Litany of the Litigious

So, the esteemed Coach Rod thinks this list of items is worth screwing his employer over, to say nothing of the players and others:

• Allowing players to keep textbooks for resale, a practice that occurs at some other schools.

Just because some schools, likely schools that either have no money for their student athletes or schools that run close to breaking the NCAA regulations about how student athletes get the money they have, allow this doesn’t mean it should be the case at WVU. Also, can you spell small potatoes?

• Waiving a $5 charge for high school coaches to attend Mountaineers games.

I understand this as a public relations issue, but come on. Give them five dollars, Rich. We know you’re good for it. Lame.

• Having authority over distribution of sideline passes. Kendrick said Rodriguez “negotiated” one for his wife, Rita.

Unless there’s someone on his staff who can’t get on the sidelines, shut the fuck up. This is so stupid, it begs the question: was there anything that Rich was truly unhappy with?

• Having authority to allocate funds from the 1100 Club for coaches.

It may have been negotiated, but to me, I’m not entirely sure I want the head coach in charge of this. It’s kind of off the beaten path of things that should be on the head football coach’s mind, isn’t it?

• A committment to increase pay for his assistant coaches.

My read of this is that the pay for this assistant coaches was raised, but they may not have received negotiated bonuses yet. This is the first comment that’s worth being pissed with the athletic department. But, it’s also not entirely clear that this issue is unresolved. We’ll have to wait and see.

• Additional money to pay graduate assistants.

How much money does he want? This is the kind of thing that can be abused, and while I understand why the department would make the promise, I also understand how they might want to drag their feet. Who decides who’s the graduate assistant? Coach? Or the payroll department? This might have been a bad promise to make by the administration.

• Hiring an additional recruiting assistant

I can understand being ticked that the position isn’t yet filled. Likely, Rodriguez had someone in mind, and when the athletic department balked, he never suggested anyone else. I’m just guessing, but…

So, that’s two legitimate complaints, none, in my mind, worthy of the subterfuge and slinking around that Rodriguez engaged in.
Still, there’s discussion that the women’s soccer coach is also leaving for Michigan. It does beg the question: is there something rotten in Denmark? Or, has Rodriguez pitted employee versus employer?
The Athletic Department is more successful overall than it has EVER been. So, where’s the crime? Is it the athletic department, or is it the bigger egos going a little money crazy?

I don’t know.
All I know is this: If the list above is what Coach Rod intends to use as his cause for getting out of paying his buyout, I’d let the fucker take me to court, because I’m going to win, if I’m West Virginia University.

Also, if I’m WVU, I’m shrieking about Rodriguez stealing the nation’s top QB recruit, and charging him $5M for that.

But, I’m bitter, and I can be vindictive when I’m bitter.

Don’t Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out

An Open Letter to Coach Rodriguez:

Fuck you.

Yeah, that’s right. You brought WVU to the brink. You had Mountaineer fans everywhere proud to be Mountaineer fans again. You brought us two or three of the greatest athletes ever to take the gridiron for WVU in Patrick White, Steve Slaton, and Noel Devine. You made an unorthodox offense regularly referred to by ESPN as “unstoppable.” And, it almost was. We were sixty minutes from playing for the national championship, however mythical such a designation may be.

But, my beloved Mountaineers won’t play for a national title this year. And it’s your fault.
All. Your. Fault.

And I’m not saying this out of bitterness. Let’s face facts: why did WVU lose to South Florida earlier this year? Or last year? Why did WVU lose to Louisville last year? Why, indeed?

Because you lose focus. You lost focus on the important things going into the game against Pitt? Your game plan was uninspired. So you started Devine over Slaton, so what? That move had been crying out to be made for months. Slaton has been taking it easy, waiting for the NFL draft almost all season long. But, did you ever going to a more downfield passing game once Jarrett Brown entered the game? No. Did you consider insisting that Jarrett run? No. You sat there, wondering what happened to your tickets to New Orleans.
Sure, Pat was gone. But, Jarrett’s won for us before. Hell, he nearly pulled it out against the Bulls earlier this year, and performed very well last season against Rutgers. Was he ready to play Pitt? It didn’t appear that he was. Worse, it didn’t appear you were prepared to go to him.

But, let’s get beyond the Xs and Os. Let’s talk motivation. How motivated were the Mountaineers? So motivated that they didn’t do anything for most of two quarters. They read the papers, and believed everything they read: “favored by 28 points,” “the only question is how long will White need to play,” “Backyard Maul.” And then Wannstedt, who, let’s face it, is a marginal coach at best, got his guys ready to play. He used every headline that was printed relating to the game as motivation.

Sure, it’s easier to get motivated when no expects you to arrive on the field. But, when you’ve got a national title chance on the line, shouldn’t that be motivation? Clearly, it wasn’t. For them or for you. You didn’t coach them. And they didn’t play.

I wandered around the net earlier, and found this gem about what the greatest coach in West Virginia history did in preparing to play the 1982 Oklahoma Sooners. And I couldn’t help wondering if your knowing that there was no way you could coach your team up to play the 2007 Oklahoma Sooners was motivation enough for you to run to Ann Arbor. You couldn’t get them ready for a shit team like Pitt, so how could you be expected to stand up to the Sooners. That’s what I see.

