West Virginia Football: Is This the End for Coach Bill Stewart?

We all knew that the Bill Stewart situation at West Virginia was going to be an interesting one to watch this season, but it's starting to sound like we may not get to see the Stewart soap opera play out in 2011.

Multiple sources, including the Charleston Gazette and Sporting News, are reporting that West Virginia is in the process of buying out head coach Bill Stewart’s contract.

The news comes just days after rumors tore through the Internet, claiming that it was Stewart and his wife Karen who were actually the ones behind the recent flurry of negative publicity surrounding head coach-in-waiting Dana Holgorsen.

When Holgorsen first arrived in Morgantown back in December after a one-year coordinator stint at Oklahoma State, many wondered how the relationship between he and Stewart would ultimately play out.

Initially, Stewart said all the right things, smiled and shook hands with his successor, but it was obvious that the West Virginia native was heartbroken over losing his dream job.

The Stewart-Holgorsen coaching combination seemed to work fine throughout spring practice sessions, but once reports surfaced that Holgorsen had been involved in a late night incident at a West Virginia casino back in mid-May, things started getting messy. 

Soon, mysterious stories started popping up, linking Holgorsen with other alcohol related run-ins at various establishments throughout the state, but school officials investigated the claims and found very little evidence of any wrongdoing.

Some felt it was the Stewart camp who leaked the information to the media in the hopes of disparaging  Holgorsen's reputation.

Obviously, that would be difficult to prove, however, the real damning evidence came when Pittsburgh Post-Gazette beat writer Colin Dunlap accused Stewart of asking him to try to “dig up dirt” on Holgorsen back when the move was first made.

That, as they say, seems to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

It looks as if Stewart will now be unceremoniously removed a year before he was actually set to be unceremoniously replaced.

If the reports and rumors prove to be true, the end is indeed imminent.

It would certainly be an embarrassing exit for a man who has poured his heart and soul into the job he loves, even if his team’s on-field results haven’t always matched his passion.

Stewart would be remembered first and foremost for his lauded head coaching debut in the 2008 Fiesta Bowl when he guided the Mountaineers to a huge upset over Oklahoma in the wake of Rich Rodriguez’s turbulent exodus.

Stewart has coached the Mountaineers to three consecutive nine-win campaigns, but he could just never do enough to please a Big East championship and BCS bowl hungry fan base.

West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck must have known that it was a risk to throw Holgorsen into the mix, and it looks as if everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong.

Many media members second-guessed Luck’s decision, and now it seems like they were right to do so.

Stewart felt slighted, which is an honest reaction to have, and if the reports are true, he reacted uncharacteristically in all the wrong ways.

If Stewart's contract is bought out, Luck will have to find a nice napkin to clean the egg off of his face after all of this.

Now I’ll admit, I’m a firm believer in Dana Holgorsen, and I expect him to accomplish great things at West Virginia, but there’s no getting around the fact that this looks bad, and it puts the program in a negative light on a national scale.

Luck, the creator of this mess, has to take all the heat for this right now, but let’s be honest, if Holgorsen wins three Big East championships over the next five years, Luck will probably be celebrated for doing what needed to be done, even if it did cause some undesirable backlash at the time.

Change creates conflict.