Much has been made about Alabama and tempo — I seriously just typed Alabampo, so … — but whether you want to hear or read about it or not, it’s a valid talking point for this Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game. WVU is at its best when it plays with pace. The Crimson Tide can come undone when the opponent pushes the pedal to the floorboard. (Then again, so can many teams.)

But when you’re looking at Alabama and you’re looking for cracks and those cracks are hard to find, little ones can be made to be bigger.

That can be misleading and thus dangerous, and perhaps Dana Holgorsen was doing me a solid when he stepped all over my tempo question Tuesday like it was Eddie Murphy’s couch.

Having said that, it’s a dynamic we must watch tomorrow. Because there will be tempo. And there must be tempo. The Mountaineers can’t out-methodical Alabama. They have to manufacture advantages and that’s the — AIR QUOTES! — easiest way to do it.

But if you’re going to have this conversation, you have to do it the right way.

WVU couldn’t fastball anyone last year until, I guess, Iowa State. Maybe? In the brief snippets of practice we saw this month, we saw tempo. In all the interview opportunities we’ve had, we’ve heard about tempo. These player are supposed to be better at it now than they were before. It makes sense because continuity is a key there. The 2011 team wasn’t very good at playing fast. The contiguous 2012 team was better at it.

And the absolute truth is if you can stack plays and gains on top of Alabama, you can succeed.

Now, you’re not going to gas Alabama. You’re not. No one has seen fewer snaps per game the past three years than the Crimson Tide.

But … but the teams that have beaten them — there have been just nine the past six years — averaged just above 65. Texas A&M didn’t beat Alabama, but had 71 in a loss last season, but had more yards than any other Alabama or Saban opponent ever. Oklahoma had 74 in the Sugar Bowl win — and needed darn near every one — and scored 48 points, the most allowed in the Saban Era.

These are the teams that are supposed to be most like WVU, or vice versa. Jimmys and Joes, I know, but the Xs and Os matter, too.

True, Alabama can strangle teams, but the Mountaineers aren’t trying to cheat off losing blueprints or study off anyone else’s paper. They need to be themselves, but also be realistic and remember and consider the opponent. They need to be evasive and elusive with their tempo and their decisions about where and when to tempo.

“Obviously, there are outliers on both sides — some are probably high and some are low — but somewhere in the middle, maybe 65 or 70, is good, which is a tribute to them and their offense and defense, because that all plays a part in how many snaps you get,” Dawson said. “We want to get as many snaps as we possibly can, but if we get 80 snaps, I think that would probably be beneficial for us.”

It’s ambitious, but this isn’t a matter of whether the Mountaineers should play fast against Alabama. They will. It’s not even a matter of if they can play fast. They believe they’re better at it now than they were last year.

WVU averaged 76.9 snaps per game last season, which was one snap better than the average from 2011, when Geno Smith was in his first season as quarterback and the offense had problems similar to what Clint Trickett and his offense had last season. In Smith’s second season, with a number of offensive linemen and skill players back with him, the offense averaged 79.2 snaps.

“It’s something that is in our plan,” Holgorsen said. “I don’t care about who our opponent is. It’s going to be in our plan to be able to do that, and hopefully within the last year we found a way to do that better than we did last year.”