I don’t care about the truth today.

Today, I have only two words for you.
And they aren’t good luck.

Indeed, I’ll repeat:

Fuck. You.

Top 25, Week Three

Nobody knows nothin’

So, this week as I glance at the Top 25 rankings for week three, I’m bothered by several things.

First, why has WVU won, handily, for the second straight week on the road, and dropped a spot for the second straight week?

Why, indeed? The voters are just plain fucking idiots.

Most of the time, I’m going to try to temper my contempt and loathing for “experts” and “coaches,” but not this week. This week, I’m going to “work blue,” and call them all fucking morons, because that’s what they’ve proven themselves to be.

Both the AP and USA Today polls are of a consensus mind about the top five:

1. Southern Cal
2. Louisiana State
3. Florida
4. Oklahoma
5. West Virginia

The AP is giving only USC and LSU number one votes, with one voter changed between this week and last, shifting his/her vote back to Southern Cal after the Trojans went to Lincoln and toyed with the Huskers.

The “Coaches” are slightly more unsure of who the best team is, splitting number one votes among the top four teams. The Gators garnered only one such vote, which is obviously one vote too many.

I suggest that while resituating one’s top five or ten or twenty-five is certainly an acceptable practice, I implore to know just what it is that WVU has shown to merit losing two spots in one poll and one spot in the other. Please. I beg to know.

Horse hockey

I’m sure most voters will submit the standard horseshit lines that idiots use to demerit the Mountaineers:

• Shaky defense.

• Bad opponents.

• Ummm… Pat White doesn’t throw enough.

• They don’t know the difference between West Virginia and western Virginia.

I answer those criticisms thusly:

• Yes, the defense has been shaky. But, they overpowered the Maryland offense after the first quarter. Sometimes, they overpowered them to an embarrassing degree. Maryland’s offense isn’t very good, sure. But, they were home, they have a good coach, and had a very supportive audience. And WVU’s defense bottled them up pretty well, upon opting to pressure the QB. This is a criticism of which I’m aware, and accepting of. But, does it matter? Aside from LSU, is anyone else’s defense not shaky?

• It’s true. The combined record of WVU’s three opponents to date is 2-7. Let’s glance at the top four combined opponent records, though, shall we?

Southern Cal’s opponents (2): 3-3

Louisiana State’s opponents (3): 4-5

Florida’s opponents (3): 4-5*

Oklahoma’s opponents (3): 2-6

I suppose we credit USC for traveling to Lincoln and handing the Huskers their first loss.

They are good. Very good. I don’t fully buy into JD Booty, yet, but whatever.

LSU has played one medium quality opponent (Virginia Tech), one mediocre to bad opponent (Mississippi State), and one atrocious one (Middle Tennessee State). They’re clearly a very good team, so, whatever.

Florida’s opponents earned an asterisk so that I remembered to make this point: Their opponent record should be 3-5. Western Kentucky dug really deep to find an opponent to ease the whipping they knew Florida would put on them. They beat West Virginia Tech 87-0. WVTech isn’t Div I-A. Or Div-I-AA. Or Division II. Or Div III. No, WV Tech isn’t even in the NCAA, in fact. They are an NAIA program. Give that Western Kentucky’s only other win is over a Div I-AA team, and well… maybe they shouldn’t count any of WKU’s record. Anyway, Florida hasn’t played a legit opponent yet, either, is my point. (Tennessee’s lone victory to this point came against Southern Miss.)

Oklahoma’s opponents have been North Texas (Sun Belt), Miami (ACC) and Utah State (Sun Belt). Tough opponents, to be sure.

Oh, and OU, Florida and LSU have yet to leave their home towns.

Of the top five teams, only USC and WVU have been on the road. And only WVU has been twice on the road.

It matters because it matters. If the Gators lose on the road to LSU, they’ll blame it on being on the road. But, come on. Maybe if they’d played anyone at all before that game, anywhere but in their own sandlot, well… they might have some sympathy. Not from me, but from somebody.

• Pat White was actually not very good against Maryland. He didn’t seem to read the defense very well, and made several bad choices on option plays, giving when he should have kept, throwing when he should have run, running when he should have given. Despite it all, I’ll take him over Booty every day but Sunday, over Flynn every day, over Bradford every day, and over Tebow every time he has seven days of preparation.

• While I’m mostly sure that voters actually don’t know the difference between West Virginia and western Virginia, I’m hoping it has no effect on their vote, ’cause there isn’t anything that can be done about the failure of geography education. (For these people, that is.)

My Top Five

1. Southern Cal
2. Louisiana State
3. West Virginia
4. Florida
5. Oklahoma

Penn State, Boston College, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Oregon, Rutgers, and Texas are still alive. Of this group, though, only Ohio State, Penn State, Rutgers and Oregon, as I see it, can make a run at the top five.

The Big East Takes Hits

Last week, only the Orange in Syracuse had losses that counted against the Big East. Unfortunately, Pitt and Louisville both went on the road and lost games.

The Cardinals will lose four games

The Cardinals have no defense at all. Letting a guy run completely free in the game’s waning seconds is absolutely ridiculous. Just ridiculous. I predict that going forward, they’ll lose to WVU, Rutgers, and South Florida. They could lose to Cincinnati, too, but it’s hard to see the Bearcats scoring enough to keep up. Not impossible, but difficult to see.

