Touchdown Terrace overlooks what Oliver Luck still calls “New Mountaineer Field” from the North end zone of what is today known as Milan Puskar Stadium.

West Virginia’s newly hired athletic director would look at this addition he could have never imagined as a quarterback 30 years earlier  as he walked across the field and toward the terrace to literally step into his future Monday.

There’d be a press conference there not announcing his hiring, but welcoming him home. The formality was handled last Thursday. This was to be the festivity and for that there is no finer or more appropriate facility than Touchdown Terrace.

What better way to commemorate the score that was the hiring of a football hero?

Luck only interviewed last Wednesday and WVU only interviewed Luck.

“We had other interviews scheduled,” WVU President Jim Clements said. “But I sat back the night of the interview and said, ‘You know what? He’s so good, he’s so right for us that it doesn’t make sense to bring other people in who don’t really have a shot in my mind. Nobody was going to trump Oliver so we cancelled the other interviews.”

WVU went all out, as expected, to mark the occasion Monday.

The video board in the stadium had a congratulatory message. Four bundles of gold and blue balloons adorned the entry to Touchdown Terrace and inside 22 televisions played a three-minute loop of career highlights.

There was a sprawling spread designed to satiate the sweet tooth. Skewered pineapple, melon, cantaloupe and grapes were mounted above loose-laying kiwi and strawberries. Tubs filled with ice and canned sodas and bottled water crowded one section. Metal canisters containing freshly brewed coffee and decaf could be found at another. To the right were three dispensers of sugary coffee flavorings as well as simple cream and sugar. To the left were carefully arranged trays of brownies and Flying WV cookies.

Rows of chairs were set up in front of a podium and three rows and 31 seats were set aside for the media. Six video cameras were ready on an elevated stage to tape the proceedings. Just about anyone who is — or was — anyone at WVU was in attendance.

And amid all of this, in a classy venue that’d been expertly assembled for the day, there was no clock. Time, it seems, matters not to WVU.

Not that it needs to, either. After all, WVU got its man and before the June 30 “deadline” on which Ed Pastilong transitions into a two-year emeritus position. And there were some in attendance Monday who got a chuckle out of the minor delay preceding Luck’s welcome home press conference.

This celebration began at 1:33 p.m., just three minutes off schedule, which hardly seems worth noting. Then again, we must get used to waiting.

Luck will acquire what he termed “full authority” July 1, but won’t be set up in his office for full-time functionality until 2011. The Houston Dynamo, a Major League Soccer franchise for which he is the president and general manager, is building a stadium and Luck wants to see it through.

The reason for Monday’s slight delay?

Well, there was a good deal of glad-handing and reuniting as Luck made his way around the room, but in a neat twist the current athletic director, Ed Pastilong, was running a little behind and it was Luck who would have to wait on him.

Pastilong, who enters a two-year “emeritus” position July 1 and will be something of a supplemental AD until Luck’s takeover, hurried in at 1:32 p.m. 

Clements really wanted to announce a hire before June 30 and for obvious reasons. One, this has been on his agenda since taking over last summer and even before that was Pastilong’s signed contract easing him into retirement.  It was important Clements actually see this through and not delay it if for no other reason than to show he could and on his own terms and schedule.

And then there’s the obvious issues surrounding college athletics. Luck was named AD Thursday. Between the conference call announcing the news and the time he arrived in Morgantown Sunday Colorado left the Big 12 for the Pac-10, Nebraska left the Big 12 for the Big Ten and Boise State left the WAC for the Mountain West Conference. As Luck was cheered Monday it suddenly appeared Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State would eschew the Pac-10 to remain in a reshaped Big 12.

So, yes, kudos to Clements and to WVU for getting Luck on time … but none of that movement directly affects WVU. If something is to happen to the Big East, the ACC, the SEC and, by extension, WVU, it’s going to happen relatively soon and it’s going to happen fast.

Time is of the essence. And Luck will be splitting his time between Houston and Morgantown. The Houston Dynamo is in the early stages of a stadium project and the city and Harris County have each pledged $10 million and the land. Luck is in negotiations with the local sports authority — the group he used to run — to work out a lease agreement.

This seems like short-term work, yet Luck and Clements agreed to a six-month transition period … and many people are wondering if it’s been accepted that it could be longer. Not that it will, but that the parties agreed it could be allowed to go longer.

The stadium is to be completed in 2012. That’s at least 18 months away. Pastilong will still be under contract at WVU. Perhaps there’s something to it, but Clements and Luck, who, to be fair, isn’t digging holes, hoisting girders and wiring lights, are calmly confident the AD can also be the president/GM and be wildly effective at both.

Luck also sounded like a guy who could walk away from the Houston project before it was completed in order to be at WVU.

“Do I have to be there in person to handle the negotiations? With cell phones and the Internet, no,” he said. “But I do feel an obligation to push the project to a point not to where it’s finished – we don’t have a shovel in the ground yet – but where things are lined up.”

This, as you might imagine, isn’t a sufficient answer for a lot of people who go to great lengths and expenses to follow and support WVU. They’d like assurances — and by this time, perhaps reassurances is the better word — their Mountaineers will be OK because their Mountaineers will have someone with unswerving focus looking out for their interests.

There are others, too, who say for WVU to get the guy it wanted and the guy who wanted to be here and make it the last stop in his career, certain compromises must be made.

You’re on one side or in the middle today … and probably for the foreseeable future.

Luck, whose reputation is to take on challenges and walk away with successes, will spend his time now learning about the history of the school and the conference and pertinent issues as a way to assess the present and, in essence, predict the future.

He echoes the company line that status quo would be ideal and life in the Big East has been and can continue to be quite beneficial. But you know he has great vision — that’s why he’s here, after all — and you can trust he’s looking at an enormous picture and trying to figure out where he and others will ultimately put WVU.

“All we can do is talk and look around and get all the information we can so we have contingencies in place in case there is a shakeup,” he said. “I do think at some point in time it’s going to have an affect on the Big East and the ACC and the other conferences left out so far.

“I think what everyone will say is what I’ll say. We’d love to maintain the Big East. It’s a great conference with great people and the Big East is being proactive and trying its best, which is the responsible thing to do.

“I think we also have a responsibility to this university and it’s our primary responsibility, but I don’t want to speculate because I don’t know. I’m not sure anybody knows how this will turn out.”