You are looking live at the weirdest place to play in the Big 12. The stands are close to the field, so there’s not a lot of room for sideline huddles. Whatever chatting you do between series is polluted with sound. The fans are right on top of the players and coaches. The walls are padded, and the fans hang over the edge and thump those walls.

It can be really windy here — Boone Pickens Stadium … imagine that — but it’s also enclosed. The field is well below the skyline, and it’s surrounded by the stadium bowl and then the team building, which is tall enough to support two video boards.

But! Oklahoma State has lost once here this season and lost two home games in each of the previous two years. The Cowboys were 17-2 at home the prior three years. This is also Oklahoma State’s third 11 a.m. start. These are tricky for home fans, especially here. The Oklahoma Sooners are a bigger deal in the state, and they’re at home for a 7 p.m. game against Kansas. Never mind.

Let’s get to the reason we’re all here, though. It’s BMX.

Two seasons ago, The Other Team’s Safety had an amazing knack for turning in a career day against the Mountaineers. It was uncanny.

“When you see a guy out there making every tackle, sure it’s obvious,” offensive line coach Ron Crook said. “You can’t miss something like that.”

The performance has become the stuff of legend over at Mountaineer Field, the sort of story that’s bound to be mentioned through the years only slightly less than it is right now.

“I’d be lying to say it isn’t something we think about,” running backs coach JaJuan Seider said. “It’s something we see when the coaches are watching film. And our guys know it, but you don’t want to keep beating a dead horse. You don’t want them to over-think it and try to second-guess how they run and change things up.”

WVU, which was then only beginning this trend toward a fruitful running game, was good enough to get to the second level and not good enough to make the safety miss. It was really something. Included on the roster of monster performances? Oklahoma State’s Jordan Sterns, who had 20 tackles here in a 34-10 loss.

Well, last season, it was a Cowboys linebacker who had himself a day. Chad Whitener made what was then a career-high 11 tackles and he forced a fumble inside the WVU 30-yard line that preceded a Cowboys touchdown and later recovered a fumble inside the Oklahoma State 10.

It was also his first start. And he wasn’t healthy. “My lungs were kind of messed up,” he said, recalling a bout he won against pneumonia. But this ought not be a surprise, and not because WVU has bad luck or an ability to inspire defenders. Whitener is a quick learner.

Take his golf game. He first played when he was in seventh grade. “A year later,” he said, “I shot a 74.” He was made to give up golf when he was in high school. He was sort of passing time playing middle school football, and he wanted to play golf in the fall in high school. The varsity football coach asked Whitener to try football with the freshman team. “He moved me up to varsity during the first season,” Whitener said. “I asked him about golf, and he said, ‘Oh, no. You’re not doing that. You’re staying here.'”

Before golf, though, was BMX.

He grew up playing basketball in New Mexico, but, naturally, he was playing with kids a year older. They all reached a level that wouldn’t allow Whitener to play up, so he had to find another diversion. There was a bike track behind the basketball gym, and Whitener’s father, Charles, was an accomplished, world-renowned biker.

So Whitener’s parents bought their 6-year-old son a bike, and he took it from there.

“I was pretty good,” he said. “I got sponsored, had one of the best sponsorships you can get — Answer Racing — which was really good for me. I had my own bikes. Gear. Everything. I was kind of a forced to be reckoned with, as far as racing goes.”

He quickly progressed form novice to intermediate to expert. “It’s competition,” he said. “I didn’t like being called a novice, just like I don’t like losing.”

He and his mom traveled the country in an RV. He won a bunch of national championships. He was flown to Japan and Canada for major events. He has a trophy case that’s stuffed full of prizes. The overflow is stored in his bedroom.

“It’s intense,” he said. “It’s fast. Quick. You’ve got to react. There’s a little bit of elbowing. It’s racing. One time, I went through a turn and came in too fast and went low to high and hit a kid. He went over the turn. I flipped over. It’s a physical sport. It’s not football-physical, but it is physical. It’s wild.”

And then one day, when he was 13 or 14, he decided he was done with that and he wanted to play golf. Today, he’ll play middle linebacker for the Cowboys and try to add to his 39 tackles and four tackles for a loss. The Mountaineers will try to make him miss.