To say that Daniel "Danny" Buggs was a good football player at West Virginia University is almost missing the point.

Sure Buggs was an exciting player in the early 1970s before embarking upon a 10-year professional career in three different leagues.

However, football merely provided Buggs a means for doing his life's work, which he came to realize during his four-year stay in "Almost Heaven."

It was on April 16, 1974, that he decided to give his life to God. It wasn't a casual decision either. That commitment has impacted every decision Buggs has made since that day. He also believes his faith led to his premature departure from the NFL. More on that later.

Daniel Buggs (as he prefers to be called) was one of the first big-time football recruits lured to West Virginia by Bobby Bowden.

"He took his shoes off in our house and my mother just fell in love with him," Buggs remembered of Bowden.

Bowden discovered Buggs almost by accident. A Samford College classmate of Bowden, Crawford Kennedy, was seeking a college scholarship for a senior defensive back. So he mailed game films for Bowden to watch.

While perusing the film, Bowden concluded that the player wasn't good enough to play at West Virginia, but there was one player who stood out, literally. That player turned out to be Buggs, who was the only black gridder on the Avondale High School team.

Buggs, part of the great American high school integration experiment of the late 1960s and early 1970s, turned out to be just a junior. So Bowden kept in regular communication with him and convinced the lanky 17-year-old to sign a scholarship to play football at West Virginia University.

"They threw the ball about sixty times a game and I said this is where I'm going," Buggs said.

He had offers from Florida State, Clemson and Arizona State even though it was apparent that he wouldn't be eligible to play his first season because of low grades.

The flanker can still remember his first trip to Morgantown.

"When I had to get into the prop plane in Pittsburgh and I could see the ground and the thing was hitting all kinds of air pockets, I said 'God if you get me out of this don't worry about me coming back,'" he remembered.

Unbeknownst to Buggs, the beginnings of his Christian conversion probably began on that plane ride from Pittsburgh to Morgantown.

Buggs spent the 1971 season watching from the sidelines. What he witnessed was a wide-open offense that scored at least 20 points in seven games. Bernie Galiffa tossed eight touchdown passes to a receiver corps that included Harry "Snake" Blake, Nate Stephens, Bernie Kirchner and Chris Potts.

A year later, Buggs and a sure-handed sophomore from Morristown, Tenn., named Marshall Mills teamed up to give West Virginia one of the best pass-catching tandems in the nation.

Three games into his West Virginia career, the 6-foot-3, 180-pounder had his first 100-yard receiving performance against Virginia and followed that up two weeks later with a magnificent all-around effort against William & Mary at Mountaineer Field.

Buggs caught six passes for 140 yards and two touchdowns, and added another 100 yards on the ground with an additional TD. It was the first known time in WVU history that a player gained 100 yards both rushing and receiving in the same game. One of the men in charge of tackling Buggs that October afternoon was former West Virginia defensive coordinator Phil Elmassian, who was a senior cornerback for the Tribe.

"I was responsible for the one he scored on the reverse, not the two passes," the veteran coach is quick to point out. "I just saw the back of him."

Elmassian has a vivid recollection of those Bowden-coached West Virginia teams of the early 1970s, and claims they were very similar to Bowden’s Florida State teams of today, minus the big people up front.

"West Virginia had some skill players now," Elmassian said. "At the time they were considered the second fastest team in the country behind Arizona State. Danny Buggs, Marshall Mills, Snake Blake, Kerry Marbury, Artie Owens … those guys could play."

"Bowden once told me he wasn’t sure about his football team, but he was certain we were going to have some great relays in the spring," former track coach Stan Romanoski recalled. "Even then Bobby loved speed on his football teams."

By midseason, Buggs had added full-time punt return duties to his resume, and returned one 95 yards for a touchdown against Tulane. He caught seven passes for 126 yards against Penn State, and snared five against Pitt a week later for 115 yards in a 38-20 Mountaineer win.

The game that best represented his enormous talents came against VMI late in the '72 season. In that contest, Buggs scored three different ways to help West Virginia defeat the Cadets, 50-24. He scored once on a long pass from Galiffa, took another one to the end zone on a flanker reverse, and scored his final TD on a long punt return.

