WVU Sports Hall of Fame

Inducted: 2004

Written by Shelly Poe

The late Charley Seabright was a versatile athlete at WVU from 1938-41, earning three letters in football, two in basketball and two in baseball. A native of Wheeling, W.Va., Seabright was an all-state athlete in football, basketball and baseball at Benwood Union High (now John Marshall) before coming to play for the Mountaineers.

Seabright averaged 4.1 points per game and scored 77 career points as a guard in basketball and started at first base in baseball, hitting over .300 for his career. He excelled most at football, where he was a standout quarterback for three years as a Mountaineer. He signed a professional contract with the Cleveland Rams of the NFL in 1941, but left the team to serve in the U.S. Army in World War II from 1942-44, where he saw combat in Germany.

When he returned from the war, he played both offense and defense for the NFL Pittsburgh Steelers from 1946-50 and was a member of the Steelers’ 1947 team that lost a one-game playoff to eventual champion Philadelphia. That team is widely considered to be Pittsburgh’s best squad till the great teams of the 1970s. Seabright was known for being a relentless blocker as a wingback and is also recognized as one of the last two-way players in the NFL before two-platoon football was instituted in the late 1940s.

He was voted to the WVU football all-time team (1940-49) and was awarded with a sportsmanship award by the Charleston Sportsman Club in 1980.

Seabright and his wife, the former Alice Olveski, had four children: Chuck, Jim, Joyce and Charlene. He worked for Valley Machine in Martins Ferry, Ohio, for 28 years as a production manager. Seabright died at the age of 62 in March, 1981, in Wheeling.