By Dan Page
The State Journal
Reprinted by permission, August, 1991

Jack Fleming simply shakes his head.  As he enters his 39th season as the voice of West Virginia University football, Fleming is in awe of what he sees on autumn Saturday afternoons at Mountaineer Field in Morgantown.

"I marvel at the support,” Fleming told The State Journal.  “I continue to marvel.  I can’t stress it too much.  You hear about the economy of the state and see all those people pour in there to support this team.  The support is there.”

In this centennial season of Mountaineer football, more than 60,000 of those faithful Mountaineer fans will greet their new team Saturday, Aug. 31, and a new football conference -- the Big East -- in a night game against the oldest of WVU rivals, the University of Pittsburgh.

And Jack Fleming, the Morgantown native, West Virginian alumni, and veteran broadcaster, will report this latest chapter of WVU sports history over the Mountaineer Sports Network and its 62 radio stations in West Virginia and several states.  With color man Woody O’Hara by his side, he will welcome the listening audience with, “The hills of West Virginia resound with the sounds of Mountaineer football.”

Fleming, who also provides play-by-play announcing for Mountaineer basketball, doesn’t hide his feelings.  His life is filled with the Old Gold and Blue.  Two daughters from his first marriage are WVU graduates.  A granddaughter is a senior in forestry at WVU.  And, if he has his way, his two young daughters from his current marriage will follow the path to Morgantown when the time comes.

“I have a lot of years and a lot of loyalty,” said Fleming, who makes his home in this Pittsburgh suburb so he can be close to his job as play-by-play announcer for the Pittsburgh Steelers of the National Football League.  “I love the school, and I love the state.”

Mike Parsons, assistant athletic director and executive producer of the Mountaineer Sports Network, sees Fleming’s loyalty to the Mountaineers as a strength of the MSN football radio broadcasts, which reach an estimated 500,000 people -- about 52 percent of the state’s population 12 years old and older.  (MSN is one of the largest college sports radio networks in the nation in numbers of stations.) 

Television has increased its football coverage, but that occurs on a sporadic basis, Parsons said. 

Radio and Jack Fleming are constants.

“The one think about radio is that it’s consistent and live, and we sell the fact that it’s Jack Fleming,” said Parsons, who is responsible for arranging affiliations and advertising support for WVU sports broadcasts through the in-house network.  “He is very much a Mountaineer, his broadcasts are very much West Virginia oriented, and that’s what we want.

“The fans wouldn’t be listening if they weren’t fans, and we feel they want to hear from a West Virginia partisan.”

The son of an accountant, Fleming lived his early years in the Sunnyside area of Morgantown, at the time a stable residential area just a stone’s throw from old Mountaineer Field.

The stadium and the schedules and the crowds have all grown and changed before Fleming’s eyes.

Fleming recalls his childhood autumns, when he would watch West Virginia play Davis & Elkins and Washington & Lee and West Virginia Wesleyan.  The crowds were small in those days, he recalled, maybe only a couple of thousand people.  The Mountaineers were on the edge of big-time college football, but the program gained momentum after the war.

Fleming began his broadcasting career in 1945 in Morgantown, where he was earning a speech degree at WVU.  In 1947, he began working the WVU football games for a loose-knit network whose member stations provided the announcers for the games on an alternating basis.  One announcer became ill and left the state.

Fleming stepped in.  Except for two interruptions totaling six seasons, the job has been his ever since.

During those early years at Morgantown radio station WAJR, Fleming broadcast area high school games on some Fridays and the Mountaineers on Saturdays.  In 1958, he hooked on as the play-by-play announcer for the Pittsburgh Steelers-a job he has held steadily since then.  The Steelers, one of the NFL’s poorest teams in those years, filled out his weekend work schedule.  They eventually would play and win four Super Bowls-and Fleming would be at each one.

