How times change. What was once inconceivable is now a reality and, with a little persuasion from the governor, West Virgina and Marshall are involved in a respectful, albeit one-sided seven-game series that may be renewed if the two sides can come to some sort of an arrangement.

Personally, the series can stay or go and I’ll survive. I just like the tension involved. It rekindles warm memories from a fiery past.

Flashback!

The year was 2003 and Marshall was playing for championships in the Mid-American Conference and really doing an effective job antagonizing WVU with strategically place billboards and suggestions to get a dog.

The Thundering Herd wanted a series with WVU as they were cresting as a football program while the Mountaineers were sampling ammunition before finding the firepower that’s since helped them pull off some impressive heists.

The back-and-forth — actually, more like back-and-(silence) — was like something scripted by Vince McMahon. Marshall would say or do something that seemed specifically designed to fluster the Mountaineers and eventually coerce them into a title match. Through it all, WVU would just stick to its principles and never allow the Herd to enter the same ring.

Then one day WVU was minding its own business when Marshall Coach Bob Pruett went upside the head with a steel chair and made some boasts about getting the state’s best talent because the Mountaineers had considered it inferior.

Well, now they’d done it. What followed was the expected reaction from the masses, but also a completely unexpected Statewide Sportsline when Greg Hunter and Tony Carido were both throwing 102 mph fastballs. For oft bullied WVU fans, it was redemption radio.

Hunter: “If you’re competing against Miami of Florida, you’ve got to go for the cream of the crop. If you’re competing against Miami of Ohio, you can take a different level of kid.”

Inspired, Caridi then hit 104 mph on the gun with an impassioned explanation of the effects of  “communication denial.” 

It’s come up twice already this week — once in conversation, once in my e-mail this morning — and it occured to me, “You had to hear it to believe it.”

And that got me thinking.

Maybe it’s just me, but this WVU-Marshall thing lacks the element of disdain. Perhaps a refresher course sometime before kickoff would introduce many of the combatants to how they arrived at this point.

“Would you like to understand?”

Press play