We’re less than a week from seeing the Hawaiian Sasquatch step out from the woods behind the Coliseum and stroll into the Puskar Center … or from seeing Verbal Kint slip into his limo and drive away with Kobayashi never to be seen again.

Tevita Finau is still expected to arrive next week, report for camp Aug. 7 and begin practice a day later. OK, I haven’t checked this morning, but nothing has changed the past two weeks and nothing will change between now and next Friday. It is, we’re all being told, simply a matter of time, paperwork and procedure.

And doesn’t that seem almost anticlimatic after all Finau has unknowingly put people through the past two years? Then again, what has he done and to who has he done these things? I can’t recall an article quoting him and more than one person within WVU football believes this is all a media-made melee … which I can’t really argue.

But my father-in-law just found out he has the mumps, which makes no senses unless he’s been bitten by this Finau fever, and yet I wonder if the Mountaineers are all that affected.

Really, for a long, long time now people have been talking about Finau and done more for his legend than a 20-sack season … which, by the way, I’m told he could do in a redshirt season.

It’s been like that and it has to be impossible for the players to isolate themselves from it, which then might work against Finau if/when he arrives. You could reasonably assume players have already formed their own opinions even though many have never met or seen him. Some people might generally, naturally, perhaps understandably hold the hype against Finau even though, again, he hasn’t really contributed to any of it apart from not showing up when most thought he might before.

So it had to be asked of the Moiuntaineers what they know, think and project of the 6-foot-5, 290-pound defensive end. Has the hype consumed them? Should anyone be worried about a potential problem?

Eddie Davis alleviated all concerns.

Finau’s fame is not an epidemic, though. His name didn’t register with cornerback Eddie Davis – “TV Fin-who?” he said – and once reminded didn’t spark great excitement or frustration.

“I’ve heard of him and I know who you’re talking about, but I really can’t say anything about him because I don’t know anything about him,” Davis said.

The feeling the Mountaineers left me with was “If he gets here, bonus. If he doesn’t, so what?” Maybe it’s because many of them lived through the Noel Devine buildup and witnessed the Jason Gwaltney and Terence Kerns letdowns. They’re conditioned to stay level and let someone prove himself when he arrives and not before.

“We pretty much roll with what we got when we get them here and use them to the best of their ability,” linebacker Najee Goode said. “I do hear about him. I was excited when I heard about him coming in. I know about him signing all those letters and how he’s supposed to be coming here, but none of that matters until he’s here.”