Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which waves an argyle handkerchief goodbye this morning. Jack Bogaczyk no longer works for the Charleston Daily Mail and our loss is Marshall University’s gain. I’m sad he’s out, but I’m happy to see where he’s going. I knew it was coming, too. Not specifically this, but something with a keyboard. Writers write and I could tell at the Orange Bowl, and then from the stories he told me about the NCAA Tournament, that he wanted to do what he’d done so well for so long.

I won’t get too lengthy or too mushy here and I’ve already shared with him what I needed to share with him, but I feel like there’s one unresolved piece of business, if for no one else, than for me.

Technically speaking, yesterday was his last day and there was a party in the Charleston office. If you know Jack, you know he would have rather not done that.

Seriously, look at the enthusiasm. I think those are his walking papers in Nanya’s hands.

So, chances are he’s not going not like this, but too bad. Not like he can fire me.

I understand opinions are mixed on Jack and while I think it’s like that with the good ones, I also understand I can’t and won’t do anything to change those motivations. What I can do is tell you what is probably pretty obvious. The guy’s meant a whole hell of a lot to me. Long story short, I was in a pretty bad spot in the summer of 2007 and for the first time really not liking what I was doing and, more specifically, for whom I was doing it. Someone was jerking with my career in a way I didn’t much care for.

One day I was covering a golf tournament at Lakeview and I bumped into Tom Aluise, who had been the Daily Mail sports editor before Jack and then segued into an office job he liked a little better, one that let him see his family more and cover golf tournaments in Morgantown. We talked about this job, which was open after Andrew Beckner left the business for something better, and Jack called me that evening. One golden parachute later and here we are.

I don’t want to get dramatic, and I promise I’ll cut this off soon because I need to get on the road for a wedding, but without that talk with Tom and that phone call from Jack, I’m not here today and probably nothing that came between that day and this sentence ever happens. You think about that.

I felt like I had a lot to prove, what with never having covered two sports at once, or worked two-plus hours away from the actual office, and I probably had to defeat the idea I couldn’t get along with who I needed to get along with in the chain of command and would instead simply, silently do my job.

It was perfect. Remember, this was a P.M. newspaper then and you had to slant your stories in a slightly askew angle to make them work. I am, as you know, slightly askew. And I’m lucky. Really, really lucky.

Let me just say this one thing about Jack. You have no clue — no clue — what he’s done behind the scenes. Many of the stories I write or break he has something to do with. Just about every time I call and say, “Hey, I’m working on this thing and I was wondering if you knew someone at such-and-such place,” he not only knows the person and has a cell phone number or an email address, but his name usually gets me with that person and then gets me information I wouldn’t have otherwise had.

This happened just recently with the third-tier stuff that was a little over my head, but is in Jack’s wheelhouse. It was then when I really realized how much things are going to change for me and, by extension, for you.

And here comes my conclusion. I’ll forever be proud of the way I and the Daily Mail covered the whole drama from Dana Holgorsen being hired in December 2010 to being promoted in June 2011. I think people should be made aware of how much Jack affected it. He was the one who pinned Oliver Luck down at a Rotary Club meeting in December and became the first media person to mention Holgorsen to the suddenly-flush athletic director. That opened our flood gates. He was the one who worked with me to plan what to do with what we had that preceded the June 6 story saying WVU suspected Bill Stewart might be involved in besmirching Dana Holgorsen. He was the only one talking to Bill Stewart the following three days before he resigned. He was the one telling me how to avoid a subpoena.

I really could go on and on and drag this out and I could mention how he fought battles for me or how he never said a word to discourage anything about my book, but he’d probably send me a terse email about going too long. My point is that as he parts, I feel the need to point out what should have been pointed out so many times before: Despite what you may think of him, or perhaps in conjunction with that, Jack Bo was a priceless commodity, a clever writer, a dogged researcher and reporter and just a good person to have telling you what to do and how to do it, as well as a good sport, a great traveling partner, a connoisseur of large pizza and a consumer of frosty drafts and six packs. Farewell, my friend.