He finished the VMI game with 164 all-purpose yards.

In the regular season finale against Coach Ben Schartzwalder's Syracuse team, Buggs was at it again. He scored once on a 77-yard pass from Galiffa, and took two more to the end zone on reverses. One went 80 yards right in front of Schwartzwalder along the Syracuse sidelines.

"Buggs is just amazing," the coach remarked after the game. "He delays just long enough on those reverses to set up those peel-back blocks. And then he gets one-on-one on you and what chance does a defensive back have with his moves?"

Once the 1972 season was complete after an unsuccessful appearance in the Peach Bowl against North Carolina State, Buggs had accumulated 1,355 all-purpose yards and 14 total touchdowns. He averaged of 22.3 yards per catch and scored once every five times he touched the football.

He was named the ECAC sophomore of the year and was picked by The Sporting News columnist Artie Burdick as the nation's co-rookie of the year along with USC's Anthony Davis.

"Bobby found ways to get Buggs the football," recalled retired Wheeling Intelligencer sports editor Doug Huff.

The legend of Danny Buggs in West Virginia had begun.

In the spring of 1973, Buggs was excused from spring football practice to run on Stan Romanoski's track team.

"Probably to get out of spring practice," Romanoski laughed.

Buggs was a prolific high school track standout who scored 30 points at the Georgia state meet in 1970, setting records in the 100-yard dash (9.7), 220-yard dash (21.6), 440-yard dash (47.6) and long jump (22' 3").

In 1971 as a freshman, Buggs was reported to have set a national intramural record by running a time of 9.55 in the 100-yard dash.

West Virginia athletic director Red Brown didn't inform Romanoski of Buggs' academic status and the coach didn't realize a sprinter of his magnitude was on the WVU campus. During one track meet in Pittsburgh, Buggs entered the race unattached and wound up winning the 100-yard dash in sneakers.

"I had no idea Buggs was from West Virginia until one of the opposing coaches came up and told me," Romanoski recalled.

By the winter of 1973, Buggs was wearing a WVU track uniform and qualified for NCAAs in the 60-yard dash with a time of 6.1 posted at the VMI relays. Buggs won his heat at NCAAs in Detroit, but didn't advance to the finals.

He also was the anchor of the mile relay that won at Ohio State. Once during a drive back to his hotel room at Penn Relays, Romanoski offered a ride to a track coach at a prominent southern school.

When Romanoski identified himself as the head coach at West Virginia University, his passenger interrupted him, "you've got Danny Buggs, don't you? He's the top quartermiler in the country!"

Buggs always used track as a way to improve his football skills. Romanoski harbors the opinion that if Buggs were serious about the sport, he could have been a world class sprinter.

"Oh yeah, I think that was possible," the coach said.

Buggs won the Ray McCoy Award as the West Virginia track athlete of the year for 1972, even though he didn't run competitively for WVU. Two weeks after the announcement, pollsters discovered their predicament. Buggs captured the award in 1973, too.

***

West Virginia's publicity machine was churning out a healthy dose of Danny Buggs literature for the 1973 season. Although his picture didn't appear on the cover of the football press guide, his full-page biography led off the player's section -- a rarity in those days.

He was also a member of the prestigious Playboy preseason All-American team that included Pitt running back Tony Dorsett, Miami offensive lineman Dennis Harrah and preseason coach of the year Barry Switzer.

Sports writers compared him to Nebraska Heisman trophy winner Johnny Rodgers. It was during this time that Buggs acquired the catchy nickname "Lightning."

"I used it in a story that I wrote for The Sporting News," Huff said. "I found out later that he didn't care for it."

Buggs, indeed, didn't like the nickname. His reasoning was simple: "Do you remember the Amos and Andy show?" he asked. "Well all of the black people had nicknames. I didn't want any part of that."

This was a period of heavy Afro-centric thinking in his life. As a social work major, Buggs was becoming more interested in the human condition, particularly his own race.

He had heard the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. when he was a boy growing up in Scottsdale, Ga., outside of Atlanta, and he took notice of Malcolm X during his rise in the Nation of Islam.

But it wasn't until college that Buggs became acquainted with the teachings of Marcus Garvey and Frederick Douglass.

