So yesterday happened, and the E! True Hollywood Story about why and how I got pulled out of vacation to report the Oliver Luck exit and the Shannon Dawson departure — oh, that also went down last night, right about the time I finally sat down to eat … breakfast — is an all-timer that I’m certain you won’t believe. That said, I’m happy it happened — not that way, of course, but overall. I was really worried I’d have to come back and write about this verbal sparring between Bob Huggins and  Dan D’Antoni.

(Huggins nuked the Capital Classic on his radio show Monday night in response to some odd words from Marshall’s first-year coach, namely that he believes the series format should change to something very obtuse and that if WVU backs out of the series now, the school is scared. He then said Marshall was on the way back, which Huggins took to mean was back, which he found to be amusing.)

I wrote this last season and it wasn’t popular: WVU would be happy if the series went away. Getting the Classic out of the middle of conference play was Part I. With the Marshall game now coming in December, WVU can schedule its one non-conference opponent during conference play and use that game to get on TV (which didn’t happen this season because this schedule … never mind). Marshall just isn’t getting WVU televised. At minimum, WVU would prefer another RPI-boosting home game it’s made an art of scheduling in the past.

The Classic outside the legislative session draws thinner crowds, and that’s one more bullet for WVU to fire at the game’s legitimacy, especially when so much of the revenue is based on the gate. This back-and-forth now is just another reason for WVU to do away with it, and Huggins explained his reasoning quite succinctly.

But turn down the volume and understand this: WVU doesn’t have to play this game. Literally doesn’t have to. I’m not talking about some righteous stance. I’m talking about a contractual obligation.

There’s no contract for next year’s game or any future game. The 2015 game is tentatively scheduled for Dec. 17, a Thursday date that ought to draw as well as my 4-month-old niece. But there’s no contract. And now there’s no athletic director, at least for the time being, to conduct business. This is all simple for the Mountaineers: If they suffered a worse indignation than their strength of schedule and they seek to address both, don’t play Marshall because you don’t have to.

So, true, I’m glad we’re not talking about that, and please note the set of circumstances that preceded Oliver Luck’s exit. He’s getting between two angry basketball coaches one day and trying to fix the fractured NCAA the next. That, in a manner of speaking, is why he’s leaving. Remeber, in June — June! — he told us that “(i)n terms of governance, the NCAA makes the Byzantine Empire look efficient. The current governance model is broken and virtually all institutions — small, medium and large — agree on that.” Now he’s second in command there! 

Yesterday was reserved for looks back at his eventful tenure, but here’s the odd part about Luck’s lasting legacy: A lot is yet unwritten and depends on the eventual fates of Dana Holgorsen, who presumably has no ties to his new boss, and the athletic department in the Big 12.

Who’s next? I’m hearing just this morning this could happen relatively quickly, and WVU has been at work because Luck told E. Gordon Gee a few weeks ago he was leaving. We put together a list, and the names are pretty obvious ones, but people seem to think there will be a lot of people interested and who WVU are interested in who didn’t make our cut. That said, E.G.G. is connected and should have no shortage of candidates and shouldn’t have to be persuasive as his predecessor.

I’ve a busy morning with basketball and football interviews, but I’ll share with you one last Luck anecdote. He agreed last month to speak to my sports reporting class on campus. He picked Dec. 10, which my students later pointed out was a no-class, prepare-for-finals day on campus. I couldn’t force them to show up, but I strongly encouraged them to because Luck was fresh out of the College Football Playoff selection committee and Big 12 meetings in New York and he’s always thoughtful on the media.

All 18 attended that day. My class is 75 minutes long. He went for close to 90 and took “one last question” about a half-a-dozen times. We veered so far off the sports media path, but the kids had a blast, and Luck was remarkably candid with them. I mean, remarkably. Yesterday, a few of the students texted or tweeted or emailed me something to remind me of how I pleaded with them to come to that non-obligatory class.

I don’t know if you’ll ever have a chance to have Oliver Luck come speak to one of your classes again.