I was going to do the Monday morning ritual, but I saw that WVU, which has lost back-to-back games and scored 17 points in the process, opened as a 17-point favorite against its rival Marshall Saturday. I’m honestly a little surprised. A bizarre beginning to a week. And what a week it will be.  

Bill Stewart’s been around a long time and I’m sure he’s had hard, hard weeks at the office. He’s been fired, after all, and involved in a lawsuit that kept him out of coaching for a year. The future was never guaranteed. In his profession, it never is.

I’m positive he’s been low before, if for no other reason than he’s so resilient and optimistic.

I just wonder if this week is as tough as any other … or better yet, will any other week be as hard as this one? 

I could be way off, but this won’t be easy.

He spoke with the media Sunday, and while it was only brief, he had an issue with something someone wrote about players using a special chamber to prepare for the Colorado altitude. “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” he said. 

He gets on the Big East conference call this morning and he was a little fiesty the past two weeks as questions from near and far weren’t all to his liking. Tuesday it’s the weekly press conference. Wednesday is the worst when knuckleheads statewide call into his radio show and say things over phone they’ve been rehearsing since Thursday night, but would likely never say to his face. They then celebrate by puffing out their chests, telling their friends and hopping on a message board.

Through it all, he practices for a game Saturday he, quite simply, cannot lose. He can’t. It’s possible, though. Marshall is 3-1 and just snapped a nine-game road losing streak with a win at Southern Mississippi that really impressed Stewart. Not since the 1997 game has the Thundering Herd really believed it could beat WVU. I know it was close last year, but WVU was an entirely different team last year. It was much better defensively and more capable offensively. It hadn’t looked vulnerable, either. I can’t imagine Marshall feeling as good before the game last year as it surely will this year.

Deep down, Stewart has to know this and has to know the tough spot he’s in. Win Saturday and so what? As far as WVU fans are concerned, it’s Marshall and it should be a win and that is not enough to erase what’s been done the past two games. Lose and … well, again, it’s hard to predict what happens.  

There is pressure now and he does not isolate himself from outside forces. He reads the papers. He faces the media. He does the radio show. How he comes through says a lot about the guy as well as the rest of the season.