… this WVU football team is now something very different. WVU announced this afternoon that Ivan McCartney has left the team. That’s probably a big deal, depending on how you want to look at it. That’s two receivers in less than a week that decided they didn’t like life at WVU — and this is supposed to be a receiver’s offense. And both kids had started during the four-game losing streak, when the coaches were looking for anyone who wanted to do something with an opportunity.

Travares Copeland, who preceded McCartney in bursting through the fire exit, was a pretty enticing recruit who, we all thought, the coaches liked. That candle burned very quickly and it is another blow to recruiting, which already took a sizable hit when Deontay McManus didn’t make it over the summer.

McCartney’s wick lasted longer, but this was happening all season. He absolutely thought about leaving in August, but was given a weekend and decided not to go. Timing is probably not a strength of his because a kid whose freshman season was basically squandered and did very little with this junior season will have to sit out next season if he wants to stay at the Division I level.

And there’s also a relationship with Miramar High to remember here, though every indication suggests this is an individual development at WVU and not an institutional one.

Yet the questions are out there … with all the other ones. And that leads to this: I say it’s “probably” a big deal, but, really, isn’t is just the latest headline in a season gone wrong?

“We’re clearly not getting through to our players that you need to go out there, play at a high level and not make junior high mistakes 100 percent of the time,” Holgorsen said.