“On one Friday,” Fleming recalled, “we went up to Tucker County to broadcast a Morgantown St. Francis game against old Mountaineer High at Thomas.  No one had ever done a game from there, and we had to hook our line to a tree.  The next afternoon, we were at Pitt stadium to do West Virginia-Pitt.  Then it was off to Greater Pitt (airport) and to Los Angeles, and on Sunday we were in the Coliseum for the Steelers and Rams.”

Fleming lost his announcer’s job at WVU for the 1960 and 1961 seasons.  Another radio station won the rights to originate the broadcasts for those two seasons, but Fleming returned in 1963.  He left in 1970 for Chicago and a whirl as the play-by-play radio announcer for the Bulls of the National Basketball Association.  He stayed there for four seasons, and returned to Pittsburgh in 1974 to try his hand at television.

Fleming said his TV shot didn’t work out, Leland Byrd, then the WVU athletic director, asked him to replace Jack Tennant, who announced Mountaineer sports for four years in Fleming’s absence before taking a job at the University of Louisville.

“I’ve been there ever since.” Fleming said.

From Fleming’s perspective, no one person or event has led West Virginia football from the outskirts of the big time to its status today as a frequent visitor to the nation’s top 20 and post-season bowl games and a member of a highly regarded new football conference.  He skips over the names of the football coaches he has known- Bill Kern, Dud DeGroot, Art Lewis, Gene Corum, Jim Carlen, Bobby Bowden, Frank Cignetti, and the present coach, Don Nehlen.

He has kind words about all of them- even those whose losses mounted up faster than wins.

But the new conference, he confessed, is something he still is analyzing.

“As most fans are, I’m vaguely aware with all the problems that started with Penn State and that avalanche of activity to get into conferences,” Fleming said. “I don’t totally understand the economics.  This is big business ...

“The Big East, I guess is a logical thing.  I am personally disappointed that they (Mountaineers) are not in it in basketball ...

“I’ve been here a long time, and most of us who have been have coveted the idea of a total sports conference.  Either Penn State or Pitt blocked it one way or the other.  I guess (Penn State football coach Joe) Paterno worked for it and gave up.  I don’t know the ins and outs, but it never happened, and it’s a shame.”

But the possibilities, he said, are attractive- bowl affiliations and big markets through member schools Miami, Rutgers, Pittsburgh, Temple, Syracuse, and Boston College.

“But it puts stress on your program,” he said.  “If you’re going to move and groove in that conference, you’ve got to do something to keep up with them.  You’re talking about Miami, you’re talking about Syracuse, which has a solid program.  Pitt is down now for obvious reasons, but they’ll bounce back.

“So you’ve got a big assignment, but we’re capable.  We have the finest facilities in the country barring none and capable people.  We have that and the backing you get from the people in the state.”

While West Virginia joins Pitt, Syracuse, Boston College, Miami, Rutgers, Temple, and Virginia Tech in the Big East football league, the Mountaineers apparently will cease their long-standing relationship with Penn State, which is the 11th, newest, and easternmost member of the Big Ten.

The end nears for a relationship that Fleming would like to have seen end years ago.

“I’m so happy,” said Fleming, who admitted that he might not be in the mainstream on the issue.  “I have advocated for years- during that long stretch when we couldn’t beat them for about 30 years- then what is the point in playing these people when you can’t win?”

Even when West Virginia snapped Penn State’s dominance over WVU 17-14 in 1984, Fleming couldn’t enjoy the victory.

“Most of the thrill was taken out of that big victory because they didn’t have the fences up, and the idiots ran over the field and Joe got to call the game,” Fleming recalled.  “That ruined it for me.”

In addition, Fleming won’t miss the winter basketball trips to Penn State’s remote campus.

“(Indiana University basketball coach) Bobby Knight hit it on the head,” Fleming said.  “It’s terrible.  Indiana will be flying into Pittsburgh or Harrisburg and busing into State College.  He says it’s a wintertime Boy Scout trip or something.  It’s just a terrible place to get to.

