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.