The AP College Football Voters are MORONS

I didn’t comment on this last week because I didn’t care enough, but this week, I care.

After Appalachian (that “a” after the “l” is pronounced as in ass, not as in ace) State shocked the world on opening Saturday, the AP saw fit to change its rules and allow voters to give votes to Division I-AA. Okay, that’s dumb. I see wanting to give Appalachian State its due that one week, but let’s not go overboard, shall we?

Oh, but we shall. Because the AP are mo-rons. Appalachian State continues to get Top 25 votes. Does anyone know what the ASU Mountaineers have done since shocking Michigan? They followed the Michigan game by beating up a Division II opponent. And they traveled out west and beat Northern Arizona (who isn’t bad, actually). But, did anyone who keeps voting for them even know that. Had they heard of Lenoir-Rhyne? Do they know anything of L-R? No, likely not.

But, they continue to vote for ASU based on the weight of a single fucking game. Ri-fucking-diculous. Show your respect one week, even give them a #1 ranking. And then stop. Because there’s a Division I-AA Top 25 poll that’s voted upon by people who actually follow that division.

Ranting on Rutgers

 

Fuck you, Navy.

 These are the words of the Rutgers University student fans to their opponent this past Friday.On Tuesday, September 11th, Mark Di Ionno wrote a story for the {where} Star Ledger about the thin-skin complaints of Navy fans, family and staff.On Wednesday, September 12th, SI.com’s Stewart Mandel reiterated Di Ionno’s complaints, and went on to blame the “classless” behavior on Rutgers’ newly acquired status as a winner and a potential conference powerhouse. He reasoned that Rutgers had some growing up to do on the being a winner front, and this behavior was somehow directly related to folks actually, for the first time in generations, expecting Rutgers to win games.I really like Mandel. I usually find him lucid, reasoned, and right. But, here, he’s woefully, inconceivably wrong. Pick Michigan to win by 70 over Oregon wrong. Here’s where he gets it most wrong: 

My guess is a lot of these kids grew up going to nearby Eagles, Jets or Giants games, where booing and obscenity is par for the course. That’s not cool in college football, however, where the participants are not multimillion-dollar professionals. 

I have to believe that there’s a generational divide at work here, and one that I would expect Mandel to be at least moderately accepting of, if not apologetic for. In the last forty years, our humor has grown more crass. Our violence has become bloodier. Our college sports have become more professional. And our yearning for meaningless titles has become unbounded. And as it has become more acceptable to behave like a moron at one level, it has become more acceptable to behave like a moron at any level.We disparage the baseball parents who hoot and holler at the umpires on local television, and we rightly adjudicate the hockey dads who try to kill each other after matches. But, have we done anything but lust for a number one ranking for our children, our towns, our universities, our professional teams, our country? Even our religion? 

Fuck you, Mandel.

 No.Sports generally have become a place in which our everyday lack of social graces has become manifest, and accepted. It is the one place in our everyday lives where truly making asses of ourselves has come to be celebrated.This is no less true in college football than anywhere else, and it’s completely ridiculous to suggest that because college athletes aren’t being paid, especially college football and basketball players, they can’t be booed. Is it cold and heartless? Hell, I’m not even sure of that. It’s rude. But, it’s rude to cut someone off when you’re driving, and I don’t see any more or less of that depending on who’s driving and riding on the highway.I don’t know about Mandel, but when I attend a sporting event, I pay my way. And while there are acceptable levels of bad behavior while attending a sporting event, booing and chanting obscenities, in my opinion, is very much my right. Clearly, I can’t go overboard. Crossing the line with racial or religious epithets (Fuck you, {nigger/jew}), making beyond the pale threats (I’m going to rape your mother’s dog while my friends murder your children by hanging them from their genitals), throwing anything (even popcorn or peanuts) should get me expelled from the game. I know this because by paying the fee for the ticket, I’ve signed a contract of acceptable behavior. I know this because these things feel wrong, in the moment and afterward. (Though pegging that Yankees fan three rows in front of me with a big wad of chewed up peanuts would feel pretty good for a few seconds.)Screaming “fuck” at the top of my lungs doesn’t strike me as offensive. Some of the reason for that, I recognize, is that I’ve lived most of my life using the word in pretty much whatever mode of communication I wished to. Today, “fuck” isn’t so much an obscenity as it is a curse. The weight of the word “fuck” is very much down there with the word “damn,” give or take a couple channels on the television dial. Sure, it sounds a little harsher, but only because our ears have become so sensitized to the word “damn” that we’ve had to adopt a new sense of offensive.And that’s part of the problem. We are more crass. We are worse when drunk. And, in a crowd, we’ve completely lost control.It may be stupid. It might even be an excuse. But, there’s no denying that it’s a fact of sports in our lives. Until we get over the obsession with being number one, and the fascination with demeaning everyone who isn’t on par with us, this is the kind of downward spiral sports fans are on. Everywhere. It’s nothing to do with Rutgers. At all.And there’s no line, written or unwritten, to keep this type of behavior from traversing all of our sporting events, in time. If it offends your sensibilities, feel free to try to change the behavior. (Reversing this national trend, especially in a segment of the nation where this type of behavior is fairly average and everyday, is quixotic. Almost as quixotic as fighting the inevitable college football playoff system.) You’re better off, though, either refusing to attend, growing thicker skin, or accepting a certain amount of asinine behavior.If you think I shouldn’t have been shouting at the kid who ran down the sidelines during an eighth grade football team after he had been tackled and kept from scoring on my team, well… you are a better person than I. Or I care more than you do. Or something. 

