Sep. 6, 1980: WVU 41, Cincinnati 27

On this day, 37 years ago, the West Virginia University football team turned a corner...and never looked back.

After a few years of being irrelevant during the Ford and Carter administrations, WVU AD Dick Martin hired a little known Michigan assistant named Don Nehlen to take command of the football program.

With Mountaineer Field (built in 1924) getting old and decrepit, the university also made the decision to build “Mountaineer Stadium”.

Both of these changes took full effect on Sep. 6, 1980.

As you saw from the video above, it was practically all Robert Alexander and Oliver Luck.

It’s just nice to remember where the trajectory of the football program and the university changed.

(Shout out to m-townjoe, one of our most active readers. These games from the 1970s and early 1980s are in his era.)