“Pitt is different,” he said.  “Pitt causes me great consternation … We always have a chance to beat them.  I went a lot of years as a kid when we couldn’t beat them, but that has leveled off.  But with Penn State, I just think it’s out of sight.  May they rest well in the Big Ten.”

Flemings’ memories and thoughts about WVU and sports abound. A sampling:

* On WVU’s stay in the Southern Conference, which ended in1968, and the Atlantic 10:

“I saw it grow, and I liked the Southern Conference.  It was not advantageous in football.  I think Jim Carlen wanted out because you pretty much had to be confined to William & Mary and VMI.  But in basketball, it was a great conference.  Starting with the big Southern, before it split, and then later the social aspects were just terrific, the people in the south and the friends you made …

“You don’t find that in the east.  You’re never going to find it.  It’s a different type of people, a different type of activity, and believe me, it’s no fun.  You go to the Atlantic 10 basketball tournament, and you might as well go to the Alaska Shootout.”

* On his most memorable football game:

‘The ‘75 Pitt game, which West Virginia won (17-14) on a field goal by Bill McKenzie at the end.  Randy Swinson caught the ball and went out of bounds.  It was a magnificent football game.  The stadium was full.  National television was there.  That sticks out in my mind to a degree- but possibly no more than Dick Nicholson falling in the end zone at Penn State to give us a big victory (19-14 in 1954) in that period when we beat them three times in a row before darkness settled in.”

* On the upcoming season:

“I’m very much encouraged. I’ve had a strong belief in the program all the way through.  I think, sure, you’re going to have your ups and downs.  Maybe you’re a Penn State or a Notre Dame and you get it on a given level and keep it there.  But I don’t think that’s going to happen to the average school …

“I think the critical item is quarterback.  The running backs are there.  The receivers.  I think the offensive ling will be able to get the job done.  You have got to have a quarterback to lead that team.”

* On the possibility of playing Marshall University in football:

“I’d rather play them in football than Bowling Green.”

* On former head coach Bobby Bowden, who has built a highly successful program at Florida State since he left WVU after the 1975 season:

“I came down from Chicago (where he was working at the time) to be marshal for the homecoming parade (in 1970).  I went to the game.  They played Duke.  I saw him punt the ball (through the end zone) into the seats from the 34-yard line. I thought, ‘My God! This guy can’t coach.’  That shows you how much I know.  I never asked him about that.  That was one of the most remarkable things I had seen.”

* On Don Nehlen, the Ohio native who is entering his 12th season at WVU and has taken the Mountaineers to seven bowl games.

“We have our best talks on Fridays before the game at home down in his office or out on the road in the hotel.  I’ll never forget.  I had my wife with me last fall.  Usually he has things to do- bed checking and he used to like to watch ‘Dallas’ on Friday night.  We like to do our pre-game show and get out of there.  He sat down on the bed and wanted to talk.  He said, ‘You know, I think we can get them.’  He outlined to my wife and me exactly what they had discovered watching Pitt films.  You know the outcome.  They kicked them good (38-24).  He knew exactly what was going to happen.  He was just glowing, and that isn’t like a coach the night before a game.”

* On old Mountaineer Field, abandoned after the 1979 season and eventually razed:

“You have to grow and there was no where to grow there.  But I loved it.  I miss it.  I still miss it ... It was one of the finest viewing stadiums that I have ever worked in from the standpoint of a broadcaster because you were so close.”

* On Gale Catlett, the WVU basketball coach whom Fleming met when Catlett was playing Hedgesville High School in the state basketball tournament in Huntington:

“There was hardly anybody in the building.  In those days, you didn’t get advance information to any degree, and I went over to poll the delegation (from Hedgesville) on heights and weights.  This big kid stepped out and said, ‘Me. Fleming, I’ve always wanted to meet you.  My name is Gale Catlett.’  It’s been a friendship ever since.”

* On memorable players: