MORGANTOWN — For college football players, other than the Heisman Trophy, there is no greater individual honor greater than being named a first-team all-American.
The legend, Ira Errett Rodgers, was WVU’s initial first-teamer back in 1916, and despite a plethora of fantastic Mountaineers that wore the gold and blue with excellence and distinction, it took 36 years before there was another.
Paul Bischoff, an outstanding two-way end from Beaver Falls, Pa., originally attended Westminster College in 1949, but broke his leg in a pickup football game.
After he recovered, then-WVU assistant coach Joe Walton convinced Bischoff to come to Morgantown, where he became a standout on and off the field.
At 6-foot-1, 185 pounds, Bischoff was exceptionally fast and athletic, and finished his college career in 1952 (as a senior year captain) with then school career records of 96 receptions for 1,349 yards. While the all-American honors were gratifying, nothing compares to the pride that comes from his team’s improvement from 2-8 in 1950 to a solid 7-2 in 1952 that featured a fabulous 16-0 beat down of powerful Pitt, the first-ever WVU defeat of a nationally ranked team.
The popular Bischoff, also an academic all-American and student body president, was selected in the NFL draft by the New York Giants, but had a two-year ROTC commitment in Germany to fulfill after graduation. When he returned, he declined the Giants offer and instead played a year in Canada with the Hamilton Tiger Cats before retiring. He coached football at Beaver Falls and Geneva College And worked as a school administrator before retiring in 2005.
Bischoff is a member of the Beaver County Sports Hall of Fame, the WVU Physical Education Hall of Fame, the WVU Sports Hall of Fame class of 2001, and was named an inaugural member of the Mountaineer legends Society in 2016.
