(Update from the Big East call: WVU at Louisville, noon, ESPN, Nov. 22) 

So how about spending a week — or is it a season? — obsessing over a terrible kickoff coverage team and promising improvements and then starting the ninth game of the season by giving up the school’s first return touchdown in 18 years? And would you feel worse to learn the player who scored was so good, so confident, he admitted he didn’t even watch much film.

This is your life, West Virginia. It’s one in which people — read: not solely reporters — in the press box laugh out loud as Mardy Gilyard slips through “tackles” and runs to the end zone (Surreal.). It’s one in which other people openly wonder if the rules permit putting, say, 15 people on the kickoff return team, making the tackle and just accepting the penalty at the end of the play (I checked. It’s illegal.). It’s one in which a person suggests if WVU would be better off kicking the ball out of bounds and starting from the 40-yard line (Everyone agreed, especially after a sky kick ended up in a first-and-10 at the Cincinnati 42.).

The worst part? You could see it coming. If the Mountaineers were nothing else last week, they were clairvoyant. After the UConn game and in interviews before the Cincinnati game, pretty much every one of them who spoke to the media said they’d better fix these sustained errors — slow starts, kickoff returns, short-yardage struggles — or else.

Or else arrived 16 seconds into the game Saturday night.

Gilyard, who leads the conference in return average and zoomed from No. 21 to No. 5 nationally, believed he was better than WVU’s scheme. Earlier in the week, special teams coach Mike Elston called Gilyard into his office. They discussed one element of WVU’s plan and Elston all but guaranteed the Bearcats would exploit it.

“I didn’t even watch much film,” Gilyard said.

What he saw, though, was strange.

“I was like, ‘Why is West Virginia doing it like this?'” he said. “We’ve never seen anybody’s kickoff team do the things that they do. It seemed like they kind of left one guy back and left another guy back. I’m like, ‘Nine guys on 11 heads?’ That’s not good numbers, especially with our unit being No. 1 in the Big East and trying to develop ourselves as a strong special teams unit. We knew they were weak there. Nine hats on 11? You can’t win doing that.” 

The Mountaineers have an open week before their next game and Bill Stewart, who by now we all know is the head coach and special teams coordinator, said he’d reconfigure things again. Following the game, Dorrell Jalloh, who was more or less omitted from the offense until the hurry-up drill late in the game, was asked what impact the kickoff return had on the rest of the team.

“Big kick in the stomach,” said receiver Dorrell Jalloh, who is not on the coverage team. “I might consider trying to get on that team myself. We have to do something. We have to fix it. We’re going to talk as a group, as a core, about doing something because we have to figure this out.”

On his conference call Sunday, Stewart, who’d just said he’d put new people on the coverage team, was told about Jalloh’s volunteering and asked if it was one of those things that sounded noble or, given the bye week, something Stewart might consider. Basically, if players wanted a shot, would he give them a shot?

You see, the Mountaineers used to be starter-heavy on special teams, and they still are on some, but not kickoff returns. WVU thought it had eliminated that need through recruiting players who could specialize on special teams before rising to greater roles — and to be fair, Courtney Stuart, Archie Sims and Jim Lewis are three of the best players on that coverage team. Neither starts or plays very much and all three are out with injuries.

That said, this many weeks, mistakes, corrections and mistakes into the season, putting the best players on the worst unit might help and if players wanted to give it a shot, maybe it’s not a terrible idea. Stewart was, how do you say, not pleased.

“Dorrell Jalloh should worry about receiving. Dorrell Jalloh should not be worried about the kickoff return team nor should he be asked because he’s not on kickoff returns.”