(But seriously, commence with the Tier 4 questions…)

Good news! The RFP process went smoothly and America’s favorite Charleston Daily Mail sports video blog about WVU shot at a basement office (CDMSVBAWVUSBO) returns tomorrow and will have regularly scheduled, if not irregularly hosted, editions throughout the season. You can exhale now.

To kick things off, how about a primer? It’s been a long time since we talked about football in much depth and I’ve been all over the Puskar Center and Dallas in between then and now. I think I can answer a lot of questions and I’ll simply wing it for the ones I don’t have answers to. I’ll tackle these in no pads tomorrow.

While we’re on the topic of new beginnings, let’s consider this for a moment. I’m a guy who thinks the third season is a big season for a head coach.

I don’t necessarily believe in a make-or-break dynamic, but I think in most situations — and, absolutely, there are exceptions — seeds should be roots and roots should be growing by this time in a coach’s career. There’s been time to recruit and develop players, install, tinker with and trust plans on all three sides of the ball and even assemble a staff and familiarize everybody with the environment and the fan base and all the demands that come with the job that don’t have to do with coaching a football team. The third year is also a time when a lot of contracts are nearing expiration or have crossed the halfway point and athletic directors have to think about the future and rival schools and coaches choose to talk about that future to sway kids one way or another.

There really is a list of reasons Year 3 is important, but those are the big ones.

And lest we forget, I’m also the guy who wrote this. I don’t think there’s any denying the foundation, the facts or the eventuality of that story. There were a lot of dynamics in play at that time that made it clear to see Stewart had to win big that season — and, yes, some third seasons have to be bigger than others.

All of that leads me to this: Dana Holgorsen begins his third season Thursday and I’m not writing a story like that and I only briefly ever entertained the idea. I really only did so to audit myself and my practices. I just don’t see a way to apply the Year 3 Rule, so to speak, to Holgorsen.

And here’s where I hook you or I lose you, but I have a warped view here. I could argue that this is more of Year One than Year Three for Holgorsen. I’m not being apologetic. I’m certain a 7-6 season, or worse, is going to awake the people who live to be awake at low moments like that. In short, I am not naive.

But I’m also not naive. I just don’t think Holgorsen has had a full runway to use before this third season. His first offseason on campus was a disaster and the transition was expedited and the Mountaineers got a ton of breaks with an offense opponents had not seen and a veteran defense that was probably better than we all realized in a league that couldn’t get out of its own way and won the Orange Bowl.

That crafted wild and eventually unrealistic expectations that grew to be so big they obscured the view of the situation. WVU expedited another transition and moved to the Big 12 much quicker than anyone first expected. That was a necessary evil, I understand, but, boy, was it ever evil. The defense was just awful last season and was in no way prepared to play in the Big 12. That’s the nice and the short way of putting it. The offense was dynamic, but really not that different from other offenses in the Big 12 and that certainly played a part in some games, as did the defense, the special teams and the wind.

And that team, really and truly, never got breaks.

Look at 2011 and remember the blocked field goal against Cincinnati, the B.J. Daniels fumble, the Stedman Bailey Holy **** catch and the Tyler Bitancurt field goal against USF and the Cincinnati win against UConn in the final game of the regular season. Those were massive breaks that went WVU’s way — and they don’t even include littler things like Johnny McEntee’s game-changing fumble in the UConn game, someone swathing glue on Tino Sunseri’s right hand in the Pitt game, etc. — and they got WVU to the Orange Bowl, where, surprise, surprise, WVU got more breaks on the way to a laugher.

Last season? I remember two breaks:

1) The third down snap that went past Texas quarterback David Ash and screwed up a drive that ended in a missed field goal.

2) J. D. Woods made an amazing one-handed catch late against Baylor that let WVU run out the clock and not play defense trying to protect a 70-63 lead.

Everything else went the other way. Heck, look at the narrow losses to TCU and Oklahoma. WVU took an untimely nap in the secondary against the Horned Frogs to surrender a 94-yard touchdown late and then lost on a, let’s say, questionable two-point conversion in the second overtime. The Sooners got their game-winning 5-yard touchdown pass on fourth down. Seriously, the Mountaineers, as flawed as they were, were two plays away from a much different season — and they might have even made one of those plays.

This is where you say, “They were two plays away from a much different season in 2011.” And that’s correct.

What I’m saying is we’ve seen Holgorsen assemble a 17-9 record, which feels about right, doesn’t it? I just don’t think he’s had a chance to attack a season like he wanted to, and I’m not saying this is the season that happens either, what with the extraordinary amount of maneuvering he’s done on his coaching staff, where you’ll fine exactly two of the 10 people doing what they did last season: Holgorsen and defensive line coach Erik Slaughter. The point is that I feel like a lot of people are chasing predictions or discussions about this season with “… or else” and I really wonder if the frustrations, as understandable as they are, run deeper than they ought to as we enter Year 3.