Former WVU Assistant Bill Kirelawich Trusted His Eyes With College Football Hall of Famer Steve Slaton – West Virginia University Athletics

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Steve Slaton could have been the University of Maryland’s seventh College Football Hall of Famer, but instead he becomes the seventh from West Virginia University.
 
The 22-member College Football Hall of Fame Class of 2025 was announced by the National Football Foundation on ESPN’s College Football Live yesterday afternoon, and among them was Slaton, who is just the 14^th player or coach associated with WVU to be immortalized with college football’s highest honor.
 
Late yesterday afternoon, Slaton, now living in Houston, Texas, recalled Maryland’s abrupt 180 degree turn on him when he was being recruited out of Conwell-Egan Catholic High in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania.
 
“I committed to Maryland, and I think I was with them for maybe four months, and then a reporter called me and asked me if it was true that my scholarship was taken,” he recalled.
 

“So, I called my recruiter, who happened to be (Penn State head coach) James Franklin, and he was ducking and dodging me,” Slaton said. “When I finally talked to him, he just said if they had a letter-of-intent left on signing day they would give me one. It wasn’t a guarantee, so I went back on the market and pretty much every school I was talking to wanted me to play defense.”
 
“They were idiots,” West Virginia assistant coach Bill Kirelawich said. “There was no doubt in my mind that Steve Slaton was going to be a great college running back. I probably thought he was better than he thought he was.”
 
Of course, Slaton wanted to play running back in college, and he did his research on West Virginia and discovered that the Mountaineers had developed a great tradition of 1,000-yard rushers starting with Amos Zereoue in the late 1990s and continuing with Avon Cobourne and Quincy Wilson.
 
The catchy “Touchdown City” moniker the local newspaper came up with and was on billboards all over town also caught his attention.
 
“When I started out, I thought West Virginia was part of Virginia,” the Levittown, Pennsylvania, native chuckled, “but I found out they were a really heavy running school and the game I came to I think they played Temple and Kay Jay Harris had a big game, and I wanted to go to a school that ran the ball like that.”
 
At the time, West Virginia was also recruiting heavily publicized five-star running back Jason Gwaltney out of Long Island, and Kirelawich, the assistant coach pursuing Slaton, made that fact known to him immediately.

“I was very aware of Jason Gwaltney, and my guy Bill Kirelawich was always truthfully honest,” Slaton said. “I think that’s what I loved most about him.”

 

Kirelawich said the first thing that really impressed him about Slaton wasn’t his blinding speed or his excellent ball skills, but rather his character.

 

“I’ll tell you what, I set up a home visit with him and in those days, we used to tell the kids to go to the high school or meet at a place and then I’d follow them to their house. There was no GPS or anything like that back then,” Kirelawich said.

 

“Well, just about every kid that I had, I’d be waiting at the school, and he’d come by, and we’d go. Not Steve. He was the first kid, and maybe the only kid, that was there before I got there. He was waiting on me, and I’m always early. Right then and there, I knew we had a special guy.”

 

Slaton’s parents, Carl and Juanita, also won Kirelawich over.

 

“His mother and dad were just super people, just wonderful,” he gushed. “You could see, a kid like that, coming from the parents he had, he’s got to be a good kid.”

 

Kirelawich recalled North Carolina being a school that Slaton was really interested in, and he encouraged him to visit Chapel Hill before making his final decision.

 

“I said, ‘Look, if you’ve got doubts, then take the trip to North Carolina. This is one thing where you’ve got to be absolutely certain that you are right.’ I told him that in front of his mother and dad,” Kirelawich said. “He looked at his mom and dad, and he looked at me, and he said, ‘Nah, I know I’m right. I’m going to West Virginia.”

 

As for Gwaltney, Kirelawich said Slaton never batted an eye.

 

“I told him, ‘You know, we’ve got Gwaltney, a five-star guy and an All-American.’ He said, ‘That doesn’t bother me. I’ll compete with whoever you have there,'” Kirelawich said.

 

And compete he did.

 

Slaton got his big opportunity six games into his freshman season in 2005 when he rushed for 90 yards on just 11 carries in a 34-17 loss against third-ranked Virginia Tech.

 

Steve was the only Mountaineer player to really do anything against the Hokies that afternoon, and that performance demonstrated to the coaching staff that he was willing to compete against anybody, no matter the circumstances.

 

“That was a confidence game, and I think a lot of things went into that were I had a week of preparing to get more playing time,” Slaton admitted. “I really didn’t get much (playing time) unless we were winning handily, and that was a chance to play, and you’ve got to take advantage of the opportunities that you do get.”

 

Two weeks later, quarterback Pat White got his big opportunity against Louisville, and the freshman duo put on one of the greatest shows in Milan Puskar Stadium history. White orchestrated a 17-point, fourth-quarter comeback, and Slaton scored a school-record six touchdowns in the Mountaineers’ unforgettable 46-44 triple-overtime victory over the Cardinals.

