If you’re still out there, the update from Lubbock, where Texas Tech hammered No. 5 WVU, 49-14.

So yesterday was something of a sad day. Fifteen years earlier, John Denver died in a plane crash. Denver’s intentions and loyalties have been debated warmly throughout the years and we’ve had occasion to visit those topics in the past, including the 2008 game at Colorado.

Was he more fond of the Rocky Mountains or the Country Roads? And is “Take Me Home, Country Roads” about West Virginia or the western part of Virginia?

It doesn’t matter. Not today. What we do know is Mr. Denver played his beautiful guitar at the first game at Mountaineer Field …

… and that the song is an indelible part of the WVU tradition.

Yet he was also an architectural student at Texas Tech who was in the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. The story, as I was told by the locals here, is that the school’s chancellor, Kent Hance, was the fraternity president. He urged Denver to stay in school because the music thing was a little risky. Denver gambled, left the university and ultimately won.

Fittingly, this game-within-the-game has become a fun little diversion this week. You’ll have to do some navigating, because there isn’t a direct link, but there’s a short feature here.