New York Giants quarterback Jeff Hostetler runs from the field after the Giants beat the Buffalo Bills 20-19 in Super Bowl XXV in Tampa, Fla., Jan. 27, 1991.
New York Giants quarterback Jeff Hostetler runs from the field after the Giants beat the Buffalo Bills 20-19 in Super Bowl XXV in Tampa, Fla., Jan. 27, 1991.
MORGANTOWN — Super Bowl 59 will take place on Sunday in New Orleans, and for the first time in four years, there will be no West Virginia University alumni playing in the NFL championship game.
Neither of this season’s Super Bowl participants — the Kansas City Chiefs nor the Philadelphia Eagles — features a former Mountaineer on their rosters. That’s a bit unusual, as 24 WVU alumni have been on the field for pro football’s grand event since its inception after the 1966 season.
An ex-West Virginia player has been involved in 25 of the 59 Super Bowls since that first one pitted the Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs. No Mountaineer was on the field in the first one, but there was in the second, as Ken Herock was a tight end for the Oakland Raiders, who lost to the Packers.
Chuck Howley was the next West Virginian to play in a Super Bowl, as he was a linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys when they made it to the championship in both the 1971 and ’72 seasons.
In fact, Howley, a Wheeling native who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2022, was named the fifth Super Bowl’s MVP. To date, he’s the only player from the losing team to be voted the game’s MVP.
Former Mountaineers had a smattering of Super Bowl opportunities throughout the rest of the ’70s and ’80s. Jeff Hostetler quarterbacked the New York Giants to a 20-19 win in Super Bowl 25 over the Buffalo Bills after the 1990 season.
Another WVU alumnus, Darryl Talley, was a member of those Bills and also remained with Buffalo throughout its four straight losing Super Bowl appearances. No other former Mountaineer has played in more than two Super Bowls.
Hostetler (Super Bowls 21 and 25) and Mike Compton (Nos. 36 and 38 as an offensive lineman with the New England Patriots) are the only two Mountaineer alumni to win multiple Super Bowls in their pro careers.
The most former WVU players to participate in a single Super Bowl came in Super Bowl 52, when the victorious Philadelphia Eagles included four Mountaineers — defensive back Rasul Douglas, wide receiver Shelton Gibson, linebacker Najee Goode and running back Wendell Smallwood.
There was a gap of several years after that before another Mountaineer was involved in a Super Bowl. In Super Bowl 56 after the 2021 season, Quinton Spain, an offensive lineman with the Cincinnati Bengals, began a three-year run for WVU that also featured linebacker Kyzir White with the Eagles in 57 and then offensive lineman Colton McKivitz last season with the San Francisco 49ers.
There will be no former WVU player on either side of the field this Sunday in New Orleans, though, there is a West Virginia connection with the Philadelphia Eagles. Autumn Lockwood is the associate performance coach for the Eagles, and she is in her third year with the club after initially coming aboard as a strength and conditioning associate in 2022.
Lockwood is the daughter of former Mountaineer defensive back David Lockwood (1984-88), who also coached at WVU in several stints (1989 as a graduate assistant, 2000 with defensive backs and 2008-11 with cornerbacks).
Autumn Lockwood graduated from University High School, where she was an all-state soccer player. She went on to play soccer and earn a bachelor’s degree at the University of Arizona, where her father was an assistant football coach.
After graduating, Lockwood got into the strength and conditioning profession, starting on a path that has now led her back to the Super Bowl for the second time in her three years with the Eagles.
