A fiery, young, coach whose innovative offensive system based on speed and precision elevates Mountaineer football to unprecedented heights before abruptly resigning for greener pastures in the Big Ten Conference … sounds a lot like Rich Rodriguez, doesn’t it?
Well, this is actually the depiction of coach Clarence Spears’s four-year association with West Virginia University football from 1921-24 - a true Golden Era in Mountaineer athletics.
Those alive to witness Spears’s powerhouse Mountaineer teams operate in the mid-1920s maintain that he was the greatest football coach in school history and was destined to permanently put West Virginia University football on the national map had he remained in Morgantown.