Post by cviller on Aug 30, 2007 9:08:14 GMT -5
On July 20, 1969 the world as we knew it changed forever. When Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong placed his square-toed shoe upon the moon’s surface for the very first time a new frontier was opened.
Rich Rodriguez has never been mistaken for Neil Armstrong, but this Saturday the Mountaineers’ commander will lead the WVU program into its own new frontier.
One hundred sixteen years and 1,138 games have passed since West Virginia University engaged in its first ever gridiron get together, but at no time during that span has a Mountaineer team entered a season following consecutive 11-win campaigns.
It all begs the question, so now what? What’s the next piece in the evolution of a football program whose perception and reality has elevated to levels only dreamed about in the past.
It can be said that Don Nehlen did the excavation, laid the foundation, and built the house that is WVU football. Rich Rodriguez, in a Ty Pennington kind of way, came in to oversee the Extreme Makeover. He’s built the house of the future so to speak. Everything old has been or is being replaced. If it’s cool and trendy they’ve got it or its on back-order. So again, we ask the question, what do you do next?
Is winning the national championship the only thing left to conquer for a West Virginia program that’s become a perennial bowl fixture and champions of the Big East in three of the last four years?
It just may be. However, winning a national title is a lot like trying to recreate your mother’s favorite recipe. You may have all the ingredients, but for whatever reason it just doesn’t come out right.
In the 1997 movie of the same name, Jack Nicholson wonders aloud if his life at that moment was “As Good As It Gets.” That’s the question we’ll begin to answer this weekend inside a sold-out Milan Puskar Stadium. Is this as good as it gets, or can it actually get better? We won’t have the final answer for the next few months.
I vividly remember that Sunday night of July 20, 1969 when Armstrong took that historic step on to the moon. My young eyes were wide open — there was a buzz of excitement in the room.
Saturday afternoon Rich Rodriguez will sprint from the team’s inflatable helmet and on to the stadium's shiny new field. Symbolically his entrance will mark the Mountaineers first steps into a new frontier.
Mountaineers fans hope that new frontier will lead them to college football’s holy grail.