October 23, 2026 - On Saturday, Oct. 10, Milan Puskar Stadium turned black. Mountaineer fans filled the stands, the Coal Rush uniforms drew on a miner’s gear, and the state’s flagship university told the country what West Virginians have known for generations: coal built this place.

Ten days later, on Tuesday, Oct. 20, Marshall University took the field at Joan C. Edwards Stadium in Huntington in helmets honoring the coal industry and beat South Alabama 20-13 on national television.

On behalf of the West Virginia Coal Association and the thousands of men and women who work in this industry, thank you to West Virginia University and Marshall University, their athletics departments, their coaches and their players for putting West Virginia’s coal miners in front of the crowd twice in eleven days.

Morgantown: the Mantrip and Coal Rush

WVU’s Mountaineer Mantrip began with the 2011 season and borrows its name from the shuttle that carries miners underground at the start of every shift. Miners ride a mantrip to go to work. The Mountaineers and their fans walk theirs to the stadium. At Coal Rush, with the crowd in black and the miners of this state in mind, that walk carries the full weight of the industry that inspired it. Coal miners took part in this year’s Mantrip and area miners posed inside a mine shaft before kickoff.

WVU and coal grew up together. The university opened in 1867 as the young state’s agricultural college, and in a state sitting on some of the richest coal seams in North America, the practical arts that drive an economy came to include mining. Generations of mining engineers trained in Morgantown have gone to work in the coalfields. When the first Coal Rush game kicked off in 2024, miners and members of the WVU Mine Rescue Team stood on the field to an ovation from the home crowd. Those students train to go underground on the worst day a mine can have. A university that prepares them and honors them in front of a packed stadium is a true partner to the industry that employs their classmates after graduation.

Huntington: the Herd wears the coal industry on its helmet

Marshall announced the helmets on Oct. 19. The helmets carried the Marshall “M” with a pickaxe atop it, along with stripingdesigned in a coal-inspired style.  Head Coach Tony Gibson’s father was a coal miner. U.S. Sen. Jim Justice attended and took part in the pregame coin toss. Judah Price, the running back from Coal City who scored the winning touchdown with 1:49 left to cap a 75-yard drive on the ground, told WCHS-TV, “That’s just the coal way.”

The tie between Marshall and the coalfields goes back decades. On June 21, 2006, the West Virginia Coal Association partnered with Marshall and WVU to sponsor the football series known as the Friends of Coal Bowl, in a seven-year agreement that included a donation to benefit both universities and scholarship support. The Marshall University Foundation has since established a scholarship in honor of Homer Hickam Sr., a coal miner who helped develop the first mine rescue team units in West Virginia, for the children and grandchildren of coal miners and mine rescue team members. And, in fact, the coal industrysupports dozens of scholarships bearing the names of former alumni and industry executives at both Marshall and WVU.

The numbers behind the helmets

The same university system supplies the facts. The West Virginia Coal Association commissioned WVU’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research to measure what coal delivers to this state. Its report, The Economic Impact of Coal and Coal-Fired Power Generation in West Virginia, is the work of WVU economists, including bureau director John Deskins, who found that the industry’s reach extends well past the mine gates and plant fences.

In 2024, coal mining and coal-fired power generation together produced about $21 billion in economic activity statewide and supported 36,249 jobs. Mining accounted for $16.4 billion of that total. Coal-fired power plants added $4.6 billion and 5,649 jobs. Direct output reached $15.5 billion, and another $5.5 billion came from suppliers, workers and their families spending money across the rest of the state economy.

Wages tell the family story. The average West Virginia coal miner earned about $112,800 in 2024. Mining holds 2.5 percent of the state’s private-sector jobs and delivers 4.8 percent of its private-sector earnings. That paycheck covers the mortgage, the truck payment, the church offering and the travel-ball fees, and it circulates through hardware stores, diners and car dealerships in every coalfield county.

The study ties about $1.3 billion in state and local tax revenue to these two industries. That money funds schools, paves roads and pays for public safety in communities from Wheeling to Williamson. Every taxpayer in West Virginia benefits from that revenue, including the ones who have never set foot underground. Remove it and the county commissions and school boards that depend on it face a choice between raising taxes and cutting services.

Policymakers who write the rules that close coal plants and starve mines of capital should read this study before their next rulemaking. Regulators who treat a coal plant as a line item to retire owe West Virginia families an accounting of what that retirement costs. Every plant retired early and every mine idled takes a slice out of that $21 billion and out of that $1.3 billion in tax revenue. The first families to feel the loss live in the counties that produce the energy, and the classrooms, roads and sheriff’s departments they depend on feel it right behind them. Ratepayers everywhere feel it too when the generating capacity that keeps power available around the clock is switched off.

Thank you

Both ceremonies honored the miners who go underground every shift so that the rest of us can turn on a light, run a factory and roll steel.

Thank you, WVU, for putting that honor on the biggest stage in the state and for backing it with research from your own economists.

Thank you, Marshall, for putting it on a national broadcast on a Tuesday night in Huntington.

We look forward to next season’s Coal Rush, to the next Herd tribute to the coalfields, and to wearing black alongside the Mountaineer Nation and the Herd once again.

Coal keeps West Virginia in the win column every day of the year, and in the month of October the state’s two largest football programs stood with the industry that earns it.