Submitted photo Marc Bulger is shown during his playing days with the Mountaineers.

MORGANTOWN — This sports writing gig is a strange business.

In a way you feel like an artist, for you arise each morning with an empty canvas before you and wonder how in the world you will fill it that day. To be honest, most days you have an idea of where it will take you, but on Wednesday afternoon, the only thing on the canvas was a bug off in search of a meal.

A couple of days with neither electricity nor Internet may allow you to investigate what is inside you, but cut off from outside stimuli creates a reality void that is not good for someone always in search of an interesting subject to portray.

That led to a midday channel surf and while moving swiftly from one channel to the next, I flipped through an image on screen that looked familiar but that I hadn’t seen for some time. As I groped for the “last viewed” button, it was as if a spark had ignited within me for there was the familiar face of Marc Bulger.

Bulger, as you may recall, was one of many quarterback gifts to WVU for Pittsburgh, along with a couple of guys named Major Harris and Rasheed Marshall. He was a scrawny freshman with a bad back who had been mostly overlooked out of Central Catholic but who Don Nehlen believed in and discovered that he could get by without draw plays on third down and 30 yards to go.

Bulger proved himself to be a gunslinger unlike any who had preceded him, graduating while possessing most of the school’s passing records despite always having an Amos Zereoue or Avon Cobourne or Quincy Wilson to carry the football on running plays.

Truth is, only Geno Smith’s career, played in Dana Holgorsen’s prolific “Air Raid”, surpassed Bulger in passing proficiency.

Bulger would go on to do the same for longer than a decade in the NFL, but his career ended a quarter of a century ago, as difficult as that is to believe.

The setting that had him on television was far different than that in Morgantown, the colorful shirt and the lei around his neck. Yes, he was in Hawaii, a far more pleasant atmosphere than either the turf in Mountaineer Field, or in St. Louis, where the bulk of his NFL career was played, or at the curling facility he had built in Nashville for what had become his latest athletic passion.

Curling, of course, is the Olympic sport on ice where a “rock” is slid slowly down the world’s longest bowling alley with sweepers working madly to correct its course and, somehow, you score points, although the scoring system is far more difficult to understand than six points for a touchdown, three for a field goal, two if you run in the conversion from a TD or one if you kick it.

Anyway the competition that brought Bulger to Hawaii was golf, but not playing a round of it, This was the Ace Hardware Celebrity Golf Challenge, a series of events celebrities and former athletes like Bulger, football quarterback Drew Bledsoe, Olympic hockey hero Mike Eruzione, pitcher Adam Wainwright.

It is like the old ABC show, “Superstars”, a 1970s and 1980s era reality show where superstars like OJ Simpson, Pete Rose, Wayne Gretzky, James Lofton, Joe Frazier and others competed in Olympic style events — except in their own specialty — while the famed ABC announcing crew of Jim McKay, Howard Cosell, Frank Gifford and Dandy Don Meredith provided commentary and interviews.

This was big time stuff at the time, drawing a viewing audience of 25 million in the mid-1970s and it was quite entertaining, perhaps the most memorable action coming in the swimming pool where Joe Frazier dove in and barely could stay afloat.

Don’t know how Cosell missed shouting “Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!” His difficulties in a sport he never had learned became world famous but equally as funny was Johnny Bench’s efforts in the pool. The Hall of Fame catcher had an early lead but simply paddled himself out of gas and, near the finish line, found himself standing in the pool, which did two things.

It disqualified him from the event and as he waded along the final few yards it also proved that he could walk through water, but not on it, as his manager Sparky Anderson would have had you believe.

Anyway, being tested here at the Mauna Kea Golf Course in this day and age were the golf skills with the athletes contributing their winnings to the Children’s Miracle Network across America.

Once a really strong golfer, Bulger admitted as he headed toward the first event, a driving contest where he was matched against Eruzione that he was not nearly as long off the tee as he once had been.

“I’m not hitting it 300 yards anymore,” he said, then went out and proved it with a drive of 226 yards. With corrections for accuracy, Eruzione beat him by yard.

The competitions included a chipping for accuracy as the athletes and celebrities went head-to-head trying to break panes of glass.

“I played 12 years in the NFL and I’ve never been as nervous as I am right now,” Bulger said.

The first to break two panes of glass with his chip shots would be the winner. Bulger won his contest there.

Then came the final event, a closest to the hole contest, approach shot distances being set up by the score heading into the final event. The leading scorer had the shortest approach of 85 yards.

Bulger’s approach shot was from 100 yards. Jon Barry, the former basketball player and son of the Hall of Fame great Rick Barry, had taken an early lead 9 feet, 5 inches away, and Eruzione had somehow gotten inside that at 7 feet, 9 inches.

It looked like a sure winner, until Bulger stepped in there.

When you’ve stood in the pocket on third and long with Bruce Smith or Julius Peppers bearing down on you, a little thing like a 100-yard flip approach doesn’t worry you one bit and Bulger flew on up there that just missed going into the hole and wound up only a foot and 8 inches away.

That won him the $25,000 first prize check and, sticking to his roots, he donated to the WVU Medicine’s Children’s Hospital, with his own charitable foundation matching the donation.

The Marc Bulger Foundation was established in 2007 with an initial donation of $1.342 million. It was ranked No. 17 among Parade Magazine’s Top 30 celebrity donors for that year.

Bulger had used it to benefit men and women in uniform and children in life threatening situations, such as Operation Underground Railroad, which rescued children from sex trafficking and endowing WVU scholarships for children of those serving the country.

He also helped fund a charity in St. Louis for fallen officers’ and soldiers’ funerals.

But he also never forgot his WVU days and the connection Don Nehlen and his wife, Merry Ann, had established between his football program and Children’s Hospital, with funds from the spring game being sent there and with the players making visits to the children, visits that brightened up both their days.

Now, Bulger is spreading $50,000 worth of sunshine back in Morgantown at Children’s Hospital and happy to be doing it.