A little more than 14 months ago, I sat down with Dana Holgorsen for the first time and we had a conversation that’s going to be hard for me to ever shake.

Not that I’d ever want to.

It was nothing especially remarkable as far as football or strategy or direction was concerned, but it was nevertheless memorable. We touched on all sorts of things, things that would really never carry over to the field. It was more like talking for the first time to someone you were going to share office space with or someone who was moving into the apartment across the hall.

I mean, this was basically his handshake that morning.

“Which is better?” he asked inside his office earlier this month. “The meatball sub at Varsity Club or the stuffed meatball at Stefano’s?”

This is symbolic of nothing relevant to football, which he finally gets his hands on Wednesday in the first of WVU’s 15 spring practices. This is comparing the merits of Morgantown’s eateries and is not to be confused with mastering NCAA compliance or familiarizing himself with a new roster.

This is just the way Holgorsen has gotten to know a place that is still getting to know him … and it’s been a pretty important part of his new life.

“That meatball sub is pretty good,” he said. “The stuffed meatball comes in a bowl by itself with some sauce. They call it an appetizer, but it’s pretty much a meal.”

I remember saying I’d had the sub and my wife once had the meatball, so I’d have to go with the sub. I don’t recall him ever giving me an answer.

Until now.

This from Bruce Feldman’s latest Morgantown essay, culled from his visitn for the spring game.

Two tables full of West Virginiacoaches made the 100-yard walk across the street to the Varsity Club on a balmy April night to toast Joe DeForest. The occasion: the Mountaineers’ new co-defensive coordinator had turned 47. At the head of the table, DeForest, only a few months removed from coming over from Oklahoma State, was busy trading barbs with Shannon Dawson, the team’s offensive coordinator. Both assistants have small-college Louisiana and Texas roots, much like almost every other Mountaineers assistant in the place on this night. Even Dawson’s parents, just in from Louisiana for the WVU spring game, heaved some zingers their son’s way.

A few hours later, most of the tavern has cleared out. These tables, which had been covered with platters wilting under overstuffed meatball subs, are now littered with salt and pepper-shakers. The condiments have become de facto Xs and Os. The Mountaineers’ other new co-defensive coordinator, Keith Patterson, another guy with small-school Texas roots before devising formidable defenses at Tulsa and Pitt, is “diagramming” his theories on ways to attack a spread offense to his boss Dana Holgorsen and Jake Spavital, the QBs coach.

Closure.