**THIS IS THE 10th and final in a series of 10 local sports stories The Dominion Post believes would make a good sports documentary.**
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Noah Braham had a decision to make prior to his freshman year at University High last season.
Braham, who starred at Mountaineer Middle both on the basketball court and football field the previous three years, likely figured he would wear the same number his dad, Rich, played with in the late 1980s at UHS.
Problem is, Rich’s No. 83 was retired by the Hawks, so Noah was on his own to choose his own number. As a wide receiver and defensive end, Noah decided to go with the single-digit No. 6 to build his own legacy, something Rich, who was on the sideline all last year as a volunteer assistant coach, wanted his son to do from the beginning.
“He looked at me and I told him, ‘You need to pick your own number. This is you,’ ” Rich said. “You want your kids to make their own path in life.”
Rich was an all-state tight end and defensive lineman for the Hawks, walked on at WVU and turned into a starting offensive tackle for the Mountaineers in the early 1990s. From there, a long and very successful NFL career followed, but now, he’s back in Morgantown and raising a family with his wife, Connie — Noah and two middle school-aged twins — where he grew up.
The beginnings
Before Braham’s junior season at UHS, a new head coach took over the program in a John Kelley, who was an assistant prior to getting the top gig.
The offense Kelley had the opportunity to coach was stacked at tight end, including two 6-foot-5 threats in Braham and Mark Casteel.
“We had some big frames up the middle,” Braham said.
Braham was also big enough to rotate from defensive end to defensive tackle, and his overall frame was certainly big enough to play at the next level. Although there wasn’t much interest at the Division II level, Braham took a trip to Blacksburg, Va., and met with then-Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer.
“They actually offered me a full-ride, but at the time, they were on probation, so I would have had to pay my way my first year there,” Braham said. “I told them thank you very much, but I wasn’t going to put my family through a financial burden because at the time, it was very expensive to go to Virginia Tech — it’s still very expensive.”
Given the opportunity to be an invited walk-on at WVU, where it was about $743 a semester and he could live off-campus, it was a much easier financial decision to join the Mountaineers.
However, being a walk-on compared to a scholarship player, especially in the late 80s, was difficult.
“People would always tell me that being a walk-on must be gravy and it’s easy — no it’s not,” Braham said. “You’re in a different locker room. The scholarship players are in the nice locker room while you’re in the smaller visitor’s locker room, per say, from back in the day. You would go through practice like everyone else, but you didn’t get training table like the scholarship kids did. If you wanted training table, you had to bus tables, and being the kind of person I was, I said nope. Fortunately, I had family in town that made it very easy for me.
“But I said I’m not busing tables, I’m going to earn myself a scholarship.”
It’s getting real
It was less than a week into practice when WVU coach Don Nehlen approached Braham with a proposition — move from a 250-pound tight end to a 300-pound offensive tackle.
“When you’re a walk-on trying to earn a scholarship, you pretty much just say, ‘Yes sir,’ Braham said.
It was common for almost all freshman to take redshirts their first year on campus, so Braham used that year to bulk up his frame, and by his redshirt-freshman year, he was battling for the backup tackle spot, and most importantly, he was on scholarship.
About halfway through the season, tackle Verne Howard broke his wrist, and Braham was approached by Nehlen prior to a home game against Penn State.
“He said, ‘Rich, you’re gonna start this game,’ and from there on, I didn’t look back and I started every game thereafter.”
That included 37 starts at tackle, earning him a spot on the WVU all-time team in the 1990s, the Ira Errett Rodgers Award (highest academic grade-point average on the team) and the offensive MVP award in 1993 when the Mountaineers finished the regular season 11-0, reaching the Sugar Bowl.
A professional career was past a dream, it was a reality for Braham. He was selected by the Phoenix (now Arizona) Cardinals in the third round of the 1994 draft as a guard, rather than the tackle spot he anchored at WVU.
“What a lot of people don’t understand is when it comes to the pros, there’s a lot of measurements going on,” Braham said. “If you look at defensive ends, a lot of them are very long, so a lot of tackles from college are drafted as guards or sometimes centers in the NFL.”
With tight NFL rosters, Phoenix placed Braham in waivers, where he was picked up by the Cincinnati Bengals. He played three games at guard in 1994 but an ankle injury forced him to miss all of the 1995 campaign.
In 1996, though, Braham’s pro career took off, though not the way he expected. He started 13 games at left guard for the Bengals and was the backup center. Prior to being asked to play center, he had never snapped the ball in his life. He was self-taught and even snapped the ball to his wife in his spare time.
“I literally got about three snaps a week (in practice),” Braham said. “I wanted to learn my trade and if they called on me, I was ready.”
To end the 1996 season, starting center Darrick Brilz went down with an injury, and it was time. Braham locked down a starting job at guard in the late 1990s but moved to center permanently from there. He was successful enough to earn an offer from the New England Patriots following the 1997 season, which the Bengals matched.
Braham spent his entire career in Cincinnati, making 142 total starts from 1996-2006, including 98 at center. He had four arthroscopic knee surgeries, two sprained ankles, a herniated neck disc and a broken toe in his career, and after suffering a tibia plateau fracture in Week 2 against the Cleveland Browns in 2006, Braham called it a career.
Prior to a home game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Bengals held a ceremony honoring Braham’s career. At midfield of Paul Brown Stadium, Braham held a small 2-year-old named Noah, who began to cry as the crowd gave his dad a standing ovation for a fulfilled career.
Returning home
As the ceremony wrapped up, the public address announcer said, “To show our gratitude, the Bengals have something for you to enjoy at your new home in the hills of West Virginia.”
Braham was presented with a utility vehicle donned with bengal stripes and a Bengals helmet, which was a nice fit for a brand new house in Morgantown. While he was still playing for the Bengals, the Brahams bought property in West Virginia with every intent to move back when his career was over.
“I love West Virginia, and my family is from here and [my wife’s] is from right above Wheeling, and us having kids being able to see their grandparents was pretty nice,” he said.
Noah was 3 years old when he moved to Morgantown, so he doesn’t remember much of his short time in Cincinnati as a toddler or when his dad was an active player.
“I always knew my dad played in the NFL, but I didn’t realize or understand what he did and who he was until about sixth grade,” Noah said. “It really made me want to play football and be successful in the sport.”
Noah started playing baseball, basketball and flag football at 6 years old, but it wasn’t until middle school when he played tackle football for the first time. As a bigger kid — listed at 6-foot-2 and 170 pounds as a high school freshman — Rich decided Noah was capable of starting tackle football in middle school.
Then-Mountaineer Middle coach Jason White approached Rich about helping out as a volunteer coach, and it seemed like a no-brainer at the time.
“The biggest thing was the knowledge of my game,” Rich said. “I’ve been around the game and I made a career out of it, so I’ve watched film over and over and over, so I knew the game. It was fun watching the kids grow up.”
Though he doesn’t play offensive line, Noah picks his dad’s brain about how to play defensive line, since Rich played it in high school and went head-to-head with them for two decades at all levels.
Still, Noah knows there’s no favorites.
“Having my dad as a coach is just like having any other coach,” he said. “He treats me just like everyone else. He is just as hard on me as he is everyone else. He is fair and doesn’t pick favorites.”
Still for Rich, it’s been a thrill to see his football career come full circle, from playing at UHS, to starring at WVU and Bengals, to now being dad and coaching his son at his high school alma mater, under the same head coach he played for.
“It’s great, and coach Kelley and coach (Shane) Ziats are great people,” Rich said. “They know football and it’s just fun being around.”
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