WVU-OSU A Family Affair For Nardo Brothers
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WHEELING - Saturday marks a crossroads for West Virginia and Oklahoma State, both sitting at 4-2 coming into Milan Puskar Stadium for a Big 12 match that can shift the trajectory of either team's seasons.
The meeting will also be a crossroads for two brothers, years in the making.
Bryan and Luke Nardo are on the coaching staffs of the Cowboys and Mountaineers, respectively, Bryan the defensive coordinator for Oklahoma State, and Luke a graduate assistant for WVU, coaching linebackers.
Saturday in Morgantown will mark the first time the two Ohio Valley natives will be on opposite sidelines.
"I'm excited," Luke Nardo said days before the game. "It's a unique and very rare opportunity to have. We're definitely going to enjoy the moment. The nice thing about it is it's not so much Bryan versus myself. We're both on defense so we're not scheming against each other directly. But it's definitely something that we're both excited about.
"It's nice that it's happening in Morgantown so that all of our family that wants to come is able to attend that game."
Luke Nardo, a Shadyside graduate, and Bryan Nardo, a graduate of St. John Central in Bellaire, will have family flocking to the game to watch their teams - about 60, according to their father Perry and mother Jayme.
"The family on both sides has been extremely supportive of all three of the boys," Jayme Nardo said. "Every weekend we go to a different game, and every weekend we have a different group of family with us. People have flown to Stillwater for games, gone to Bluffton for games, and now we have a group going to WVU. It's a traveling family these days."
Amongst those who will be in attendance includes the two boys' 91 year-old grandmother Kathy Nardo, who will be watching a game coached by her grandchildren for the first time.
"This'll be her first time," Luke Nardo said. "It's pretty special that she's going to see two of her grandsons do something that they love to do."
While it is rare enough to have two siblings in the college football coaching ranks, Luke and Bryan's brother Matthew is likewise a college coach, the head coach at Bluffton University in northwest Ohio.
The coaching tree goes back a generation too, to father Perry who coached high school at St. John Central and Bishop Donahue.
The love of football, one shared between father and sons, is what the elder Nardo credits for his three sons' career paths.
"I think they got into coaching because they love the game," Perry Nardo said. "All three of the boys love football, they love competing. They didn't have the talent to go on to the next level of play, so they saw coaching as an opportunity to stay connected to the game. Maybe some of the things they saw with me coaching made them interested in it, but I think more so it was just their desire to stay connected to the game.
"What all three of them have done is exceptional," he added. "They understand the game real well, they all relate well to their players, and they all have the mindset that they're not going to get outworked. They know what it takes to succeed, they have a vision and they stick to it."
The journey through the coaching ranks passed through Ohio University for both Luke and Bryan, Bryan working as a graduate assistant for the Bobcats, while Luke learned his craft as a student-coach at the university.
"I got to witness first hand my brothers' routes," Luke Nardo said. "Going to Ohio University, working as an unpaid assistant, and going on to GA at Ohio or to Muskingum in my brother Matt's case."
"Everything I've ever done has always been because of them. I've always loved everything they've done, I've tried to be just like them and compete in a way that was following their tracks, wanting to do some things differently, do them a little better. They really showed me a great route of how to do things. They definitely were huge influences on me getting into this profession."
From Ohio, Luke Nardo got his first coaching job at Nebraska-Kearney in 2020, where he and Bryan Nardo had an opportunity to go against one another with Bryan at conference foe Emporia State. But Bryan was hired on to Youngstown State that same year, a near-miss in their coaching paths.
From there, Bryan Nardo went to Gannon University before coming aboard as the Cowboys' defensive coordinator this season, while Luke Nardo went back to Ohio University as a safeties graduate assistant coach before seizing an opportunity at WVU this year.
No matter how far or close their journeys came to one another, Bryan, 37, and Luke, 11 years his junior, have remained close.
"I talk to my brother Bryan a lot," Luke Nardo said. "We're both morning people so as he's driving into work or I'm driving in we'll always call and talk, bounce ideas off each other. He's always there for me when I have questions regarding defenses or techniques. I reach out to Matt as well, he gives me an approach from an offensive mind."
"My younger brother is one of my best friends, if not my best friend," Bryan Nardo told The Oklahoman. "So it'll be cool to compete against him, outside of playing noon hoops or something."
While their brotherly bond isn't in jeopardy, there is no doubt that both want their teams to prevail Saturday, and their tribe of family members coming down to Morgantown may be more stressed than either of them.
"I'm going to be sick to my stomach," mother Jayme Nardo said. "I probably will be eating Tums the whole game.
"It's very nerve-wracking," she added, "you just want them all to do good, but you know they can't both come out on top. I really hope it's a defensive game, I hope the defense does all the scoring and that it's a one-point game."
As for father Perry, when having to choose between rooting for WVU or OSU, he is choosing option C.
"I hope Bluffton University plays really well this weekend," Perry said when asked about Saturday. "I'm wearing my Bluffton shirt and my Bluffton ballcap to the game."
"In all seriousness I'm hoping both defenses play really well, and we'll just see how it plays out."