Jan 2, 2026 By Bob Hertzel 4 min read

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — This has been one of those days you didn’t really think you’d ever really have to sit down and write about, an emotional day that no one really looked forward to.

Bad enough that it was the start of the new year, America’s 250th year, but this had nothing to do with that nor, thank goodness, the political unrest that makes every day more challenging to get through.

But here you were saying goodbye to a couple of extraordinary players who rose above the cesspool of greed and money that college athletics has become, swept up in the wave of the transfer portal that opens on Friday and once again changes the entire look and direction of the WVU football program.

Hours apart, wide receiver and Laurel Highlands graduate Rodney Gallagher and quarterback Nicco Marchiol announced they were entering the transfer portal.

What price, one wonders, for a hard edge and winning program?

These two players just a year ago seemed to hold the future of WVU football in their hands. They were the poster children of what we all wanted not just our football heroes to be but our sons.

They loved the program, loved the fans and the university, even the state, which was adopting them as favorite sons as they were adopting the state.

But this is a world where your worth is counted out in wins and losses and in dollars and cents rather than the qualities you have as a person.

There are on all football teams players who make their coaches turn first in the morning not to the sports section of the local paper but instead to the pages that include the arrests from the previous day, just hoping not to see those names in there.

If ever you were going to see the names of Marchiol and Gallagher among the arrests it would be far more likely to be as a law firm defending the players.

These two young men did what was right naturally. They loved kids, did the Children’s Hospital thing not because they had to but because they felt an obligation to their fans, to their community and to brightening the darkest day for an ailing child.

True, things had changed since they showed up on the scene. Their football careers hadn’t reached quite the level they had hoped despite the fact they had given all that they had.

Marchiol paid his dues as a backup, not complaining, doing what he had to do to make the team better.

And this year, when the job was his, his season was cut short with a season-ending leg injury. It was a cruel twist of fate and while he had struggled, the truth was he was quarterbacking a 4-8 football team that tried everyone at the quarterback position except for the janitor who swept the floor without finding the answer.

Gallagher’s plight was a little different. He was used as a slot receiver, improving each season. His highlight was catching a game-winning pass to beat Kansas but in reality he treated each day he was here as if it were a day when he would catch another game-winner.

And when a need for a defensive back came up, he was willing to play both ways, an unselfish gesture of his team-first attitude.

But along came the first of the year and both had gone on social media to announce they would test the portal for surely someone out there would understand how much more you were getting than just a football player in them.

We sometimes lose sight in our emotional reactions to players leaving the home program, how much thought and prayer some of them like Marchiol and Gallagher put into the decision.