ESPN’s fluid bowl predictions have  WVU in what was once the Tire and later Car Care bowl in Charlotte. Even Miss Adelson urges against betting on these outcomes, but note the very real concerns she uses to hedge the Mountaineers.

That’s all well and good, and it’s certainly valid, but what would bother me the most, if I were one to be bothered by these things, or the prospect of Christmas in Charlotte, is WVU kind of knew what was coming and responded with that.

“We knew what we were getting ourselves into, the atmosphere up there. I talked to the guys about last year and they hit the field in Morgantown and played harder than we did, just like this year,” Holgorsen said.

It was, he said, a matter of being “outcoached and outplayed.”

“They played with more effort, more energy and more excitement,” Holgorsen said.

And when asked why that would be and what he could do to change it, he offered the standard answer that comes with that question:

“If we could figure out why we’d be writing books.”