Bowl Brothers
Henshaw Siblings Suit Up—On Opposite Teams
by Jim Bissett
Just
call it the Henshaw Bowl. As brothers go, Mike and Matt Henshaw
have never been ones to choose sides.
After all, when you're the perennial new kids in school, as they were as youngsters when their father was following football coaching posts across the country, you just might want to be buddies first—siblings second.
That family credo of not choosing sides, though, was a little tricky on New Year's Day in Jacksonville, Florida, when the 83 Mountaineers went to the Toyota Gator Bowl with the Florida State Seminoles, also 83.
The Henshaw brothers were on opposite sidelines in the Alltel Stadium that day: Mike wore No. 40 as a senior safety for the 'Eers, and Matt, a junior quarterback-turned tight end, was No. 14 for the Seminoles.
"We've never actually seen each other play in college," said Mike, 23, who will pursue a master's degree in athletic coaching next fall at WVU. "We always wondered if it would ever happen."
"Oh, yeah," seconded Matt, a 21-year-old junior sociology major at FSU. "This one means even more because it's Mike's last game. And we've always had football in our lives."
For the legions of fans keeping Mountaineer sports in their lives, the January 1 Gator Bowl was like a family reunion . . . with football helmets. And of course you can't forget the Bobby BowdenWest Virginia connection. The venerable coach made his mark with the Mountaineers when the team was still playing in old Mountaineer Field below Woodburn Hall.
Bowden
left Morgantown in 1975 and ended up at Florida State a year
later—where he's been ever since.
His son, Tommy, a Morgantown High graduate and Mountaineer walk-on wide receiver, was a coaching mentor to the Mountaineers' current head coach Rich Rodriguez at Tulane and Clemson.
Then there's the Henshaw connection: Matt and Mike's father, George Henshaw, now an assistant coach with the NFL's Tennessee Titans, is a WVU graduate and Mountaineer star defensive tackle who captained the 1969 Peach Bowl team.
When Henshaw got his degree in 1970, he stayed on with Bowden as a defensive line coach, and followed him to Tallahassee, before moving on to a head coaching job at Tulsa University and assistant coaching posts in the NFL at Denver and Tennessee.
"There are all these connections," the elder Henshaw said. "I'm excited for Mike and Matt, and I'm excited for the bowl. Bobby Bowden's a true gentleman of the game, and Rich Rodriguez is just doing some amazing things."
For George's wife, Kathy, the amazing thing is that her boys finally get to be on the same field together as college players.
"Forget the Gator Bowl," laughed Kathy, also a WVU graduate. "We're calling this one the Henshaw Bowl."
A bowl
featuring two young men, their mother says, who couldn't be more
different.
Mike is the aggressive, slightly more serious one, Kathy said, and Matt is a happy-go-lucky jokester with a flair for mimicry—a comic in shoulder pads who has been known to do a dead-on (hilarious) impression of Bobby Bowden's halftime talk, complete with gum-chewing and gestures.
George, meanwhile, has gotten to view his sons with the eyes of both a father and a coach.
"From a coaching standpoint, they've both got the talent," Henshaw said. "But more importantly, they want to play. They have that desire, and that can't be coached."