Editor-Author Frank Fear Loves West Virginia Football

Frank Fear spent his formative years in Central and Western New York and worked for many years in East Lansing, Michigan. But his heart belongs to West Virginia football. Frank, the managing editor of The Sports Column, took a few moments to share his journey, discuss WVU football and some other fun stuff.

STADIUM JOURNEY:

How and when did your love affair with West Virginia football begin?

FRANK FEAR:

While it began formally when I enrolled as a graduate student at West Virginia University, the connection began long before — not with WV or WVU specifically, but with that part of the country. It is a long and emotional story, and the short version is that I was drawn there, best described by a colleague who once put it this way: "It (WVU) is a place we were meant to be." As an eight-year-old, I was with my father when he passed away suddenly, and my sense of place was disrupted because of his passing. We lived in Syracuse, New York, at the time, and I needed a new place to settle. Both of my parents grew up in the same town in Western Pennsylvania, Punxsutawney, and there was something about that place that felt comfortable. As I told a friend recently, U.S. 119 runs through Punxy, and part of my life has been a personal journey down U.S. 119 because Morgantown is on that route, too. Now that I look back, that migration was the beginning of the life I live now. It was not planned and never envisioned, but I now realize that it was meant to be. I recently told this story to a friend who was visiting. He looked at me and said, "My hometown is on U.S. 119!" After over 45 years of living and working elsewhere, I am back to the place where I lived and studied decades ago. WVU football was important then, and it is now. Back in the day, completely by luck, I got the chance to assist the head football coach, Bobby Bowden at the time, in talking to recruits about WVU's academic side. My spouse, who is also a WVU master's alum, and I went to all the games at Old Mountaineer Field when we were students there. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that about five decades later—especially after spending over 40 years of my life in university academic and administrative work hundreds of miles away—that I would meet many of those WVU players from back then and write a book about them and their teams, Band of Brothers, Then and Now: The Inspiring Story of the 1966-70 WVU Football Mountaineers (Palmetto Publishing, 2023)  One thing led to another after that, and today with colleagues, I co-host a weekly football podcast, Mountaineer Locker Room, Then and Now.

Each week, we chat with a former Mountaineer and discuss the current team, games, and seasons, including broadcasting pre- and post-game shows. I am also the show's executive producer. Today, I am finishing a second book about WVU athletics. This one is about a 1980s-era star whose journey from Washington, DC, to Morgantown is conceptually similar to my personal journey. It’s entitled True Prue: Darryl Prue, Unwavering (Palmetto Publishing, 2026). Nobody could script what I have just described. It has taught me to trust emergence and take one step at a time. The road will take you to where you are meant to be.   

STADIUM JOURNEY:

What's unique about Milan Puskar Stadium? What can visitors expect? 

FRANK FEAR:

Milan Puskar Stadium reminds me a lot of Jack Trice Stadium at Iowa State University, where I did my doctoral work. There is a good reason, too: the Puskar design was based on the Trice design, which had been completed a few years earlier. Trice opened in 1975, and Puskar opened in 1980. The best thing about Puskar is the environment and fan engagement. What sets WVU football apart is the connection to John Denver's "Take Me Home Country Roads," which he sang personally at the facility's opening in 1980.  Fans and players sing the song at game endings, and the rendition, along with the location, creates an emotional experience. That said, my student experiences were all with what is now called “Old” Mountaineer Field, which was located on the university's downtown campus across from the Monongahela River. Puskar is located on the old golf course land where I used to play, adjacent to WVU medical facilities on the Evanston campus. The old field sat only a bit over 30,000 fans, but it sounded like twice that many were there. My office overlooked the stadium, offering a breathtaking view from my window, especially at night or during the winter when the stadium was snow-covered. A photo of that scene hangs today in my home office. Unforgettable!

STADIUM JOURNEY:

Very important. Must places to hit for a snack in Morgantown? Why? What is their specialty?  

