CREDIT: KDKA-FM PITTBURGH by sportsxbrooks
---West Virginia is searching for anonymous contributors to stories it says contain "blatant inaccuracies" about the football team's coach-in-waiting and offensive coordinator, Dana Holgorsen.
They might want to start with head coach Bill Stewart. Colin Dunlap, a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter and the paper's former West Virginia beat writer, told 93.7 The Fan in Pittsburgh that Stewart called him on Dec. 18 and asked him to dig up "dirt" on Holgorsen. Holgorsen was hired and given the coach-in-waiting title on Dec. 15.
Dunlap recalled: "He tried to flame-throw the guy in December by calling me and at least one other reporter because the other reporter and I discussed it. [Stewart] said, can you get the word, I think it was scumbag or something, tattooed on the front of the sports page? You need to dig up this dirt; you need to get it out on this guy. And I said, 'Hey man, I'm not a part of some witch hunt.' But I understood the guy was like backed in a corner and was in a tight spot."
On May 28, the Huntington Herald-Dispatch wrote that Holgorsen was involved in six alcohol-related incidents that the university tried to cover up. The paper cited sources for some of his information and it was later speculated that those sources could have been Stewart or his wife, Karen.
Either Stewart or Holgorsen won't be at West Virginia much longer and in the future ADs should look at this situation as a prime example on why coach-in-waiting scenarios are a bad idea.
---Rodney McKissic
(www.twitter.com/rodneyjmckissic)
tagged
Big East | Bowl Championship Series | College football | National
