Defending through the years

Mike Fox is one of seven Mountaineer student-athletes who was inducted into the West Virginia University Sports Hall of Fame last fall. Fox earned his bachelor’s degree in physical education from the College of Physical Activity and Sport Sciences in 1990.

The Akron, Ohio, native came to Morgantown skinny and unsure of himself. Five years later, he left as one of the most coveted interior defensive linemen in the country. He built himself into the player he became the old-fashioned way – by working hard and eating a lot.

"I was tall and skinny, and putting weight on my body was a hard thing to do," Fox recalled. His teammates said he used to eat a large pizza each night before he went to bed. "I was still hungry after dinner. The funny thing about a youthful metabolism is that it's like an inferno. You can eat whatever you want and it's not going to affect you because you need something to burn. As you get older, those same habits you had as a young person — they do not still apply."

Those five-course meals and late-night pizza trips helped turn Fox into a 285-pound quarterback-eater who ended his Mountaineer career in 1989 with 14 sacks – 10 coming during his senior season when he was named defensive Most Valuable Player of the Gator Bowl and earned All-America Honorable Mention honors from The Sporting News.

Making the climb

Fox was a starting defensive tackle on the 1988 WVU team that was undefeated during the regular season and played Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl for the national championship. The biggest disappointment for him was losing that game. "We got our quarterback, Major Harris, hurt on the third play of the game, so that didn't help any and it kind of took the momentum away from what we could do," he added.

"The climb to get there — especially all of the years before the '88 season — we had some tough years when we had to grow up, learn and become a whole lot better if we wanted to compete on a national level," Fox said. "We got to a national level that season and we did it as an independent. Once upon a time, we weren't in the Big East or the Big 12, we were just an independent school trying to win and make some money for the University at bowl time."

However, Fox is not one of those who pins WVU's loss to Notre Dame on some untimely injuries. He learned in the pros that the next player available must be ready to play.

"If a guy is asked to step up, it's time to step up, or if they ask you to move over to another position then it's your job to do that. Football is a funny game," he explained. "It's next-man-up mentality. I don't care if he's an A-player or a C-player, on game day he better be an A-player because that's your job. That's why you're there."

Later, when Fox played for the New York Giants, he watched backup quarterback Jeff Hostetler fill in for injured starting quarterback Phil Simms and lead the Giants to the Super Bowl. "Hoss was a Mountaineer too, and thank God we had Jeff Hostetler because when you get to the backup quarterback, you don't really know what's going to happen," Fox said.

Containing position

Fox was a rookie defensive tackle for the Giants in 1990 when they got off to a 10-0 start before losing their first game of the season at Philadelphia. New York lost two more times to San Francisco and Buffalo and lost its starting quarterback, Phil Simms, when he broke his foot in the loss to the Bills. The Giants were going to have to sink or swim with Hostetler under center for the remainder of the season.

New York won its remaining regular season games against Phoenix and New England before meeting Chicago in an NFC divisional playoff game. All the Bears could manage was one field goal.

"We were fortunate for lots of different reasons," Fox said. "Number one, we had the number-one defense in the NFL that year, and I don't think I was ever on a team that achieved that status again. Hoss stepped in and did a great job, and Coach Bill Parcells was a great coach who was tough as nails, and he expected everything out of his players to be just the same.

"Bill Belichick was our defensive coordinator and Romeo Crennel was my D-line coach at the time. You all know those names and they're great coaches, and they take their players and get the best out of them," he added.

New York's 15-13 victory over San Francisco in the NFC championship game in Candlestick Park was memorable because the Giants knocked Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana out of the game. Fox was on the field when Leonard Marshall blindsided Montana, ending his afternoon.

"I was part of that," Fox recalled. "He was rolling to my left. Lawrence Taylor (LT) was there with me and LT kind of missed him. I stayed in front of him and put my hands up, and I saw Leonard in the corner of my right eye get him. I tried to keep my contain position and keep my hands up in the air. Joe couldn't see over top of me; Leonard made the hit, and I fell on top of him."

Winning the Super Bowl

New York won the game by kicking five field goals and limiting the 49ers to just 240 total yards – an amazing achievement considering the number of Hall of Famers the 49ers had on offense at the time. It was a game New York wasn't expected to win, especially with Hostetler as its starting quarterback.

