I realized this today when I started to research and write this post, but we’ve been hemming and hawing for seven years about the way West Virginia does and, more to the point, does not honor its athletic past. The athletic department tried to shut our traps today.

I think we can agree that the Mountaineers have had a number of excellent athletes, coaches and ambassadors through the years, but you don’t see a lot of jerseys and numbers hanging around the various stadiums. In short, the clubs were too exclusive, that being the product of an extremely stringent set of requirements to have a jersey or a number retired.

Well, WVU sought to change all of that today, essentially doing away with retired jerseys and replacing that method of remembrance with the agreeably more inclusive Mountaineer Legends Society.

The WVU Sports Hall of Fame will serve as the first honor to recognize greatness in Mountaineer athletics. A former student-athlete must first be inducted into the WVU Sports Hall of Fame to be considered for the next step of recognition.

After induction into the WVU Sports Hall of Fame, the second step to honor Mountaineer greatness will be with a Legends Society distinction, if the student-athlete meets the criteria for his or her sport. Criteria for Legends Society status has been established for all 18 current varsity sports, along with former sports, so that each program can recognize its past great student-athletes.

The Mountaineer Legends Society program will replace the retirement of a jersey honor, which had previously served as the second form of recognition. The ultimate honor for greatness in a Mountaineer uniform will still be to have a number retired. Currently only two numbers in football and two in men’s basketball have been retired.

I dig it. There’s something to be said about fans, visitors, recruits and opponents walking into the venue and looking around and realizing what coaches, players and teams used to perform there. WVU now has a much better mechanism to provide that.

To join the society, you have to be in the WVU hall of fame, as legends tend to be, and then check just one item on a list of criteria. Just one. There are 13 criteria for football, which has 36 names now for the society. The other 17 sports on campus will submit their criteria in the future.

Retiring a number remains very difficult, though not as difficult because you no longer need to have a retired jersey. Instead, you have to have a degree from WVU, be in the Mountaineer Legends Society, be in WVU’s hall of fame, be a prominent Olympic, international team or professional athlete and be in your sport’s national hall of fame, if the sport has one.