 

A few weeks later, Slaton rushed for 179 yards and scored two touchdowns in WVU’s 45-13 victory over Pitt and then capped a brilliant freshman season by going into the heart of SEC country and rushing for a Sugar Bowl-record 204 yards with three touchdowns in West Virginia’s stunning 38-35 victory over Georgia in Atlanta.

 

That’s the game that put Rich Rodriguez and Mountaineer football on the college football map.

 

Former WVU defensive coordinator Steve Dunlap, watching the game on television, said years later that Slaton’s performance was the closest he had ever seen to someone matching Pitt’s Tony Dorsett. Dunlap had spent two seasons at WVU chasing Dorsett when Dorsett starred for the Panthers in the mid-1970s.

 

Slaton’s greatest game came during his best season in 2006 when the Mountaineers rallied to defeat the Panthers 45-27 at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh. He rushed for 215 yards and scored two touchdowns and caught six passes for 130 yards and two more scores. 

 

It was a game that displayed his immense all-around abilities.

 

“I remember it was a close game in the first half, and it was one of those games that was blow-by-blow to where I think the long touchdown catch that I made tied it up,” Slaton said. “We were always a good second-half team with all of the conditioning that we did, and it took over.”

 

Slaton’s most personally satisfying performance happened seven games prior when he ran for 195 yards and scored two touchdowns in the Mountaineers’ 45-24 home victory over Maryland.

 

That was one of two times he faced the team that had scorned him. The other, in 2007, he ran for 137 yards and tallied three touchdowns in 31-14 win in College Park.

 

“It was kind of one of those things of, ‘This is what you could have had.’ (The 2006 Maryland game) was one of those memorable games to where it was like a scorned lover,” he laughed.

 

Slaton’s 1,744 yards and 16 touchdowns in 2006 helped him earn unanimous All-America honors, and he concluded his three-year college career in 2007 with another 1,000-yard season and a victory over Oklahoma in the 2008 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.

 

Slaton’s three-year totals included 3,923 yards and 50 rushing touchdowns with 65 receptions for 805 yards and five additional scores.

 

Soon after 2007 season, which culminated a three-year run that featured three consecutive top-10 finishes and bowl wins in the Sugar, Gator and Fiesta, Slaton opted to put his name into the NFL Draft.

 

He felt that he did all he could at WVU during those three years and had nothing left to prove.

 

“We were on a quest for a national championship, and that was as high as you could go,” Slaton explained. “The NFL stands for not for long for running backs, so that was one of those things where it was perfect timing for me to leave.

 

“There was nothing else to really grab at,” he added. “Those records that those guys have, they are very deserving to have them, and I have my own, so I’m proud of the ones I have, and I’m pretty sure they are proud of the ones they have.”

 

Although Slaton rushed for more than 1,000 yards during his rookie season with the Houston Texans, a shoulder injury first suffered in college made it difficult for him to hold onto the football. Eventually, the injury forced his premature retirement from the game in 2011.

 

Slaton has remained in Houston with his wife, Kim, and their three children Julian (18), Brennan (16) and Darla (eight). He enrolled in culinary school after his playing career and currently works as a private chef.

 

Slaton also keeps up with his Mountaineers and is fired up about seeing his old ball coach returning to Morgantown to finish what he started in the mid-2000s.

 

“I think it’s great, and I think the whole landscape of the West Virginia fan world is ecstatic as well,” he said. “That’s what I know about West Virginia football and having that guy back at the helm is definitely going to be a great thing to watch. I think he’s going to get things turned around as fast as he can. I’m looking forward to being back in town just to watch it.”

 

Slaton is also looking forward to an upcoming College Football Hall of Fame ceremony that will feature the likes of Terry Hanratty, Graham Harrell, Terry Metcalf, Michael Strahan, Michael Vick and coaches Nick Saban and Urban Meyer.

 

These are some of the greatest names in college football history!

“I’m still trying to grasp it because just being nominated for it, it’s like, ‘Hey, do I really deserve this?'” he said. “There are a lot of guys who play the game, and there are a lot of guys who are remembered by their team, but this is forever to the college football world.”

 

Indeed, it is.

 

Not too shabby for a guy who started out his college career being second fiddle to a guy named Morgan Green, who Maryland took instead of Slaton.

 

Kirelawich always knew what was in Steve, just as he knew what was in so many other great players he recruited to West Virginia through the years.

 

“I can remember a guy telling me he wasn’t going to recruit Bo Orlando because he didn’t think Bo could play defensive back,” Kirelawich said. “He ran a 4.4, he benched 400 pounds, and he couldn’t play defensive back? He also did it for about nine years in the pros.

 

“Honest to God, when you are recruiting, you can’t take anybody else’s word. The only guy who knows is what’s in your head and what’s in West Virginia’s head,” Kirelawich explained. “If we saw that a guy was a good player, all that star bull—- didn’t mean anything to us.”

 

Kirelawich trusted his eyes on Steve Slaton, and now, the rest of us will forever being looking at Slaton’s No. 10 jersey on the Milan Puskar Stadium façade.