"That game went a lot of different ways," Fox said. "Before the game, from what we all heard, San Francisco supposedly already sent all of their stuff down to Tampa Bay for the Super Bowl. Back then, when the Giants and the 49ers played, they were war games. Those were hard games and that day we got through it."

The Giants were also given little chance to defeat Buffalo in Super Bowl XXV. Buffalo was coming off a 51-3 victory over the Los Angeles Raiders in the AFC championship game with a high-powered, no-huddle offense featuring future Pro Football Hall of Famers Jim Kelly, Andre Reed, James Lofton and Thurman Thomas.

"The Buffalo Bills were pretty intimidating," Fox admitted. "They were putting 50 points on the scoreboard on people in playoff games, and we had to stop them."

Parcells and Belichick came up with a masterful game plan, relying on New York's power running game to keep Buffalo's offense off the field. After falling behind early 12-3, New York recovered to take the lead late in the third quarter on a 14-play touchdown drive that consumed nearly 10 minutes of the game clock. Limiting Buffalo's opportunities was the key to the victory.

"Any time you have an offense that can consume the ball, especially when you needed it most, that's a great feeling as a defensive player," Fox said. "I'm glad we won the Super Bowl because you don't want to lose that game. That was a hard-fought game and any other day it could have been the other way around. I'm glad we had 20 and they had 19," he added.

Fox was on the field as a member of the field goal block unit when Scott Norwood missed a 47-yard field goal with eight seconds left to win the game for the Bills. Fox recalls that play vividly.

"Me and Erik Howard were out there and folks just see the wide right part, but I remember Erik, our nose tackle, saying to me, 'If you ever wanted anything more in your life, let's dig these guys out!' You go back and you watch that play and you'll see we knocked those guys as far back as we could and hopefully that was enough to cause enough of a distraction to move that ball to the right."

That's what Fox remembers whenever he looks at his shiny Super Bowl champion ring.

Working with big players

During his five seasons with the Giants, he got to play alongside the most dominant defensive player in NFL history, outside linebacker Lawrence Taylor. He also got to play for two of the game's most influential coaches, Parcells and Belichick.

"Parcells was tough and hard, but he was fair," Fox said. "There was no candy-coating things or trying to make people feel better about themselves. That really wasn't part of the program there. If you had five bad things happen to you in a game, you were going to know about it until you got it corrected.

"They only keep their jobs if they win football games, and you only keep your job if you do your job," Fox continued. "You don't get to bury something and hide it too long because the eye in the sky is always watching you. You either won or you lost, and you've got to win more plays than you lose."

Fox said he first learned this while playing for Don Nehlen at WVU. "Coach Nehlen let me come to WVU. I was excited to be part of the program, and he was a very good coach," Fox said. "He ran his organization good and fair and it was a hard organization too. We worked our butts off there, and Coach was always honest and fair with me."

Life during retirement

After retiring from professional football after four seasons playing for the Carolina Panthers, Fox remained in Charlotte to operate several successful business ventures. Just days away from turning 54, Fox admitted he's ready to begin scaling back some of the things he's doing.

"I got to make some good money playing professional football, and that always helps. I got everything I could get out of it and then some," he said. "I'm very happy, and I've been able to do a lot of different things since my playing career ended. I've been blessed."

Getting inducted into the West Virginia University Sports Hall of Fame is a fitting ending to a memorable athletic career that began more than 35 years ago when he was a senior at Akron North High.

He wasn't sure where life was going to take him, but his gut told him the road to success was somehow rooted in those twisty, curvy roads in West Virginia.

"I appreciate everything West Virginia University has done for me. I'm a Mountaineer; I pull for the Mountaineers and always want them to do as well as they possibly can," Fox said, adding, "I got my degree from WVU. I got to play some football and get to the next level, and all the people that I met along the way there have just been awesome to me. Even to this day, I still come back.”

Fox joins a 2021 WVU Sports Hall of Fame Class of seven that includes football players Noel Devine and Dale Farley, rifle Olympic champion Nicco Campriani, women's track All-American Keri Bland, gymnastics standout Lajuanda Moody and women's basketball star performer Olayinka Sanni.

The induction ceremonies took place on Oct. 30, prior to WVU's home football game against Iowa State.