West Virginia has enjoyed considerable success with quarterback transfers from four-year schools, dating back to Jeff Hostetler’s two seasons at WVU in 1982-83 and continuing in the early 1990s with Jake Kelchner, and most recently, Clint Trickett.
Former coach Don Nehlen believes Hostetler’s decision to transfer from Penn State following the 1980 season was one of the key components in his early success turning around a Mountaineer program that had experienced five consecutive losing seasons from 1976-80.
“Had Jeff not transferred in we would have never turned the program around because there were no other quarterbacks in the program of that caliber and we couldn’t recruit any,” Nehlen once told me.