WVU Football: Coach Stewart Completes Coaching Staff

NOTE: WVU's football staff is ALMOST complete. I failed to remember there is an opening for a strength and conditioning coach. The Charleston Daily Mail today reports that the preferred candidate is Notre Dame's Mike Joseph, a Fairmont native. (Coach Stew loves him some West Virginians.)

WVU head football coach Bill Stewart has completed the hiring for his football staff with the addition of Lonnie Galloway to coach the Mountaineer wide receivers.

Galloway spent the past three seasons coaching at Appalachian State—coincidentally, the three years that Appy State won the Div. 1AA National Championship.

So that makes the WVU staff look like this...

Head coach Bill Stewart

Football lifer, incurable hugger, hired on an emotional whim after leading WVU to perhaps its biggest victory ever, the 48-28 rout of Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl.

Assistant head coach Doc Holliday

Renowned recruiting wiz, especially in Florida.

Assistant head coach Steve Dunlap

Blood is full of WVU DNA. Maybe a little too much. Coach Stew promised "you'll be seeing a lot more of Don Nehlen around here," after he was hired. I'm not sure that's the best thing. I respected Neach and all when he was at WVU, but that was a different era.

Offensive coordinator Jeff Mullen

Comes from Wake Forest, where he helped run an offense highly similar to WVU's spread, but with more motion.

Offensive line coach David Johnson

Comes from Georgia. Wonder if he's the yelling sort, like fiery ex-Marine Rick Trickett? I hope he doesn't screw up WVU's returning starting offensive line and turn them into clay-footed behemoths like WVU's defense ran around in the Fiesta Bowl.

Running back coach Chris Beatty

I don't know anything about him other than he's from the talent-rich Tidewater, Virginia area. He could be a good pipeline to recruit that area. Oh, he coached running backs at Northern Illinois, which produced Garrett Wolfe.

Defensive back coach David Lockwood

A former WVU player and a coaching veteran. So, ok.

Defensive coordinator Jeff Casteel

Remains from the former coach's staff. I was a little down on Casteel and his 3-3-501(c)3-23 defense after 2006. But after 2007, well, it turned out it was the athletes, not the system.

It's worth noting that the staff is racially diverse—Lockwood, Beatty and Galloway are black. This should do something to answer, if not put to rest, the possible racial slur in Stewart's past at VMI.

Holliday is the only known superstar in this group. But you don't know who will be considered a coaching superstar in five years—could be Mullen, could be Beatty.

National signing day for high school recruits is Feb. 6. We'll see who Coach Stew and his staff have managed to run to ground.