Garvey helped improve the condition of blacks in Jamaica in the early 1900s and founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association. By 1921, Garvey was the unquestioned leader of the largest organization of this type in the world. Today, Garvey is considered the father of Jamaican independence.

Douglass, meanwhile, was one of the most influential African-Americans of the 1800s. Born a slave, Douglass became a noted reformer, author, orator and advisor to President Abraham Lincoln in the mid-1860s. It was Douglass who helped Lincoln understand the plight of the slaves and turn their condition into a moral issue. Later in life, Douglass served as minister to Haiti from 1889-1891.

Daniel Buggs the man was evolving. His football career was taking a different course, however.

Galiffa graduated following the '72 season and West Virginia didn't have a comparable quarterback waiting in the wings. The job was a toss-up between Navy transfer Ade Dillon, Chuck Fiorante and Ben Williams.

Some went as far as calling Fiorante "the next Joe Namath" until they actually watched him play. The only thing the handsome, dark-haired New Castle, Pa., native wound up having in common with Namath was that they both hailed from the Pittsburgh area.

The three-headed quarterback Bowden created was unable to get Buggs the football like Galiffa did in 1972.

Therefore, Bowden had to come up with new ways of getting Buggs into the offense. Sometimes the opposing coach helped as well.

In the '73 opener against Maryland, the two teams were about ready to wind up a 13-all nose bleeder of a game. The defense dominated throughout, and most of the points were scored as a result of poor offensive execution.

West Virginia forced Maryland into a fourth and long deep in their own territory with just 36 seconds left on the clock. Maryland's Jerry Claiborne coached by the book, and the book said punt the football and run out the clock.

So he ordered his punter Phil Wagenheim to drill one down the field.

On the other sideline was Bowden, who often didn't coach by the book. In the back of his mind he was hoping Buggs could get the football to midfield, though he was almost certain Claiborne wouldn’t punt it to Buggs.

Sure enough, the football went arching toward the flanker, who had just one catch for 17 yards and one carry for minus eight yards to his name up to that point.

He took the football at his own 31 with six of the enemy barreling down on him. Buggs set sail to his left, was boxed in after a couple of steps and retreated to his right. After the 180-degree turn, he found an alley and zipped up the right sideline!

He swerved back to the middle of the field and was gone. Buggs was still distancing himself from Maryland defenders when he was high stepping across the goal line 69 yards later. The return spanned 85 yards (including the distance he gave way) and took 24 seconds to complete.

West Virginia won the game 20-13. That return alone permanently etched Danny Buggs into the minds of Mountaineer football fans forever.

"I didn't think he knew who I was," Buggs offered. "I'm glad he punted the football to me, though."

There was the six-catch, 151-yard day against Illinois, a school-record 96-yard TD catch against Penn State, and a 111-yard effort against Boston College, but his numbers were down from 1972. Buggs finished the season with 901 all-purpose yards and just 27 receptions.

His numbers continued to decline in 1974.

The Buggs-for-All-America promotional material hit its apex during his senior campaign, when he was featured on the cover of the press guide along with Bowden at Cooper's Rock. Buggs was outfitted in a black pinstripe suit with white platform shoes.

Bobby wore blue pinstriped trousers with a gold jacket, white shirt and solid navy tie. He had on white wing-tipped shoes that looked similar to the ones cousin Eddie presented Clark Griswold in the first Vacation movie.

That cover shot represented the beginning of ominous things to come.

The quarterbacking problems were still evident in 1974, though West Virginia returned a large number of veteran players. Making things more difficult was Bowden's proclamation during the spring banquet tour that West Virginia was going to be a much better football team in 1974.

That theory was put to rest in the season opener when Richmond stunned the Mountaineers, 29-25 in Morgantown. Two weeks later West Virginia lost at Tulane and dropped decisions to Miami, Fla., Pitt, Penn State, Boston College and Temple. The seven losses were the most in 14 years.

West Virginia fans hung Bowden in effigy and placed "for sale" signs in his yard.

Buggs was encountering his own problems. He had an injured thigh that didn't heal all season and had a tough time getting his hands on the football.

