West Virginia-born coaches have won 19 national titles -- 7 by Fielding Yost (Marion County) at Michigan, 5 by Nick Saban (Marion County) at LSU and Alabama, 4 by John McKay (Monongalia County) at Southern Cal and one apiece by Jimbo Fisher (Harrison County) at Florida State, Ben Schwartzwalder (Mason County) at Syracuse, and Lou Holtz (Brooke County) at Notre Dame.
Schwartzwalder and Yost played collegiately at West Virginia.
Hurry Up Yost's brother was a state attorney general. Yost's pronunciation of "MEE-she-gan" has long been imitated by folks such as Rece Davis. Yost taught school for a year at Patterson Creek in Mineral County before enrolling at Ohio Northern (then Ohio Normal, a teachers' college). He studied law at West Virginia and played football -- and played it very well indeed -- for the Snakes. He was head coach at Ohio Wesleyan, Nebraska, Kansas and Stanford -- staying a year at each stop -- before taking over in Ann Arbor in 1901.
Floyd "Ben" Schwartzwalder weighed 146 pounds when he left Point Pleasant to play center for West Virginia, where he captained the football team in 1933 and excelled in wrestling. He coached high school ball for six years in Sistersville and Parkersburg before WWII. He was a paratrooper and a captain in the 82nd Airborne who performed heroically at the Normandy Invasion. Following the war, he coached at Muhlenberg for three years before taking over at Syracuse, where his stars included Ernie Davis, Jim Brown, Larry Csonka, Jim Nance and Floyd Little.
Johnny McKay grew up in Shinnston and had a football scholarship to Wake Forest before WWII changed his plans. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps and served as a tailgunner on B-29s in the Pacific. After the war, he enrolled at Purdue before transferring to Oregon, where he starred with Norm Van Brocklin. He was an assistant coach at Oregon for most of the 1950s before moving to USC, where he worked as an assistant for a year before taking over as head coach in 1960. He coached two Heisman winners (Mike Garrett and O.J. Simpson) as well as guys such as Lynn Swann, Pat Haden and Sam Cunningham.
Brother Saban played quarterback for the fabulous Monongah teams of the late 1960s, but while Bobby Bowden recruited Monongah guys like Kerry Marbury and Charlie Miller, he passed on Saban, who's only 5-foot-6. Saban starred as a defensive back at Kent State. He coached DBs for Frank Cignetti for a couple of years in the late 1970s.
Jimbo Fisher graduated from Liberty High in Clarksburg, then enrolled in Salem College to play quarterback for Terry Bowden. He transferred to Samford -- Bobby Bowden's alma mater in Alabama -- when Terry took the head coaching job there.
Lou Holtz was born in Follansbee, but he grew up in East Liverpool, which is across the Ohio River from West Virginia's northernmost point (which, for trivia buffs, is situated as far north as the Statue of Liberty). Holtz is the only coach in this group who did not play high school ball in the Mountain State, and he famously (or infamously) once said: "The only good thing to come out of West Virginia is an empty bus."
He was joking.
I think.
