One thing continuously used against Bill Stewart is the process by which he was hired not long after the 48-28 Fiesta Bowl victory. He’d never formally interviewed — though what’s a more practical interview than what he did as the interim coach? — and WVU was getting deeper and deeper into a search.

Yet in the early, early morning hours following the game, calls went out to reporters and columnists and people who wear WVU hats to press conferences that Bill Stewart would be announced as the new head coach that afternoon.

There was lively debate — remember this back-and-forth? — with four distinctive camps: right guy, right guy but wrong process, wrong guy, wrong guy because of a wrong process. Not to say Stewart didn’t earn the job, but it always seemed to me a majority of people would have been more comfortable had WVU gotten some sleep, resumed the search and then made a decision.

If WVU picks Stewart, then good for everyone involved.

Nearly three years later now, we learn that was the plan. Former President Mike Garrison had already interviewed and spoken to some head coaches and assistants and there were appointments to do more of the same following the bowl. The idea was compromised after Garrison said he was pulled into a hotel hospitality suite after the victory to speak with three influential voices.

“I was by no means the only voice in the process, but when you’ve got the chair of the Board of Governors and the athletic director and the governor meeting unto themselves and with who knows who else, it’s challenging to try and unravel that thing,” Garrison said.

Hours later, WVU officials were calling reporters who had covered the Fiesta Bowl and waking many of them who had early flights back to Morgantown. The instructions were simple: Rearrange the travel plans. Bill Stewart would be named the head coach that afternoon.

“It was clear to me that the train was on the tracks,” Garrison said. “That was the decision. It was a decision I didn’t think was a bad decision, but I thought the timing was bad. There was no reason to do it then.”

Think of that what you will, accept it as truth of dismiss it as part of an agenda, but that’s the backdrop for Stewart’s coaching career at WVU — and that’s unfair on different levels and because of different people. Would Stewart have rather taken over under different circumstances? Probably, just to eliminate all that nonsense. In the long, long run, though, does it really matter to him? Probably not.

For two full seasons, it’s a condition that’s been held against him, one over which he had no control, one he neither will nor needs to apologize for. Yet it’s at the root of the criticisms levied against him and those rumbles are getting loud now.

A head coach’s third year is an important year. It’s the end of the beginning and Stewart himself says the third year is big, but so, too, are the fourth and fifth.

It’s not a myth, either. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday the current BCS coaches won 54.8 percent of their games their first two seasons. In the third year, they combined to win 62.7 percent of their games.

Fact is, with nine starters back on offense and defense and with almost complete continuity on his coaching staff, Stewart’s team was picked No. 2 in the Big East and at No. 24 in the preseason coaches’ poll. He says his team can win 10 or more games this year and a lot of people are banking on just that.

And not just fans. Stewart has a president who’s been in office a little more than a year and an A.D. who’s been in his job for a little more than a month. One of their greatest concerns is the future of the Big East and where WVU will play football in the future — because football is the revenue generator for a self-sustaining athletic department. This season, after consecutive 9-4 seasons, will go a long way toward shaping many opinions about WVU and its football.

Recruiting is what it is and you can make what you want of the star system and rankings, but WVU’s 2011 class is not yet up to speed with the 2009 and 2010 classes Stewart said were the best ever at WVU. Could it be that Stewart has just four years remaning on his contract and that he can’t go into a 2011 recruit’s living room and say, with absolute certainty, he’ll be the coach when that kid is a senior? Perhaps. Maybe it also has to do with an offense that isn’t nearly as exciting as it once was. You could also say the uncertain future of the Big East is a factor.

What happened Thursday won’t help, either, and now that WVU and Stewart are accused of violating NCAA rules, the game becames much more difficult while the stakes continue to rise.

No one knows this more than Luck, who, by nature of his job, treats every football season as an important one. He doesn’t believe there’s a “magic number” when a coach figures it all out, but it’s different, he said, when a coach has a few years on his resume.

“I think there’s a reasonable argument to expect something from a coach who’s been around a while and recruited a few classes of his players, as opposed to the other players who would have never been brought in to run that particular offensive system,” Luck said.

“It’s a little different if you’re running the same system and our situation, when Rich left, more or less of his own volition to go to a pretty good football program, it’s not as though Rich, by any stretch of the imagination, wasn’t recruiting well his last three or four years here.”