Post by cviller on Aug 26, 2007 9:08:47 GMT -5
Hoppy Kercheval
Kicking Off 2007 Football Season
The West Virginia University Mountaineers begin the 2007 season this Saturday, Sept. 1, a date significant only that the last time WVU played on the first day of the ninth month happened to be Rich Rodriguez’s first game as the Mountaineer head coach.
The months leading up to the 2001 opener at Chestnut Hill had been filled with chatter of how the new coach’s hurry-up offense would leave opponents bent over in fatigue as the Mountaineers no-huddled their way to the end zone.
But that September 1 afternoon it was the then-rival Boston College Eagles who moved the ball at will on their way to a 34-10 victory over the Mountaineers.
In the visiting locker room after the game, Rodriguez looked shaken. Never a good loser, Rodriguez normally confident, piercing scowl had been replaced by a look of exhaustion.
Was it going to be like this?
The fan optimism that preceded that first season in 2001 drifted away through September, October and November like dried leaves falling from a West Virginia oak. West Virginia’s home boy Rich Rodriguez would obviously get more than one year to be successful, but that success would not come instantly.
That first season produced just three modest wins – Ohio, Kent State and Rutgers. Along the way there was a 35-0 thumping at the hands of Virginia Tech and even a painful 17-14 loss to Temple.
Even in the worst of times West Virginia could count on a win over the Owls.
That was just a few short years ago, but in football life, it was another era.
Now as this next September 1 game approaches, the 2001 season has more the feel of a footnote than a year of record. Rodriguez lost three of his first five games his first season. Now the coach has lost just three games in two seasons, three out of his last 25 games.
The three Big East Championships, two consecutive bowl victories, five straight winning seasons, final top ten ranking the last two seasons and preseason number three ranking this year have established the Mountaineer football program as consistently one of the best in the country.
The nagging fear of many Mountaineer fans of the eventual letdown – the losing season or the bowl debacle – has given way to a confidence that can border on arrogance. Rodriguez’s decision to stay in Morgantown and pass on an opportunity to coach on the myth and memory-filled campus of Alabama adds to the mania of the Mountaineer Nation today.
The fact that the Mountaineers are playing on September 1 for just the second time in the Rodriguez era is simply a function of the nexus of the calendar and the schedulers, something only a savant fan might consider noteworthy.
The date of a game is one of the least significant facts about the event. It’s good only for marking the official record, not in determining the outcome. But in this case, the span between the last Mountaineer game on September 1 and this one is critical because it measures how far West Virginia football under Rich Rodriguez has come and gives us an indication how far it could go.