Fuck you, Di Ionno

 Where Mandel is wrong in telling us that college athletes shouldn’t have to put up with the stress of being booed or cursed, Di Ionno is wrong in telling us that the service academy football squads should be afforded some special status on the football field simply because their players may or may not leave the nation to oversee a combat zone. 

But you’d hope our Jersey kids would be smart enough to make an exception for the service academies, especially the weekend before the anniversary of Sept. 11, their generation’s own Day of Infamy. You’d hope they’d be sensitive enough to realize that some of those Midshipmen may soon be among the young American men and women fighting and bleeding and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

And he quotes some doofus verbalizing this sentiment: 

“This is how you treat people who may die for this country?” said Bill Squires, an Annapolis graduate (Class of’75) who was on the sidelines for the Friday night game in Piscataway and was shocked by the obscene chants directed at the Navy players and fans throughout the game. “It was the most classless thing I’ve seen.” 

If this was truly the most classless thing this guy, Squires, has ever seen, I wonder if he’s ever watched a football game on TV. Far more classless is the chest-beating and tribal dancing that follows a touchdown or sack, nevermind the level. Professional, semi-pro, college and high school alike, the celebration routines run classless through its paces much more thoroughly than shouting “Fuck you, Navy.”But, there’s another part of their sentiment that really gets my goat. More than being offended by the words used, they seem to think Navy (and Army and Air Force) is a special opponent. Undermanned, undersized, and underpaid, Navy is just another football squad. What happens to the members of the football team after they leave the field is so very much not a concern to Navy’s opponents that it is irrelevant.That’s right. Irrelevant. Today, they’re playing football. If they’re lucky, they’ll blow out a knee and never play football again. Their military future will be behind a desk. But, wait! These are Navy midshipmen. With the exception of getting to spend time on a boat, which has its own inherent risks, these Naval and Marines officers-in-training are almost certain never to be under fire in a combat zone.Graduates of the academies attend these academies to learn the theories of combat, the history of ammunition, the strategies of Global Thermonuclear War. They move pieces around on a map of the world, like a chessboard, and then, when they’ve obtained appropriate clearance, order real men, men who sit in the stands and root for Rutgers, men who sit in the stands and root for Nebraska, for Oklahoma, for the New York Yankees, the Cleveland Indians, the Columbus BlueJackets, men who chant “Yankees suck!” at Red Sox games, men who couldn’t read as well as those attending the service academies, men who couldn’t afford to go to college, men whose whole lives revolved around the idea of throwing a perfect game in the World Series for the LA Dodgers up until they tore their rotator cuff in high school, into combat zones where they may die.Who rallies around, asks for special treatment, for these men? If these men and women are lucky, they’ll come home to root for their home teams as vociferously as they did before they shipped off to war, saw real blood, walked through real guts, felt body parts spatter against their clothes and faces and hands. Before they watched guys they had become brotherly toward disintegrate before their very eyes.Spare me your whining, oh, military veterans, when the greatest, most classless crime you know is the chanting of “Fuck you, Navy” by drunken Rutgers fans.Perhaps the most ridiculous part of this commentary is the idea that this former Annapolis grad complains about the classlessness of Rutgers football fans, when, ideally, he saw people spitting at Vietnam returnees and heard the chants of “babykiller” at these same folks. He must have been absolutely shocked and surprised to hear the vice president, then, use the word “fuck” in the open chambers of the Senate. 

Fuck you, Rutgers

 So, all of this is hyperbole and oversensitive belly-aching by people who think we, as a nation, don’t support our troops. That’s what it really boils down to. Some oversentimentalized response to the nation’s almost desperate desire to not be at war.Military officers-in-training, and their ilk, are upset that Rutgers fans would deign to treat them like any other opponent. Oh, the humanity! It leaps off the page, doesn’t it: You can catcall West Virginia all you like, but look! These guys might just one day wear stripes on their faggoty white uniforms!But, it’s nothing to do with war, Navy or respect. It’s about football. And football is about invective, injury and insolence, to a certain degree, anyway. Kind of like war, I guess.On the other hand, if it’ll make them feel better, maybe they should just let loose with some “fuck you”s of their own.And, if not, well, that’s okay. I plan on sending several dozen “fuck you”s to Rutgers when WVU marches onto their field.

Glances around the Mountain State

Soccer. Yes, soccer.

I know it goes unnoticed, but when I conceived of this project some 18 months ago, I swore to myself that I’d hit on all the goings-on in Mountaineer sports that I could find information about. And, the interwebs being all inter and webby, as long as you keep your eyes open, you can find info on almost anything.

Sometimes, that can be very awkward.

On to soccer.

