According to Gary Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Blaine Stewart, son of the late former WVU football coach Bill Stewart, is joining the Mountaineers as an assistant coach.
The younger Stewart has been an assistant coach with the Pittsburgh Steelers for the past four years, spending the last two years as an assistant wide receivers coach and the two before that as a coaching assistant.
A reunion between WVU and the Stewart family has been on the table for a while.
“Coach [Neal] Brown has been very open about my mom and I being 100% welcomed around the program,” Stewart told the Dominion Post in 2020. “I’m thankful for him and his staff. It’s nice to feel welcomed again after a long time away.”
Stewart, who was 13 when his father led the Mountaineers to victory in the famous 2008 Fiesta Bowl, graduated from Morgantown High in 2013. He was an all-state player for the Mohigans and matriculated to James Madison, where he played wide receiver for three seasons. He moved to the University of Charleston as a two-year graduate transfer and graduated from UC in 2017.
He was hired by the Steelers in 2018 as his family shares a connection with Pittsburgh head coach Mike Tomlin. Bill Stewart gave Tomlin his first-ever coaching job at Virginia Military Institute in 1995. That was the elder Stewart’s first and only head coaching job before he became the Mountaineers’ head man in 2008.
Bill Stewart was a native of New Martinsville, where the football facility at Magnolia High School is named in his honor. He was the head coach at WVU from 2008-11, compiling a 28-12 record, and died of a heart attack in 2012.
“It was amazing seeing him get the opportunity to lead we loved so much,” Blaine Stewart said of his father in 2020. “He was a West Virginia guy through and through, from a West Virginia family who married a West Virginia girl (Karen). I think the interim opportunity was a culmination of a lot of hard work, a lot of ups and downs and this was his shot.”
Stewart’s hiring has not been officially announced by WVU. His potential title with WVU is unknown as the Mountaineers hired Bilal Marshall as a receivers coach at the beginning of the month. Sean Reagan could move back to coaching quarterbacks, a position he held from 2019-21, which would allow Stewart to become the tight ends coach.
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