MORGANTOWN — During an interview on the Kanawha Valley Sports Report Monday, WVU kicker Casey Legg announced that he will forgo his final year of college eligibility and retire from football.
Talking to host Taylor Kennedy, Legg said he took some time to reflect after this season, his fifth with the Mountaineers, and decided that his time was simply up.
“I was super-thankful for the five years I got to play on the WVU football team,” Legg said. “It truly was a dream come true and I loved it, I loved getting to play for my home state. As I looked at it, I really felt like my time was up and I was content.”
Legg, a Charleston native, notably did not play football in high school as Cross Lanes, his alma mater, did not offer it. Playing soccer instead, Legg eventually walked on at WVU and redshirted in 2018. He became the team’s full-time placekicker in 2020 and went on to kick 81.6% (40-of-49) on field goals in his career.
Legg said that there was a moment during a home game this season when he looked around Milan Puskar stadium and decided he never wanted to play football anywhere else, even as a professional.
“A moment that sticks out in my mind, I think it was the Baylor game, someone had called a timeout so I was on the field warming up,” Legg recalled. “I just looked around at all the fans in Milan Puskar Stadium and kind of soaked it in for a minute and decided that I didn’t want to play anywhere else and I’m thinking even the NFL level.”
Legg ended up being the hero of that Baylor game as he made a go-ahead 22-yard field goal with 30 seconds left that put the Mountaineers up 43-40. He accomplished the same feat a month later when he kicked a 25-yard field goal as time expired against Oklahoma that lifted WVU to a 23-20 triumph.
“For me, I had reached the top of the top and kind of in that moment I decided I wasn’t going to pursue the NFL,” Legg said. “I didn’t think (the NFL) would be as meaningful to me as WVU football is. For me, I had reached the heights. When I think about the Baylor game and the Oklahoma game, those were the heights, for me, of my football career and I was content with those.”
Legg made 14-of-15 field goal attempts this season and 37-of-39 extra points. Technically a redshirt-junior, Legg had one year of eligibility remaining because of the blanket waiver the NCAA gave out in 2020.
Other kickers on WVU’s roster include Parker Grothaus, who handled kickoffs this season, Danny King, Leighton Bechdel and RJ Kocan.
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