How transferring to WVU changed Jeff Hostetler’s life

MORGANTOWN — If Neal Brown manages to pull it off and change the face of West Virginia football through the transfer portal, as Bob Huggins is doing with his basketball team, it will be neither the first time it has been done nor the most impactful on the program or the state and community within which it exists.

In fact, the earliest success of Don Nehlen’s Hall of Fame career at WVU grew out of a transfer that even now influences the program and the very image it projects across the world.

It was quarterback Jeff Hostetler who announced to the world that Mountaineer football was ready to climb to the top of the football ladder when, after transferring from Penn State to Nehlen’s new program at WVU in 1981, he led them to perhaps the single most important victory in Nehlen’s career.

In 1980 Nehlen, a former Bowling Green head coach and assistant under Bo Schembechler at Michigan, took the Mountaineers’ job even though Schembechler had advised him to wait for a more prominent offer. No player on the team had enjoyed a winning season, having had five consecutive losing seasons under an ailing Frank Cignetti.

But there was a new stadium, new hope and Nehen wanted a new challenge, all the same reasons he was able to land Hostetler away from Penn State. In 1980, Nehlen had a .500 season at 6-6 and in 1981 it jumped to 9-3, with Oliver Luck at quarterback, including an upset win over Florida in the Peach Bowl.

That same 1981-year Hostetler joined the Mountaineers after two years as a backup at Penn State, having completed just 24 passes and only 1 touchdown pass in two years. It was an adjustment year for Hostetler, who had to sit the season out.

His Mountaineer debut in 1982 was at Oklahoma, then like now a national power, and WVU was a huge underdog, but Hostetler would flash the brilliance that eventually carried him to a Super Bowl championship with the New York Giants, throwing 324 yards and four touchdowns in a 41-27 upset of the Sooners.

He would return to Morgantown after his professional career, raise his family, become an important part of the community and a driving force behind the new WVU Medicine Children’s Hospital that sits proudly overlooking the stadium that he once helped fill.

The transfer that changed the program

Hostetler’s football story is relative today not only because of the influence transfers are having on the Mountaineers’ program, not only because of that Oklahoma victory that put them back on the national stage but also because Neal Brown can do the same thing this year. Brown’s opening game, which they say he can’t win against, of all opponents, Penn State, is the school that gave them Hostetler in the first place.

“I look at where it’s come now and I can remember the early days. I can remember how long camp was then, spring ball, how many two-a-days, how many practices you had. There was a lot of things for us to start at Oklahoma and be told that we were going to kill their horse out there because he’d have to run around the field so much after they scored.

“To start off that way, to go out there and beat them and then continue the process was pretty special, especially with the people we had in the locker room. This is a tribute to the coaches we had and the players themselves, because the coaches got the most out of each one of us.

“If you took the guys that were in our locker room and compared them to the guys who were in Penn State’s locker room, it would be very difficult for a majority of our guys to have broken into the second team at Penn State and some of these bigger schools.

“But our coaches used all that. Great coaches put their guys in position to be successful.

What was it that brought Hostetler to WVU in the first place in a era where transferring was not the rage and there was no NIL money being passed around?

“Coach’s daughter,” Hostetler said with a laugh, having wound up marrying Don Nehlen’s daughter, Vicky. “We’re working on our 40th anniversary next May 15.

“Really, what brought me was Coach Nehlen. I was looking for someone who was going to be straight forward, up front with you, tell you where you stood, let you know what you had to do to get on the field,” Hostetler said. “I wanted to be part of building something and I felt like this was a program that had a lot of potential.”

That was what WVU was offering.

“I remember playing against West Virginia when I was at Penn State. We came down into the new stadium, the locker room wasn’t ready yet. We had to walk through the stands to get to the locker room. I ended up playing in that game and we ended up beating West Virginia.

“They were beating us the whole game and we wound up winning at the end. I remember walking through the stadium and some of the fans were already in. I remember it like it was yesterday. I turned to my roommate, Billy Crummy [Who, coincidently, had graduated from Mars, Pa., high school, the same school that sent 2023 baseball All-American JJ Wetherholt to WVU], and saying, ‘Wow, look at these fans. Wouldn’t these guys be great to play in front of?’

“Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would be there the following year. But I made it home because of a combination of things.”

A tough decision

It started with Nehlen, Hostetler explained.

“This is a tough decision for me. I grew up in the shadow of Penn State. I had two older brothers that played there. I have a brother-in-law that played there. I had a younger brother that was playing baseball there. I had sisters that went to school there.

“When I was coming out of high school, I knew Penn State was where I was going … and so did everybody else. So, to leave there was a tough thing to do,” Hostetler continued.

“One of my older brothers, Doug, he was the one who told me to go down there and take a look. He had traveled through and said ‘They got a new head coach; a new stadium. You gotta take a look at it. He suggested it, I came down and fell in love with it right away even though it was a difficult move.

“I was leaving everything I was familiar with and taking a step into something that was completely unknown.”

It all made it a tough decision, especially 40 years before the world in which we now live.

Today it’s too easy to transfer

“Back then, it was very difficult to transfer out. Then you had to sit out a year. That, in itself is an extremely difficult thing to do compared to now where the rules are so lax. I don’t know how these coaches do it.”

And he’s not necessarily in favor of the looser transfer rules today.

“In order to build a team with comradery and adhesiveness and to gain mental toughness, you have to go through adversity. Some of the greatest players who ever played have gone through a lot of adversity and it made them stronger, tougher and better,” he said.

“Teams that have been the most successful are teams that have gone through adversity together. The way it is now, it’s easy to move. You aren’t going to stay somewhere and go through something when you can test the water somewhere else without consequences or time constraints.

“I don’t think it’s a good thing for the game because it has a lot of consequences you may not see right away. One of those is mentally the toughness involved with dealing with negative things and having to fight through it isn’t there.”

His two years at WVU brought about two 9-3 seasons, two bowl victories, two losses to his old school Penn State and a split of two games with Pitt, including a near upset over the Dan Marino-led Panthers, ranked No. 2 in the nation, losing 16-13 on a late TD and safety.

He was a third-round draft pick of the New York Giants and beat Buffalo, 20-19, in the “wide right” game of 1991, a game in which he well could have been named the MVP.

Back to Morgantown

In all, he played 12 NFL seasons, then decided to return to Morgantown.

“My second year in training camp, the final cuts were made and I saw guys who had started the year before who were now cut, out on the street and unemployed,” he said.

“That was just a big eye opener for me, knowing there is no security in what I was doing. We wanted to find a home base. Where would be a great place to raise our family, raise our kids and be part of a community?

“We could have been anywhere, but we chose Morgantown. We came back and had our first son, who had four major surgeries before he was 11 months old. The last of them were done here in Morgantown. So, the medical facility was really, really important for us.”

It was home.

“We just felt like we loved the people, we loved the area, we thought it was a great place to raise a family. We would travel during the season as long as I played, but we were going to make stability at home as long as I played.”

Hostetler became a driving force behind the new Children’s Hospital, which played such a major part of his family’s life.

“My wife and I have been really, really blessed. I look at that hospital and thank the Lord for being part of that,” he said. “”It’s a big part of my desire to give back. As a family we have three sons and almost lost all three. It’s how life changes so quickly.

“We just wanted to help families who are going through something traumatic to have a place, a place where they could take care of their family and their children.”

Now it is up and operating, and he marvels at what he sees.

“We’ excited about the facility and we’re excited about the doctors and staff who have come in. They are all top of the line. You look at that in little Morgantown, West Virginia. We have a place we can show off to anyone in the country.”

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