First, since the Women’s World Cup in China began yesterday AM Eastern time, we’ll glance first at the women. Ranked 18th, the Lady ‘Eers (Is that Lady nickname still used in college athletics today? I confess, I don’t pay close attention to women’s sports.) beat the Lady Nittanies 1-0 Sunday afternoon. Penn State was 15th ranked at the time.

In an effort to be more confusing than football’s ranking situation, there are three ranking sources in college soccer. The Mountaineer-ettes are 14, 18 and 19, depending on which publication/association you’re abiding by. That’s an average of #17. Not too shabby.

The men’s soccer team isn’t yet ranked, but beat Duquesne Monday evening, 1-0, scoring the game winner late, according to the report you can catch here at msnsportsnet.com.

That’s probably enough college soccer for now.

UPDATE: The Men’s soccer team is ranked 13th.

Injuries

As I scrolled through the college football headlines on espn.com yesterday and this morning, I was struck by how many season-ending injuries folks were dealing with. Not quite as bad as the Scroll of the Dead that the NFL put out over the last 48 hours (apologies to Kevin Everett, who has apparently improved more than expected between Monday and Tuesday).

How is it that the Mountaineers have enjoyed unusually good health in the Coach Rod era, anyway? For that matter, I can’t recall the Mountaineers losing a player to injury that changed a season. Yes, last season saw Slaton’s running one-handed affect a game (his wrist problems versus Louisville was almost as responsible for that loss as the defense’s ineptitude), but in general, injuries haven’t claimed major stars in Morgantown.

Perhaps I’m cursing the crew by even typing this.

Maryland

While I’ll write a more thorough preview tomorrow, I was struck by the score of Maryland’s game Saturday over Florida International, team #118 of 120. I would have expected the T(w)erps to have blown out the Golden Panthers, but instead they eked out a 26-10 win.

They were on the road, so that counts for something. Also, they had to have skipped game planning the game at FIU, instead focusing on the visiting Mountaineers during practice. That’s all that makes sense to me, because FIU is, well, a Division I-A team in name only. Sure, anything can happen, as Appalachian State proved on the season’s opening Saturday, but Appy State’s a good squad. FIU would lose ten games out of ten to Appy State.

So, I expect the T(w)erps will show up on Thursday night, but I truly doubt the Mountaineers will have any more trouble with them than they did with Marshall.

Administrivia

I’d promised a near-daily look at college athletes involved in police matters, but honestly, I’m overwhelmed. You’ve got computer thieves at WVU, batterers everywhere, murderers in New Hampshire, kids getting suspended for anything and everything. I will get to it. I promise.

‘Till then, I suck.

Mountaineers in the NFL

WVU grads (or, at least, former attendees) have gone on to the National Football League. I thought Mondays would be a good day to track them. And, when I’m feeling nostalgic, I’ll write about former Mountaineers who went on to have at least a year in the league.

Anthony Becht, TE Tampa Buccaneers

Becht’s career is just about over. He’s on the Tampa roster, but he had no stats in yesterday’s loss to Seattle. Things have been going downhill for him since Pennington’s chronic wrist problems began.

Marc Bulger, QB St. Louis Rams

Bulger was mildly miserable against the Carolina Panthers. His line was:

CMP	ATT	YDS	CMP%      LNG	TD	INT	RAT	        ATT	YDS	AVG   TD

22 42 167 52.4 18 1 0 70.2 3 18 6.0 0

While the Panthers do have a defense that could be decent, one would expect more from the QB of a supposedly high octane offense, even in week one. The Rams played poorly overall, but the QB has to perform, and Bulger’s numbers stand as evidence of either 1)He didn’t play well, or 2)His team stinks, or 3)Carolina’s better than I suspected, or even 4)Linehan’s offense ain’t so hot, after all.

Antwan Lake, DT New Orleans Saints

Antwan’s Saints got completely outclassed by the Indianapolis Colts on the league’s opening night. Lake offered two tackles as a sub in the Saints hopeless defense against the Colts, who looked incredibly strong overall.

Corey McIntyre, FB Atlanta Falcons

Since Corey had no stats against his name in the Falcons’ obliteration against the Vikings, I want to ask him one question: How’s my boy, Prince Killer? That pitbull is one good doggie.

Jerry Porter, WR Oakland Raiders

The second best former Mountaineer receiver to play in the league actually had two catches for the Raiders yesterday as the Raiders went down to the Lions. Two catches for twenty-six yards. It’s something, I guess.

Todd Sauerbrun, P Denver Broncos

Sauerbrun may be long in the tooth, but remains a really good punter, steroid issues aside. Todd had three punts yesterday, dropping one inside the twenty. Of course, one of those three punts went for six points for the Bills. Not that it’s all Todd’s fault, but…

Gary Stills, DE Baltimore Ravens

Stills had no numbers in tonight’s loss to the Bengals, though that doesn’t mean much. The Ravens playmakers are linebackers and safeties.

John Thornton, DT Cincinnati Bengals

Former teammate of Stills, big John Thornton had one tackle tonight in the Bengals’ victory.

All in all, a pretty crummy week for former Mountaineers, going 2-6.

Oh, and of course, this doesn’t include any former Mountaineers who might be suspended or otherwise detained by police.

