In today’s college football, establishing a culture is perhaps as important as it’s ever been.
With all of the constant changes with the rise of the transfer portal and NIL opportunities, finding an identity and a culture is critical in order to help propel a team into each season.
But it isn’t always so easily defined.
“I think culture is something you can’t really measure but you know it when you see it,” tight ends coach Blaine Stewart said.
West Virginia has spent the better part of the last two years reinventing the way they approached the game with a focus on some things that are well within their control. It takes time and effort, but the goal is to become a team that is able to reflect the type of football they want to play.
“We’re going to be a tough unit that’s really disciplined and plays smart football and we do those things with an underdog mentality with a chip on our shoulder," head coach Neal Brown said.
Stewart, who grew up following the program prior to his coaching days, has seen that approach work with previous Mountaineers football teams.
“When I was young the teams here had great culture. A kind of underdog mentality that grew into a heavyweight fighter mentality,” he said. “I remember when guys like Pac-Man Jones, Angel Estrada and Grant Wiley when those guys were playing there was an edge about the West Virginia team.”
And that translated over to the offensive side of the ball where the Mountaineers relied on hard-nosed running under players like Avon Cobourne and Quincy Wilson before it evolved with Steve Slaton and what all would come during that era of football.
The goal was to cultivate an identity and that played out on the field this past season as the Mountaineers were a much more physical football team on the way to a 9-4 record, the best mark since Brown took over the program. That wasn’t by accident as West Virginia was intentional with tackling and being physical in practice until it eventually spilled over into the games.
That was again the focus this off-season as the program again made it a point to be physical and refine the way they tackled among other things. That plays into the physical toughness that Brown has been working to instill and the Mountaineers also worked in other areas such as striking with their hands on strike pads and with grip training.
“You have to have an edge about you as a program and I think we’re trending in that direction to find our fit in college football,” Stewart said.
But as the assistant can testify it’s a formula that has worked in Morgantown before and when looking back successful teams across the history of college football have a proven identity. Now, the focus is fine-tuning what this version of the Mountaineers is doing to be the best they can be.
“We just have to find out culture and how we can be the best version of ourselves to give us the edge and the mindset we take every Saturday,” Stewart said. “And we're developing that all the way through the season.”
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