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Like all the best sports information directors, Michael Fragale is a man of much knowledge. He knows the seating plan of nearly every collegiate and professional stadium and arena and has postcards of most of them in his desk drawer. He is even more expert on uniforms – if you need to know what year the Cowboys added piping to their pants or when the Lakers went to high socks or when Purdue changed its helmet sticke
r, Michael Fragale is your first call.
Fragale also ranks high in the ‘cool quotient.’ He can hail a cab like no one else, and he discovered fantasy
NASCAR so long ago that Harry Gant was still racing. His performance of ‘YMCA’ on a football road trip at Penn State would still raise eyebrows today (with an encore in front of a shocked North Carolina coaching staff at the 1996 Gator Bowl); and he started his own golf tournament because, well, he always wanted to run a golf tournament and invite all his friends and his picture looks pretty sweet on the logo.
Fragale is as Mountaineer as Jerry West (they share the same birthday) or Country Roads, and after 25 years as a communication professional at West Virginia University, he is as much a fixture on the Morgantown campus as pepperoni rolls or the PRT.
Hard to believe that it almost didn’t happen.
Flemington, W.V., is a town nestled in the mountains of the Tygart Valley. Counting 312 residents in the last
census, its claim to fame is Paul Popovich, a major leaguer with the Cubs, Dodgers and Pirates during the 1960s and 70s. Those years are also when Flemington was in its heyday. By the early 1980s, the pace of life there was slower and the guidance counselor at Flemington High wasn’t sure the Greyhounds’ point guard could keep his head above water at a university of 23,000 students. She advised Fragale he would be more comfortable at a smaller school or even staying home to work in the family store. The metropolis of Morgantown might swallow him alive.
But Fragale was ready to take the risk, so he politely – Fragale never does anything discourteously – disagreed. He grew a mustache, gassed up his red Mercury Cougar, and set out for the state’s university to meet his fate head-on.
Enrolled in WVU’s exacting journalism curriculum, he soon gained recognition through his column in the student newspaper,
Fragale Force. Following graduation, he was one of the earliest distinguished products of the sports management graduate program. And in the midst of those academic endeavors, he landed a student worker position in sports information and found his life’s calling.
“I’ve been in the SID profession for almost 25 years and Michael Fragale is one of my mentors in the business,”
Mike Montoro, the Mountaineers’ football SID, says. “As one of the top college sports PR professionals in the nation, his work ethic is unquestioned, as well as his commitment to West Virginia University and its athletics department. His ability to think quickly and accurately, especially in crisis situations, is outstanding. He is the backbone of the WVU Sports Communications Office.”
Bryan Messerly, WVU’s basketball publicist, added, “Michael is truly one of the nicest and one of the most respected communications professionals in all of college athletics. I’ve known Michael for 23 years and I have never heard anyone -- a coach, a staff member, a student-athlete, a fan or a member of the media – say anything negative about him. His love for the university and his job are bo
th evident on a daily basis.”
West Virginia University is something Fragale loves. He loves his wife Kate, the daughter of a professor who was
a longtime member of the WVU stat crew, and he loves his children Anthony and Emme, even though they can be as ornery as they are cute.
Fragale loves his older brother and sister and their sons like the Italian family they are, but next on the list, he loves the Mountaineers.
“One thing about Michael is that he has always had a passion for what he does. From year one through year 25, he has maintained that passion,” Mike Parsons, longtime athletic administrator, says about his friend. “He truly cares about the people, student-athletes, coaches and the perception of the university. He takes it personally.”
“I can recall clearly the excitement that Michael brought to his work in our sports communications office at WVU when he started,” remembers Liberty University’s Kevin Keys, who first worked with Fragale in 1985. “One of the best things I can say about him is that he brings that same enthusiasm 25 years later each and every day. Michael is a tremendous talent and one of my best friends in our business. Michael has always cared greatly about the people in his life and gone out of his way to make others’ lives better.”
A superb public relations practitioner whose hero is the great communicator Ronald Reagan, his record goes far beyond stats and spin. Fragale is the sort of co-worker who will organize a great staff dinner on Friday night of a football trip, and then top it the next week and the next and the next. He’s the sort of friend who will break into your ex-boyfriend’s unlocked pickup truck to retrieve an item you want back and keep quiet about it for 20 years. He is the role model who can tell you definitively if cuffs or pleats on pants are in or out of style this season, and he is sophisticated enough to find the best bottle of champagne in Manhattan for a special occasion without breaking the bank.
According to no less of an expert than John Antonik, WVU’s web guru, “Michael is our own version of Angie’s List; he has advice for everything. If you need a painter, you ask Michael. If you need new tires, you ask Michael. If your belt doesn’t match your shoes, Michael will tell you how to make it work.
“He is true to the people and knows how to deal with them, whether they are friendly or whether they are difficult. Dealing with people is a gift and he has it, and he always does it in the nicest possible way. He does not make waves.”
Once, while traveling to a fundraising banquet with WVU’s all-time winningest football and basketball coaches, Fragale was asked to take the wheel for a spell. He declined. “I’m sorry, Coach Nehlen and Coach Catlett,” he told them, “but there are just too many wins in this car and I’d just be too nervous driving.” That courtesy has become Fragale’s calling card.
Administrative assistant extraordinaire Lisa Ammons knows it well. “It is very important to him that all members of the staff be treated with respect. When I first came to athletics, he overheard a conversation I was having with a media type on the phone. After I hung up, he asked me about it – I told him the guy was rude to me – and he called them back – it was not pretty!
“Last week (24 years later), he overheard a conversation in the office. The other staff member was loud but it was all in fun. Michael asked me if he was rude to me – I said no. Michael continues to watch out for me and for all of us.”
Starting as a student worker assisting with all of WVU’s varsity sports, Fragale climbed the ladder, working with women’s basketball and gymnastics and men’s basketball and football and helping man
age the broadcast networks that brought the Mountaineers into so many homes throughout the Mountain State. He’s been to the Final Four, the football national championship, the Waldorf-Astoria, the Greenbrier, the Palestra, Madison Square Garden, the Orange Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl and a million memorable venues along the way. And he has actively encouraged others to try the career that has brought him so much satisfaction.
Joe Swan, WVU’s publications director, recalls, “I first met Michael in the spring of 1993. I was beginning my last year of college and had stopped by the office to inquire about potential job openings for the summer or fall. While giving his trademark wave of the finger, he told me that the process for selecting student assistants in the office was just getting underway and encouraged me to apply. He gave me the particulars and wished me luck. Little did I know that meeting would lead to a career in sports that now is in its second decade. I’m thankful to have had the opportunity to work with somebody like him, and he has served many roles for me – mentor, co-worker, confidant, and most importantly, friend.”
“I truly believe that every day when Michael is driving in to work, he is thinking, `How can I make WVU better today?’ To do that every day for 25 years – that’s quite an accomplishment,” Antonik marvels.
All icons have a few trademarks; the most profound Fragale adage is sterling and succinct: “Never underappreciate a win over Pitt.”
But the most lasting may be the advice that he has given to student workers. On Friday afternoons in the press box stuffing folders, as a grad student, he would tell them, “It’s really very simple and there are only two rules. Rule number one: Don’t be an ass. Rule number two: always remember rule number one and don’t be an ass.”
For 25 years, no one has held truer to that than Michael Fragale.