We talked briefly last week about Oliver Luck and how to appropriately measure and project his work in such a small amount of time in his office. It was a good point, I thought, because, realistically, what has he done relative to what he can do or be expected to do?

He probably wouldn’t want concrete opinions about him to form just yet because, in a way, I doubt he thinks he’s given a true representation of what he’s capable of in his position. Yet.

Still, I can’t get enough of listening to and reading the things he has to say because he pulls back the curtain an awful lot with regard to how things work and how things are to work. You see how he locks in on some stuff and tell change is on the way. Within everything, you can find something to show what he’s doing and how he thinks. Example:

I learned fairly early that our bus system wasn’t synched up with events. You can want to come to a volleyball game here at the Coliseum or a soccer match, but if you’re in Boreman Hall downtown you didn’t have a way to get out here unless you had a car. So we sat down with the transportation folks and figured out a way to allow the busses to run a little longer, whether it’s volleyball, soccer, or going forward with gymnastics, wrestling or whatever. It’s important that we make it easy for students to get out here. It’s a small development but I think it helped us get 600 fans in here to watch us beat Marshall in volleyball for the first time in many years. That matters. You bring 50 or 100 Mountaineer Maniacs out to anything and that will make a difference.

That’s a very small thing, I know, but it’s a detail that has gone overlooked and has now been cured. I figure this was something of a gripe that was brought to his attention. Simple fix, really, and it forwards the feeling I’ve gotten from him so far: There are no small parts, but only a big operation.

There will be far, far more significant matters. There already are. Yet this snippet is indicative, I think, of the way this guy works. You have to feel with a manager like that in his position the major issues will get major attention and be treated exactly as warranted.

For the purpose of our discussion then and now, football scheduling is a big thing. Marshall is on the table. There’s a need to find appealing and rewarding nonconference games. Luck’s idea has some color to it.

I think at this point – where we are in the Big East – our path to a national championship is going to be through the Big East, and you clearly have to win your conference, but that’s likely not enough to propel you to that level. I think we have got to schedule some teams like Auburn and LSU – and those are clearly games fans want to see: how do we stack up against great programs from the SEC or from other conferences? I think you have natural rivalries like Maryland that are important. I do think it is important to play schools like Marshall. They will be part of us going forward in some form or fashion, based on what we can work out with the Marshall folks.

I think it is important for us to be able to go into ‘hostile environments’ whether it is LSU or a packed house in Huntington and win games. That’s where you become a quality program. We shouldn’t bow to anybody. We should certainly have respect for all of our opponents but we shouldn’t be concerned about going anywhere to play if we want to win a national championship. That is our goal and must remain our goal.

There is also a huge financial component to scheduling. We need to play seven home games, but also be on the lookout for a game like BYU in Washington, D.C. Those are clearly important. We have an enormously important fiduciary responsibility to the University as an athletic department. In turn, what drives the athletic department is football revenue and as a result, it’s extraordinarily important for us that we maximize, monetarily, our football schedule. These one-off games are going to be more and more important. (Dallas Cowboys owner) Jerry Jones seems to be announcing one a week. I know the NFL economics well enough that they need to keep their buildings busy on Saturdays. Baltimore, D.C., Cincinnati and Cleveland – those are all markets where I wouldn’t be surprised if more and more of these offers didn’t start coming to us. We have to be smart about it, but when you can walk away with $2.25 million, that’s not a bad deal for a university.