FRANK FEAR:

I make pilgrimages to Morgantown about twice a year, and being a person of habit, I tend to return to the same places. First, the go-to sports bar-restaurant is Kegler's (735 Chestnut Ridge Road), which is located near the Evansdale campus. It is called "Kegler's" for a good reason; the bar and restaurant are connected to a bowling alley. WVU coaches' shows are held in a room called "The Clubhouse." We have done our podcasts there multiple times and had a ball each time with guests, former players who come back, and fans. Everything is good on the menu, and my favorite is named after a friend, a former WVU Mountaineer offensive lineman, Dale Wolfley. Called "The Wolfe Man," it is an 8-ounce burger smothered in cheese steak and covered with Kegler's "Gold and Blue" sauce. Kegler's did not exist when I went to school, and to reconnect with bygone days, the place I like best is Mario's Fishbowl, 704 Richwood Avenue, the original location. It is located near the downtown campus and not far from where we lived as grad students. The signature there is beer served in a large, frozen fish bowl mug, and any beer tastes better that way. The food is excellent, too. I recommend the Filet Tip Hoagie, Mario's Hot Dog, and the Breakfast Burger. Finally, I always like a good microbrew, and one of my recent haunts is Mountain State Brewing at 3505 Monongahela Blvd, not far from the WVU basketball coliseum. With a standard and rotating array of beers, I always find things to my liking. There is easy parking, and the staff is excellent. For food, MSB has an extensive menu of starters, sandwiches, flatbread and pizzas. I always get either the Caprese sandwich or the "Shrummus" sandwich, which has cheesy garlic portabella mushrooms matched with red pepper hummus, smoked Gouda, and baby spinach on toasted Italian. It is out of this world.

STADIUM JOURNEY:

You grew up in upstate New York. Which teams did you support growing up? Which sports venue did you attend?

FRANK FEAR:

Central and Western New York, where I lived as a kid, is a different environment compared to the places I have lived in since. First, college sports are not big there except for Syracuse University. Even then, I would consider the level of support modest, except for the surrounding Syracuse area. When I moved from Central to Western New York, SU fans seemed outnumbered by “subway alumni” who rooted for the Notre Dame Irish. The Bills are the big team these days, and hockey is also big. College basketball? Sadly, no. It was when I was growing up, but not now. Even then, few of my childhood friends were into college basketball or football, for that matter. So, it was mostly me and my radio back in those days. I absolutely loved Eastern football and followed the Orange closely, paying special attention to when SU played Pitt, Penn State, and West Virginia. I was lucky enough to attend one game at SU’s old Archbold Stadium when I was a kid, and that was a thrill. I also got to see St. Bonaventure play, the big basketball school in the area at the time. It was at the old Buffalo Aud in front of a packed house. I followed the Cincinnati Reds closely on clear-channel WLW, listening to Joe Nuxhall. From time to time, I would see them play the Pirates in Pittsburgh. Sports writing began in high school, where I wrote about my high school football and boys' basketball for the local paper. In college at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York, I served as an assistant to the sports info director and as sports editor of the college paper. There, I got to know and work with Bob Wanzer, a former Seton Hall and NBA star (Rochester Royals), who was the head men’s basketball coach at the time. Great guy. The work was fun, and I thought I might have made a career in sports writing, but I did not. The call of academics was stronger. Now I am back where I was fifty years ago, closing the loop, I suppose.

STADIUM JOURNEY:

You spent 35 years as an administrator at Michigan State. How does the game day experience at MSU compare to West Virginia? Did those teams ever play one another?

FRANK FEAR:

First, no, WVU and MSU have not played each other in decades. MSU is 2-1 in basketball, and the teams have not played since 1941. The MSU football team is 4-0, and the teams have not played since 1945. Big 10 sports are enormous, and so it was a scale-up from WVU and ISU. That said, the gameday experiences are very much the same—great, but also regrettable because of conference realignment, WVU, and expansion, MSU. The best days at WVU were playing rivals at home — Pitt, Penn State, Syracuse, Maryland, Boston College, and Virginia Tech. It is just not the same when K-State, Texas Tech, and Baylor come to town. Same for MSU. Yes, there is still Michigan and Ohio State, but we do not play Notre Dame regularly anymore. I never get excited about playing teams like Rutgers and prefer playing teams like Nebraska, UCLA, and USC, either as non conference foes or in a bowl game. When I got to East Lansing, football was king, but the allure faded for a bit because the Spartans went through years in the 1970s and 1980s without having consistently good teams. Basketball took a leap forward when Magic played for the Spartans, and football and basketball became more equivalent, just as they are at WVU. When I became a college administrator, we had our own football suite, which provided an entirely different game-watching experience. This was especially true when football got better during the Mark Dantonio era, with multiple Big Ten championships, Cotton Bowl and Rose Bowl wins, and a College Football Playoff appearance. What I liked best about Dantonio is how he and his staff recruited underestimated guys and developed them, for example Kirk Cousins, Le'Veon Bell. The highlight for me, in conjunction with MSU football, was serving as a mentor to the football team when Nick Saban was the head coach in the 1990s. I look back on it now and wonder, "How in the world did WVU part ways with Bowden and MSU with Saban?" Each went on to collegiate greatness. 

