Wayback Wednesday: Bowden's Genius is Revealed and The Mountaineers Grab a Bowl Win

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Peach Bowl being recognized this weekend, this week's Wayback Wednesday will focus on that game.

The date is December 30, 1969. The location is Atlanta, Georgia, Grant Field to be exact, the locale that has housed Georgia Tech Yellowjacket football since 1905 and will one day be converted into Bobby Dodd Stadium. The reason for being here is the 1969 Peach Bowl, just the second ever in the game's storied history, between the ACC champion South Carolina Gamecocks and the 9-1, independent West Virginia Mountaineers. The Gamecocks travel down from Columbia with their first ever ACC title in tow and set to make their first bowl appearance since 1946, still a year away from going independent and 22 years from joining the SEC in 1991. The Mountaineers, meanwhile, were looking to cap off a dominating season in which they outscored opponents 288-110 through 10 regular season games.

WVU's offense is keyed around a three-headed rushing attack that consisted of future NFL tailbacks Jim Braxton and Bob Gresham and fullback Ed Williams. Paired with quarterback Mike Sherwood, the Mountaineers brought a potent ground game that offensive coordinator Bobby Bowden leaned on when game planning for the Gamecocks. For South Carolina, they were lead by current radio broadcaster Tommy Suggs at quarterback with West Point transfer Warren Muir as the bellcow of bruising running offense.

The Mountaineers had an outstanding head coach in Jim Carlen but the man who shaped this bowl game was offensive coordinator and future head coach Bobby Bowden. Despite being a wide-open, pass-first style of coach, Bowden took his orders from Carlen to install the wishbone offense before the bowl game to take advantage of the stable of backs in Morgantown. Bowden's installation went perfectly as Braxton, Gresham, and Williams were able to put up big numbers against the Gamecocks. The ability for Bowden to adapt his play calling was immensely important for the Mountaineers to have a chance in this game.

With a driving rain starting to fall right around kickoff, the game was contested almost entirely on the ground as the natural grass field in Atlanta was turned to an absolute mud pit in a matter of minutes. This played into the Mountaineers hands as, not only could South Carolina not stop the wishbone, they could hardly stay on their feet and the undersized Suggs struggled with the height and bulk of the WVU defensive front.

Very little happened in the first half of this game as a result of the weather but WVU took a 7-0 lead on 1,000+ yard rusher Gresham's ten-yard jaunt into the Gamecock end zone. The defenses held up for the majority of the rest of the half with Bill Dupree getting South Carolina on the board with a field goal in the second quarter, making the halftime score 7-3 in favor of WVU.

Both teams picked up where they left off in the third quarter with no scoring coming in the third quarter as neither team could get much going due to the pouring weather. The same continued deep into the fourth quarter but eventually Suggs was able to drive his team deep into Mountaineer territory and set up the Gamecocks best chance at a touchdown all day. The offense reached as far as the Mountaineer 7 but the defense held once again and Sherwood's offense came out to seal the game. A long drive ensued and the big-bodied Braxton was able to bully into the end zone with 23 seconds left to play and clinch a 14-3 win for WVU.

The key to the game was the fullback Williams. With South Carolina expecting the Mountaineers to run their traditional two-back. veer, Williams was unleashed in the three-back wishbone, running for 208 yards on 35 carries to earn offensive MVP honors. With two NFL backs on the field, the Gamecocks were unprepared for the third part of that rushing attack and the fullback ran all over them on that day.

With the bowl game win, WVU tallied their tenth win in a season for the first time since 1922. Carlen used this opportunity to jump to Texas Tech where he won 37 games in five years before taking a joint role as head coach and athletic director of the very South Carolina Gamecocks he beat in this game. Bowden was promoted to head coach and held the position through 1975 when he left for Florida State, building a perennial powerhouse in Tallahassee and becoming one of the winningest college football coaches of all time. 36 members of the team are expected to return to Morgantown this weekend to be honored for their accomplishments fifty years ago. This is truly one of the most successful teams that helped set WVU up as a power-level program and to have the success they enjoy today.

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