Top 25, Week Two

On the AP, and being jumped by Oklahoma

I don’t mind, too much, that the Sooners leaped ahead of the Mountaineers in this week’s AP poll. OU pounded Miami, who pounded Marshall, who got pounded by WVU. So, that makes sense.

Oh, wait. It doesn’t? Are you sure?

Marshall went to Miami, and got killed. Miami went to OU, and got killed. WVU went to Marshall, and… didn’t get killed. Sure, they weren’t great for an entire game, but… what do we really know about OU at this point?

It’s early. West Virginia’s defense doesn’t seem to have improved very much. But, I think there’s a risk in letting OU jump ahead of WVU when there’s so little to go on. Can Miami actually do anything on offense? That WVU didn’t do?

Short answer: no.

So, why would Miami have been any better against OU than WVU would be?

It’s arguable, of course, Miami would have rolled around useless for an entire half in Huntington, too.

Ah, whatever.

LSU

I would like to suggest that jumping from having five first place votes to twenty-five first place votes based on what I thought was a fairly predictable stomping of a very overrated, over-sympathized, under-talented Virginia Tech team.

Virginia Tech proved to everyone in week one that while they might be able to play some D, their offense was going to struggle against all comers. Even against Louisville.

The only surprise about VT’s loss to LSU was that anyone thought it deserved the hype that rang it in. VT was clearly not a top ten team, but had a top ten ranking because they (and Michigan) were overrated at the season’s start.

If I had found the matchup remotely interesting, I might have watched a down of the game. If I had, perhaps I’d have been aroused to full LSU lust. Instead, I was watching games whose results didn’t strike me as preordained (or were on an upset track).

I’ll grant that USC didn’t do much in week one to support their overwhelming number of top ranked votes. But they didn’t do anything yesterday to lose it.

On the USAToday, and being jumped by Florida

Ummm, you guys are kidding, right? They’ve played two games at home, against Western Kentucky and Troy State. Neither team would survive a half against Western Michigan. WTF?!

Whatever. You guys are clearly idiots.

Hawaii

Both polls are clinging to this idea that because the Warriors have one good player, they’re a Top 25 team. Their performance against Louisiana Tech yesterday should really have proven that, in fact, they’re just another overrated team with one college superstar, and really absolutely nothing else.

They could win the WAC with just that. But, I’m betting they won’t. As is the case with any conference, coaching generally wins the day. And I think we saw last season that Boise State has a superior coaching acumen to Hawaii, player (or players) be damned.

Week Two in College Football

First, my alma mater, Carnegie Mellon, ranked #25 in Division 3, slogged out a 16-6 victory over Grove City College, a rival just up I-79. The Tartans are 2-0, coming off an undefeated regular season last year, and have won twelve regular season games in a row.Also, the same guy who was coaching football there when I arrived in 1990 is still coaching there 17 years later. Talk about comfy. 

Michigan Sucks

 I think Lloyd Carr loses his job on Monday. I’d fire him in a heartbeat. Michigan, with the exception of Mike Hart, looked completely awful today. Hart wanted to carry the team, but his ankle was obviously bothering him. Were I him, I’d insist on Carr’s dismissal based simply on false hope. He, quarterback Chad Henne, and tackle Jake Long all stayed in hopes of going after a national title. Carr forgot to tell this trio that he wasn’t going to field anyone on defense.I think WVU could score 80 points against that Michigan D. In a single half. They’re about as atrocious as WVU’s D, in fact. 

Notre Dame may not win, but they do fight

 And by fight, I mean actually throw punches.Why that Irish player wasn’t ejected from the game in the second quarter after sitting on a Penn State player and pummelling him for several seconds, I’ll never understand. The official was standing over them, seemingly enjoying the assault, for nearly ten seconds before finally getting involved.Abysmal.This is what Charlie Weis is all about, by the way. “If my team stinks,” he says behind closed doors, “we’ll just beat the hell out of kids who don’t expect it.” Weis is a dirty little bastard. He has no football qualms, and he has no football morals. The team will go dirtier as the moaning about how horrible his squad is gets louder and louder, too. He’s a rat. A complete sheister.And his team is going to get killed at Michigan next week. 

Louisville tries playing without defense, realizes problems with that

 By now, everyone’s seen highlights of the Louisville v. Middle Tennessee State fireworks show from Thursday night. Great stuff. If you hate Louisville as much as I do. Well, till they separate, anyway.As a Mountaineer fan, I’m salivating over that matchup. Should be a 150-point game, the way the two teams play D. 

The Big East

 As I write this post, South Florida is tied at Auburn. Check that: South Florida just intercepted a Brandon Cox pass into a crowd of four Bulls and a single Tiger and returned the ball to the Tiger 3 yard line. South Florida seems likely to win this one. Suggesting that they do, after two weeks of play, only one Big East team will have lost: Syracuse to Washington and Iowa. The same Washington who went to Boise State and won today. And the same Iowa who will likely contend for the Big Ten title.While the opponents of the Big East in general leave something to be desired, other conferences that are considered far superior to the Big East have faced lesser or similar opponents, and fared less well.UPDATE: Auburn has taken a 3-point lead with just under three minutes to play. Five turnovers, and South Florida has scored zero points from them. Nice D in Tampa. A terrible, terrible offense.UPDATE to the previous update: USF returned the ensuing kickoff to the Auburn 34 yard line. Incredible. The Bulls may still be able to win this one after all.UPDATE numero tres: The Bulls win! The Bulls win! And, in his postgame on-field interview, coach Jim Leavitt says of his team’s win at Jordan-Hare Stadium, “This is a big shot for the Big East.” And he’s right. Huge. Makes me wish that WVU would try to schedule some bigger-time opponents. (For the record, I believe the Mountaineers have Auburn on the schedule in ‘08 and ‘09, or ‘09 and ‘10.) 