STADIUM JOURNEY:

So, tell us about The Sports Column and how you got involved.

FRANK FEAR:

That is another “You cannot make this up” story. Not long after I retired from MSU, my back pain got to the point that I had to have spinal stenosis surgery. The discomfort and pain medicines made it difficult for me to read for any length of time or to write anything longer than short pieces. So, I started looking for things to occupy my time. I learned about The Sports Column, started writing short pieces, and submitted them to the editor, Brett Dickinson, who was also a sports radio producer with a weekend show out of Baltimore, MD, at the time. After writing and submitting a few articles, he asked me if I would like to become a columnist. I said yes and submitted more articles. Well, not long after, Brett got a staff position at an NFL-connected foundation, and he didn’t have the time to continue editing TSC. I volunteered, and I have been serving as managing editor since 2014. I volunteered because I emphatically endorse Brett’s vision of a site that enables fans to write full-length articles. They submit, we edit, format, and post. I have gone through that cycle about 5000 articles as managing editor. We do not have assignments, so folks decide what they want to write about and when. We have only a few rules, such as article length, so the blog is easy to manage. The first thing I do every day is check the portal, download articles, edit, format, and post—typically two to four articles a day. Brett moved up the system to lead the foundation, so he can’t devote time to TSC these days, and I continue handling all day-to-day tasks.

STADIUM JOURNEY:

What are some of your favorite TSC pieces?

FRANK FEAR:

Ordinarily, that would be a good question, but I think it is secondary to TSC because we are a writer-centered blog. So, for me at least, it is about who writes, not necessarily what they write. Our writers range from teenagers to octogenarians, and they come from around the globe. I am most impressed with folks you would not expect to write as persistently and as well as they do. We have had several autistic writers, high school grads or less, and people from all walks of life. Some have used TSC to build a resume and then move on to other writing roles. Several have written books or will write books later, and we’ve been a place where former beat writers and columnists have settled. Let me add that I learn a lot from them because we have writers who focus on sports and sports issues, which I am less familiar with such as cricket and field hockey. Many have strong feelings about players, teams, and leagues, and want to tell their side of the story. We get game articles, critiques of players and teams, a fair bit of what I would call sports commentary, and articles about sports history, my love. My job is not to critique their writing except when they ask or are serving an internship. Not giving constant feedback is difficult for someone who has overseen over 50 theses and dissertations over the years. I am especially proud that we are a place where a bus driver or a UPS worker can write and get a byline, as well as accomplished authors. I am also proud that very few people have tried to take advantage of our open space to engage in behaviors we cannot support such as writing a personal vendetta against a coach or fellow player. An interesting side story is that TSC got me back to West Virginia. I had written an article about Jim Braxton, my all-time favorite football player there. One of his teammates read the article and passed it on to fellow players. One of those players not only read it, but he also contacted me. We talked, and one thing led to another, including writing the book I mentioned earlier. Without that contact, I can’t imagine writing that book.

STADIUM JOURNEY:

What's next for The Sports Column?

FRANK FEAR:

I answer that question in the The Sports Column: Written By Fans, For Fans - The Sports Column | Sports Articles, Analysis, News and Media. I will quote it here: “TSC will last as long as it’s meant to. Continuity depends on writers who write, readers who read, and staff who take the time to publish your work. Nevertheless, there is no tomorrow unless you do your thing. If you do, then we’ll do ours.”

And we will.

Jon Hart is @manversusball