Just so we’re clear here, what’s written in italics was written around 1:45 p.m. after working this throughout the day. I don’t believe anything has happened, but I believe something is beginning to happen toward some end. What’s written below the italics was written around 8:30 a.m.  — and published much later because I was still working it — after early-morning conversations about things that happened and were said to have happened late last night and overnight. Important to remember in things like this that the heavy stuff often happens at night.

( … and business is picking up, I feel. Also, I’ve been informed the buyout is not $1.125 million. It was — 750k for liquidated damages + $375 k for alternative position of employment — but the 750k was to be paid no later than Jan. 31, 2011. I’d have to believe that happened. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to charge my phone, take a nap and slam an energy shot.)

… and we’re really no closer to any resolution, or even any advancement, to this days-old story than we were when it was new. The best information I can relay is WVU is still dug in as it looks for who did and did not say what about Dana Holgorsen. I’ve been told that whatever is “next” is also “last” — barring any surprises.

What’s that mean? You had your beginning of the story, we’re now in a clearly undefined middle, and what happens next will be the conclusion. And understand that’s understood.

If and when one side sits down with another and they present the topic for discussion, that meeting will happen just once. Once.

The end, whatever it is, has to be decisive and perhaps even beyond majority.

Anyone telling you this is done and Bill Stewart is out is not, at this moment, correct. Not based on anything tangible, at least. Could that person be right? Sure, but it’s more of a guess, perhaps even an educated or informed guess, than anything else. I guess it’s like winning Powerball: Were your numbers right? Sure. Did you know that at the time? No.

There has been no verifiable move toward a conclusion. I’m not sure it’s know to what conclusion they’ll eventually move. Trusting people who have been and should be trusted, this is still a fluid and delicate process. There is no play clock, but, of course, the sooner a resolution comes the better it is for everyone involved. I think it matters, too, that the MAC had its last Coaches Caravan last night, if you can believe there was an interest in letting those events happen under happier circumstances for the public which didn’t ask for this cloud to be cast over their moment in the WVU fundraising sun.

For diversionary purposes, could I interest you in the once-unlikely return to WVU of airplane dancing, jersey popping, trash talking, self-labeled PB3 Pat Beilein? That, I can confirm with complete certainty, is happening. Today.

The guy who didn’t really mask his feelings when his father left for Michigan in 2007 will be a guest counselor at this weekend’s Bob Huggins fantasy camp — and he couldn’t be more excited.

He was at the Final Four in Houston in April when WVU’s director of basketball operations, Jerrod Calhoun, saw Beilein and pulled him aside to share an idea. Calhoun and Huggins wanted Beilein to come to the fantasy camp.

“I kind of smiled, like, ‘You know what? That’s cool,'” Beilein said. “I know they’d run them before and I’d never gotten a call. I’d seen guys like Frank Young and Mike Gansey and Joe Alexander go back. Not getting a call, it didn’t really bother me, but I’d love to be back and see those guys and catch up with all them and all the things we did and the memories we have.”