Anderson comes to mind. Obviously, he missed the last two years because of injuries, so he’s had to fight through a ton. He’s a great, great worker. He stacks up there physically as good as anybody we’ve had at that position, including Joe and Samaje.”
There is Abdul Adams, a 5-foot-11-inch, 205-pounder from Landover, Maryland, who got work last year as a third-down back for the Sooners, there’s JC transfer Marcelius Sutton and two touted high school prospects, Trey Sermon and Kennedy Brooks, Riley can look to as well.
In other words, just because Mixon and Perine are no longer in Norman that doesn’t mean Oklahoma will abandon its running game.
“It’s as wide open as it can be,” Riley said. “We’ll play the best guy whether it’s one guy getting most of the carries, two guys like last year, or even as much as three or four.”
* I know new Texas coach Tom Herman is the hot name in college football right now. And his two-year record at Houston is certainly eye catching, considering he won 13 of 14 games his first season there and defeated Florida State, 38-24, in the Peach Bowl. Then, last year, he followed that up with a season-opening victory over Oklahoma before knocking Louisville out of playoff contention later in the year - both big victories coming at home.
But he also suffered losses to Navy, SMU and Memphis before packing his bags for Austin.
Now compare what Herman has done in two short seasons as Houston’s head coach to what Charlie Strong had accomplished when Texas hired him prior to the 2014 season.
Strong won two Big East championships while at Louisville, went 23-3 during his final two seasons there, which included an impressive 33-23 victory over Florida in the Sugar Bowl. Before that, Strong spent a number of years in the SEC as a defensive coordinator at South Carolina and Florida before landing his first head coaching gig in 2010 at age 50.
Strong’s three-year tenure at Texas was considered a failure, but all indications point to him leaving Herman with a strong nucleus of players to work with this season.
Will Strong get any credit for this, or will all of the credit go to Herman if he enjoys immediate success in Austin?
Based on his remarks during last week’s Big 12 media day, it looks like Herman is already laying the groundwork to get the credit, should success come his way immediately.
“I know it went through a tremendous storm, if you will, from Coach (Mack) Brown’s departure to now,” he said. “We’re talking about a Hall of Fame coach leaving, a Hall of Fame athletic director leaving, a president leaving, a new president coming in, a new AD getting hired, a new AD leaving, a new interim AD leaving, the next head coach leaving and not having success. So, I think a lot of non-continuity, if that’s a word, there just wasn’t any stability from the top down.”
Herman is also well-schooled in the program’s recent gridiron struggles.
“Since the class of 2018, these 16-year-old kids that we are recruiting - since they were two-years-old, they’ve seen two winning Texas football seasons, two; and they’ve seen four losing Texas football seasons,” he said. “So, the Texas they know is a lot different than the Texas that people in my generation know. So, it’s our job to show them what Texas is capable of, what Texas has been in the past, and what we’re planning on being again in the future.”
Herman, Riley and Baylor’s Matt Ruhle have already received strong endorsements from Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby, who called them “superstars, each one in their own right” during his opening remarks at this year’s media day.
All three have challenging jobs for different reasons.
It will be interesting watching their development in the Big 12 in the coming years.
Andrew Caridi
* And finally, a big shout out to Andrew Caridi, who earlier this week landed a job as the play-by-play voice of Shepherd University Rams football and men’s basketball for 95.9 The Big Dawg and bigdawgfm.com!
Andrew got his start calling WVU hockey games at U-92 before branching out to describe West Virginia University men’s and women’s soccer, volleyball and wrestling action on our free web streams available at WVUsports.com.
He also served as our correspondent out in San Jose, California, during women’s soccer’s run to the national championship game last season.
Most recently, Andrew called West Virginia Black Bears games on the MetroNews Radio Network.
Of course, Andrew is the son of our very own Tony Caridi.
It’s never a bad thing getting more Caridis behind a microphone!
Great job Andrew!
In the meantime, I hope everyone has a great weekend.
Don’t forget, fall camp opens on Sunday.