"We really didn't have a quarterback that could get me the ball in '74," Buggs recalled.

He had just 24 receptions for 381 yards and two touchdowns and finished his career with 1,796 receiving yards and 15 touchdowns. His 20.9 career yards-per-catch average is still the best in school history. Despite being academically ineligible his first season, Buggs managed to earn his college degree in social work in four years.

***

Following the Hula Bowl, where he caught a 47-yard TD pass, Buggs was the 62^nd player taken in the third round of the 1975 football draft by the New York Giants.

His career never took off in New York and after two seasons was claimed off waivers by the Washington Redskins.

He caught 26 passes for 341 yards and a touchdown in 1977, and followed that up with a 36-catch, 575-yard campaign in '78. He caught a 63-yard bomb on the first play of the season and finished the opener with two touchdowns.

His best campaign with the Redskins came in 1979, when he led the team with 46 receptions for 631 yards.

Shortly thereafter Buggs got into a disagreement with Redskins general manager Bobby Beathard about his religious convictions, and was soon traded to Tampa Bay for cornerback Jeris White.

That proved to be the beginning of the end of his career as an NFL wide receiver.

"Bobby Beathard was the kind of guy who didn't think you could be a Christian and be aggressive on the football field," Buggs noted. "Then I pointed out to him that the defensive leader Ken Houston was a Christian. Mark Mosely, your top kicker was a Christian. I'm your leading receiver and I'm a Christian. Monty Coleman was a Christian. I told him this was bogus and I'm not going to compromise to be recognized."

Buggs went to Tampa Bay, which was coming off an NFC championship appearance against Los Angeles the year before. He was released before the start of the season, beginning his professional odyssey.

From 1980 until the creation of the United States Football League in 1983, Buggs was signed and waived by four different teams in two different leagues.

He did manage to play on Edmonton's Grey Cup team in 1980, catching 11 passes for 134 yards and three touchdowns.

"Buggs was built like Randy Moss, but I think he was more of a track guy made into a football player," Huff mentioned.

Buggs latched on with the Tampa Bay Bandits of the USFL in 1982 and became the second leading receiver in the USFL in 1983. All told, he caught 76 passes for 1,146 yards and five touchdowns for the Bandits. He was named to the all-USFL team.

In December of 1983, he was traded to San Antonio for two draft picks and played one more professional season with the Gunslingers. His professional football career was over by 1984 at age 31.

It was about that time that Buggs, now living in Decatur, Ga., began to devote his life full-time to helping others.

"That was my mission, even when I was in school," Buggs said. "I'm a servant of the people."

Buggs exchanged his feet and hands for his mind and mouth. It took on a personal meaning in 1990 when his son Jamal wanted him to come to the school and talk to his fifth-grade class. Buggs' message was about living together and loving your brother.

After a series of talks, Buggs challenged his son and some friends to go out and start a group of kids who shared the same beliefs.

"Each one reach one was our philosophy," Buggs said.

The group started as the "Brothers 5" and grew into the "Winning Circle."

The mantra of the organization is to instill in the youth of today the goals of self-knowledge, knowledge of the world, self-discipline and self-motivation.

The "Winning Circle" is now 3,000 members strong and for his efforts, Buggs was named the 1997 "Scroll of Courage Winner."

Buggs, inducted into the West Virginia University Sports Hall of Fame in 1997, has been recognized by other organizations, including a citation from Mother Theresa. He makes a living speaking to others, but his life centers on the five children he's managed to raise.

Four of them are in college and a fifth is on the way. He proudly recites each of their academic accomplishments.

"Tameka is at Alabama-Birmingham and Jamal is at Carson-Newman playing football," he began. "Tiara is at Georgia Southern and Alisha is at Florida A&M. My youngest, Maurice, will be a freshman at Tennessee."

Buggs, now 48, is also a grandfather for the first time. Jamal and his wife have a 15-month-old daughter named Jahara.

"Just watching my kids grow up has been very rewarding for me," Buggs said.

It is evident that Daniel Buggs was more than just a good football player. He used his extraordinary athletic talents as a means to get an education. In turn, he used that education to help others.

Wasn't it Malcolm X who said an education is your "passport to the future?"

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