Post by dehayes35 on Sept 6, 2007 16:32:43 GMT -5
Thursday, September 06, 2007
By Chuck Finder, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- When hostilities between West Virginia's two major colleges return Saturday to Huntington for the first time in 92 years, the state will be represented by two starters on each side.
Four total.
Don't blink, you might miss them.
These rare native sons collide when the West Virginia defense meets the Marshall offense on the floor of Joan C. Edwards Stadium, sold out for the first time in its 16-year history thanks, apparently, to Mountaineers fans buying up season tickets for this singular weekend visit.
So a game capturing a state's attention boils down to a couple of homegrown one-on-one confrontations: Marshall center Doug Legursky of Beckley and tackle Josh Evans of Fayetteville vs. Mountaineers middle linebacker Reed Williams of Moorefield and outside linebacker Marc Magro of Morgantown.
"Really nice, really great guys," Williams said of the Thundering Herd members he knows. "I don't have anything against them."
What is this, two teams who do like each other?
Mostly, these are teams unaccustomed to each other in every way. The players have limited West Virginia connections, this being a state that produces barely a handful of Division I-A recruits each year. Five natives played for Marshall in the Herd's 31-3 loss in the opener at Miami; eight played in the Mountaineers' 62-24 rout of Western Michigan. Marshall contains as many Floridians and Georgians combined as players from the home state, 21. The state namesake contains even fewer, with 18 Mountaineers from West Virginia and almost as many from WPIAL and City League schools, 17.
What imbues this cross-state meeting with passion are the rival fans, some of whom have been known to switch colors.
"When Marshall was enjoying their success in the late '90s with Chad Pennington, Byron Leftwich and Randy Moss, the people in the state who didn't go to either institution kind of gravitated to whoever was doing well," said Keith Morehouse, a sportscaster with WSAZ-TV in Huntington and a son of the Marshall play-by-play announcer, Gene, who was killed in the program's 1970 plane-crash tragedy.
"You'd see green and white replacing blue and gold. With the way West Virginia's done the past couple of years, you see more blue and gold around here, to be honest. It's an interesting phenomenon."
There remain a scant few fans still around from the previous time the mighty Mountaineers visited little Huntington in 1915. The visitors came, they conquered Marshall by 92-6, and they never returned ... until 11:10 a.m. Saturday on ESPN2. The homegrown players understand the stakes and heft of such a Marshall-West Virginia series, the first half-dozen all won by the Mountaineers.
"You're going to hear about this for years to come," Magro said. "Yeah, being from in-state, it does make it a little bigger."
Williams added, "It's that backyard kind of feel."
Though not quite a neighboring Backyard Brawl kind.
NOTES -- Mountaineers coach Rich Rodriguez said this week he plans to try to redshirt freshmen offensive linemen Gino Gradkowski of Seton-LaSalle and Don Barclay of Seneca Valley. ... Asked about Joe Paterno's penalty that had Penn State players cleaning up Beaver Stadium on home-game Sundays, Rodriguez said: "That's been going on for a number of years, it just hasn't been made public. I punished a whole team for a couple of guys' indiscretions. Did it this year. Did it last year. Just didn't tell anybody about it. Probably won't." ... Informed that his Mountaineers are 0-2 in games with 11 a.m. local-time kickoffs -- a Wisconsin loss and a Continental Tire Bowl defeat to Virginia, both in 2002 -- a previously unaware Rodriguez replied: "That'll be another four sleepless nights." He added, more seriously: "Nah, I don't think it'll be an issue."
By Chuck Finder, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- When hostilities between West Virginia's two major colleges return Saturday to Huntington for the first time in 92 years, the state will be represented by two starters on each side.
Four total.
Don't blink, you might miss them.
These rare native sons collide when the West Virginia defense meets the Marshall offense on the floor of Joan C. Edwards Stadium, sold out for the first time in its 16-year history thanks, apparently, to Mountaineers fans buying up season tickets for this singular weekend visit.
So a game capturing a state's attention boils down to a couple of homegrown one-on-one confrontations: Marshall center Doug Legursky of Beckley and tackle Josh Evans of Fayetteville vs. Mountaineers middle linebacker Reed Williams of Moorefield and outside linebacker Marc Magro of Morgantown.
"Really nice, really great guys," Williams said of the Thundering Herd members he knows. "I don't have anything against them."
What is this, two teams who do like each other?
Mostly, these are teams unaccustomed to each other in every way. The players have limited West Virginia connections, this being a state that produces barely a handful of Division I-A recruits each year. Five natives played for Marshall in the Herd's 31-3 loss in the opener at Miami; eight played in the Mountaineers' 62-24 rout of Western Michigan. Marshall contains as many Floridians and Georgians combined as players from the home state, 21. The state namesake contains even fewer, with 18 Mountaineers from West Virginia and almost as many from WPIAL and City League schools, 17.
What imbues this cross-state meeting with passion are the rival fans, some of whom have been known to switch colors.
"When Marshall was enjoying their success in the late '90s with Chad Pennington, Byron Leftwich and Randy Moss, the people in the state who didn't go to either institution kind of gravitated to whoever was doing well," said Keith Morehouse, a sportscaster with WSAZ-TV in Huntington and a son of the Marshall play-by-play announcer, Gene, who was killed in the program's 1970 plane-crash tragedy.
"You'd see green and white replacing blue and gold. With the way West Virginia's done the past couple of years, you see more blue and gold around here, to be honest. It's an interesting phenomenon."
There remain a scant few fans still around from the previous time the mighty Mountaineers visited little Huntington in 1915. The visitors came, they conquered Marshall by 92-6, and they never returned ... until 11:10 a.m. Saturday on ESPN2. The homegrown players understand the stakes and heft of such a Marshall-West Virginia series, the first half-dozen all won by the Mountaineers.
"You're going to hear about this for years to come," Magro said. "Yeah, being from in-state, it does make it a little bigger."
Williams added, "It's that backyard kind of feel."
Though not quite a neighboring Backyard Brawl kind.
NOTES -- Mountaineers coach Rich Rodriguez said this week he plans to try to redshirt freshmen offensive linemen Gino Gradkowski of Seton-LaSalle and Don Barclay of Seneca Valley. ... Asked about Joe Paterno's penalty that had Penn State players cleaning up Beaver Stadium on home-game Sundays, Rodriguez said: "That's been going on for a number of years, it just hasn't been made public. I punished a whole team for a couple of guys' indiscretions. Did it this year. Did it last year. Just didn't tell anybody about it. Probably won't." ... Informed that his Mountaineers are 0-2 in games with 11 a.m. local-time kickoffs -- a Wisconsin loss and a Continental Tire Bowl defeat to Virginia, both in 2002 -- a previously unaware Rodriguez replied: "That'll be another four sleepless nights." He added, more seriously: "Nah, I don't think it'll be an issue."