Big Ten and Coaches #5

 It’s early fourth quarter as I type, but maybe the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll ought not rank Big Ten teams so highly. Wisconsin appears prepared to choke away a game to not-quite-a-football-power UNLV.UPDATE: Wisconsin holds off a very game Runnin’ Rebels team. But, overall, the Big Ten’s looking quite shaky two weeks into the year. Wisconsin is my pick for winning the conference, but I suppose you can’t overlook Penn State or even Iowa.

West Virginia AT Marshall

I wanted to post some thoughts about this matchup prior to the game, but I failed to make time. So, some of this post will be a little irrelevant now.

Also, since I’m posting thoughts after the game, I’m going to take potshots, lots of them, at Pam Ward. What a friggin’ mess she continues to be, and on a consistent basis.

Marshall

I kind of regret that Marshall University ever became a Division I-A football program. They were absolutely dominant in Division I-AA during the early and mid-’90s. I actually started rooting for them fairly regularly. Indeed, the whole state started to pay attention, because with occasional bright spots (1992), the WVU program seemed to have plateaued. I enjoyed the Thundering Herd in their green and white dominating the scene in Div I-AA, because they had an interesting offense. And (I’m sheepishly admitting this–more on why some other time), I kind of enjoyed the playoff system that Div I-AA had.

So, the folks at ESPN made sure that we were all aware that the DVD of the film We Are Marshall was coming out soon. I liked that they played up the Marshall angle during the broadcast, but it got a little annoying. I haven’t seen the film, but I want to. I especially want to see the movie because growing up in Charleston/Beckley, WV, I didn’t hear about the Marshall tragedy of 1970 until I was living in Boston, sometime in the last ten years or so.

All I knew of Marshall prior to their dominance in the Div I-AA Southern Conference was that they stunk while I grew up. I have memories of hearing them called “The Blundering Herd” on both local sports television broadcasts and radio sports updates during one of those annoying “morning zoo crews” on V100. So, until they began winning, awful football was all I knew about Marshall. Well, that, and the school was in Huntington.

So, when I discovered this thing about the Marshall tragedy (I think the Oklahoma State basketball incident brought it to my attention for the first time), I felt horrible. I felt horrible at having grown up between fifty and ninety miles from the school and not knowing anything about the event. I felt horrible that sports folks saw fit, even twelve years later, to call the program blundering. Of course they were blundering! The entire program had been decimated! They had to start nearly from scratch.

Anyway, I hold it against… I’m not sure who, but I have some anger at my homeland and those that brought me up those 18 years of my life in WV not knowing about it. I think that’s thoughtless. I know why, to a degree, why I never knew about it, but, it seems wrong. Here we are today, bowing to Virginia Tech and their tragedy on a weekly basis, and no future Va Tech potential student will exist without knowing about their tragedy. Hell, the state will likely have some idiotic day of prayer or something. But, in WV, we mocked their muddled return to the game.

So, I’m a Marshall supporter, except for when they play one team: my Mountaineers.

Today’s Game

I missed the first five minutes of game time. I was surprised to turn on the game and find WVU up by only a field goal. As I watched, I was surprised to see the Mountaineers so easily kept under wraps.

My hat’s off to the Herd. They have a decent team there in Huntington. Maybe their best team in the post-Pruitt era. They can’t win the Conference USA (I’m pipping TCU, but don’t forget East Carolina), but they should be competitive.

I’m not sure why the offense didn’t run enough in the first half. Perhaps it was intended, to make the matchup worth something to someone. But, if the Mountaineers had played their normal brand of football during the first half, there’s no way that they would have been trailing by a touchdown at the half.

They seemed to want to throw, which is fine. I’m all for throwing, if you’re running the right pass plays. But, they weren’t. They were throwing short, against man defense. Against bump-and-run defense. Stupid. If someone is forcing you to throw by crowding the line, spread it out, sprint guys downfield and let White show off what he can do.

Maybe they don’t trust White to throw downfield. I don’t get it. I trust him implicitly. I fully believe he’s the second best quarterback ever to wear Blue and Old Gold. (Maybe third. I go back and forth on whether I like him better than Major Harris or not.)

I thought Marshall killed themselves, actually slit their own throats, by refusing to try for a TD at the end of the first half. Settle for the FG only after throwing into the end zone. They didn’t even try for the TD. Idiotic. I laughed at the coaching. Nothing more cowardly than kicking a field goal when you’re leading a heavy favorite late in the half. Plenty of time to try to take an eleven point lead. By only going up by seven, 13-6, by kicking a FG, without trying to take a 17-6 lead, the Marshall coach simply said to his team, “We’re gonna lose. We may as score the sure points and not start losing now.”

