Luck

(Editor’s Note: This week marks the 100th anniversary of the opening of Old Mountaineer Field down on the Mon and we celebrate it with a look back at its history from the beginnings to the players who played there, those who worked there, the games that were played there.)

MORGANTOWN — All good things come to an end, they say, and so it was with Old Mountaineer Field, home to West Virginia University from 1924 to 1979.

But Model-Ts had become Thunderbirds. We’d been to the moon and back. Typewriters had become laptop computers.

It was a different world and football was a different game.

It was time to say goodbye to Old Mountaineer Field and hello to the new Mountaineer Field that occupied the ground that had been a golf course.

Oliver Luck remembers it … maybe not well, after these years, but enough to appreciate the transition that took place.

Luck quarterbacked the last West Virginia team to play in Old Mountaineer Field and the first one to play in the new one.

He represented change at WVU, from quarterback to athletic director to co-founding with Ken Kendrick the Country Roads Trust to take the school into the new era of NIL and superconferences, of pay to play and where market strategy was maybe even more important than game strategy.

A post from Doak Turner on Facebook reminded us that Cedric Thomas, a marvelous receiver from the era, had a place in Mountaineer history having caught the last touchdown pass in Old Mountaineer Field and the first in the new one.

Luck had thrown both and laughed when he was reminded of it.

“I think I also threw the last interception in old Mountaineer Field and the first one in the new stadium,” he said. “It works both ways.”

Luck admits his memories of the last game, which was a Backyard Brawl thriller against Pitt that the No. 12 Panthers won, 24-17, are scant and well they should be. He came up on the short end matching throws with Pitt’s Dan Marino, being chased all over the field as he threw five interceptions.

He did lead WVU in rushing that day with 20 net rushing yards, but actually was thrown for 54 negative yards.

Interestingly, that last interception was also intended for Cedric Taylor late in the game as WVU was driving to tie the game, the ball squirting through Taylor’s hands and intercepted.

It was eerily similar to the 2022 Pitt loss when a pass slithered through Bryce Ford-Wheaton’s as WVU was driving for what could have been a winning field goal or touchdown and run back for the score that gave Pitt a 38-31 victory.

“I was at that game and I remember thinking ‘Damnit, there it goes again,'” Luck said.

It was better in that initial game in the new stadium as WVU beat Cincinnati, 41-17, Luck throwing two touchdown passes, to Thomas and Darrell Miller, although his memories of them are sketchy.

“I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to play at Old Mountaineer Field,” Luck admitted. “The stadium was a throwback. We used to joke that it was built in the horse and buggy era. Everything about it was circa 1924 and 1925, when it was built, including the locker room. It was like stepping back into a time machine.

“The tightness of where it was built in Falling Rock, the way they parked all the school buses on one side there to transport people, the throngs of people walking to the game from campus, trying to find a parking spot. My parents would come down from Cleveland for games and they’d have to park up at the Coliseum and take the bus down to the stadium.

“The ambience was incredibly old school … and I enjoyed that. I was a history major. I used to say to myself, this is the same place where in the ’20s and ’30s and ’40s and ’50s and ’60s athletes were playing West Virginia football.”

“It was clearly run down. West Virginia wasn’t putting any money into it then. I wasn’t aware of the politics, but I’m sure at some point in the early ’70s the administration said ‘We can’t continue to have this as home for the Mountaineers or we won’t grow and be competitive with our peer schools.”

As Luck thought about it, he remembered his recruiting trip to Morgantown as a high school player out of Cleveland.

Gary Stevens recruited Cleveland and brought a lot of really good players in, including Darryl Talley, who is up for the Pro Football Hall of Fame this year.

“On the visit, they didn’t even stop at Old Mountaineer Field. They drove directly out to the golf course and there was nothing there except an architect’s drawing on an easel of what it was going to look like,” Luck laughed. “They didn’t even show us Old Mountaineer Field because the facilities were so unimpressive.”

And by the time the final game was played, understandably, the old stadium was run down, the money being redirected toward building the new facility.

Certainly, it was needed.

“We played in a lot of big time stadiums on the road. The only place we played on the road that was comparable was probably Richmond. They had an old, red brick stadium. It was sort of downtown, small, seated mayber 20,000 people.

“I’ll neve forget. They had a game clock with two hands on it, like a clock you told time left. ‘I asked the referee before the game ‘Hey, how do I know when there’s 30 seconds left, 20 seconds left and he said ‘I’ll stand behind you and count out loud so you know.’

“Every other stadium we played in … Virginia Tech, Pitt, Syracuse, Rutgers … they all had better stadiums. We all appreciated that we were the first group to play in the new stadium.”

On opening night, with the ceremonies that included Gov. Rockefeller and John Denver flying by helicopter to sing “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” it was a gala affair for the fans … but it wasn’t exactly completely ready for occupancy.

“In the locker room there was nothing but folding chairs,” Luck said. “I forget if we got dressed in the old locker room and bussed to the field with our uniforms on. The stadium was ready and we filled it with 50,000 people, but there was earth work being done.

“Lord knows what it was like for the coaches, but it was clearly barely finished. I’m sure the Friday before the Saturday game is when the occupancy permit was issued.”

But the players knew it was something big and that it would propel the Mountaineers into bigtime NCAA football as they’d never really been before.