Why were they going to lose? Because WVU was going to change the way they were playing. Because you could see in Pat White’s face only modest frustration that things weren’t going their way. He didn’t panic at all. He was annoyed, but was never afraid of losing the game. Same for Coach Rodriguez. He was annoyed by the way things were going, but I don’t believe he ever suspected the second half would be more of the same.

ESPN

I have a request, oh Worldwide Leader of Sports. It’s a simple request. It’s this: Please, please, please FIRE PAM WARD. She’s an absolute frigging mess. She couldn’t keep Huntington and Morgantown straight. And she was doing a game in Huntington. She couldn’t identify players right the first time almost ever. She (and her boothmate) totally ignored the fact that the first Marshall TD came on an illegal play. (Morris was a full yard over the line of scrimmage when he threw the football. Line of scrimmage is the WVU38, his forward foot is on the WVU37 when he throws. He’s over the line. In fact, I saw no fewer than five obvious penalties committed by Marshall that went uncalled.)

She’s an abysmal mess. Easily the worst play-by-play voice around. I’ve ignored her for a long time, but now, it’s just time. Her performance is so bad, she must be repurposed. Absolutely must be. I don’t care what she does. Just take her out of the broadcast booth. She’s making a living on not having a penis in a penis-dominated job. I didn’t object to her at first. But, she only continues to regress from an only mildly tolerable start. She’s an embarrassment, and must be removed from covering games that will be aired on ESPN or ESPN2. Seriously.

Later on, I’ll post my thoughts on the three days of college football and update some problems in this post.

Until then, I suck.

An introduction, an explanation, a road for the season ahead

Too much time and too many bits are wasted on explaining why a new blog on some topic on which there is already time and bits wasted seems like an idiotic start to this new writing venture of mine.

Suffice to say this: I have opinions. Strong ones. Right ones, and wrong ones. I also have changing opinions. And, most importantly, I sometimes need to reveal these opinions, let them be available for the masses, so that they may tear them apart, so that they may absorb them.

I think a great deal about the state of college athletics in the United States. And at no time do I consider its state more than during college football season. There is so much wrong with my all-time, anytime, everytime favorite sport. There remains much about it which is right, but so much that is not.

And so it is without further ado or delay that I unveil MountaineerDave: On College Athletics.

First, some notes:

Who am I?

I grew up in West Virginia rooting for the only team around, the Mountaineers. Coach Don Nehlen was getting started in Morgantown when I first started following the game. I remember my grandfather’s excitement over a game we heard bits of on the radio. When I think of it, there wasn’t a time during that era of his life that recall him being more excited than when we were working on building a house and West Virginia did the unthinkable by marching into a Norman, Oklahoma and whipped the Sooners. True, in retrospect, it wasn’t the best team that the University of Oklahoma ever put on the field, but it raised eyebrows everywhere, and put a couple names on the tongues of everyone who pays attention to college football: Jeff Hostetler, Don Nehlen. Things were never the same for WVU (except perhaps at the end of Coach Nehlen’s career). But, the Mountaineers could no longer be considered some nothing team from the Southern Conference (a I-AA division). They were there nationally, now.

And they had beaten the Sooners, who my grandfather knew best as having been the best team of the 1950s and 1960s. West Virginia was suddenly somebody.

I loved that a football team could make somebody who wasn’t happy with his situation in life feel better about everything, if for only a short time.

Better than that, the entire state felt it. Something was afoot.

And I was growing up there. So, there couldn’t possibly be another rooting interest in my mind.

Where am I?

I moved to Pittsburgh to attend college (but not at hated Pitt!), and have since moved to the greater Boston area. Interesting thing about living in towns with professional sports: college athletics take on a much reduced import than what I grew up experiencing. Where WVU had lifted the spirits of nearly every citizen of the state (even my grandmother, whose primary concerns were her family, her friends and her bible, in that order came to know what WVU was doing from her chair in front of the televisions), the fates of the University of Pittsburgh and Boston College are completely inconsequential to the citizenry of their respective cities.

Ultimately, I think there’s something healthy about that. But, damn, does it make for talking my favorite sport difficult.

What am I doing?

I am filling my college football hunger, rooting for my childhood team from afar, and on the cheap. No ESPN GamePlan subscribers here, thanks.

No, I’ll be filing my opinionated reports based on what I can glean from the nine thousand video-hosting websites, blogs, news reports, etc. My focus will be on my favorite team, but I intend to move forward with a wider eye. Hey, I love my Mountaineers, but not everyone who cares about college athletics is interested in WVU, and I’m going for more than a simple niche readership.

That said, I plan to follow something approximating the schedule below:

• Daily comments on whatever, and I mean whatever, is floating around the wires and webs on my favorite team.

• Weekly picks to go along with a topic of the week.

• Something that will be a feature whenever it comes up, which is too often (and was a favorite section of our weekly college newspaper, about three hundred years ago): the police blotters. I’ll be looking for reports of malfeasance every day, but how often I need to comment on it, well, we’ll just see.

Other stuff is likely to come along, but this is where we’ll start.

I should have posted this a week, or two weeks ago.

Alas, I suck.