You are looking live at the site of the Big 12 Game of the Year of the Week! No. 11 Oklahoma State won 31-6 today even though it was a six-point underdog at TCU. But the Cowboys are 9-2 overall and 7-1 in the Big 12, and they’ll play for the conference championship Dec. 3.

One of the teams in tonight’s game could, as well.

For 10th-ranked West Virginia, it can’t lose tonight, Saturday at Iowa State — which suddenly looks dicey — or at home Dec. 3 against Baylor — which ran out the clock down 42-21 with four minutes left today and has lost four in a row. Should the Mountaineers do all of that, they then need No. 8 Oklahoma to beat the Cowboys in Bedlam in Norman.

For the Sooners, if they win tonight and beat Oklahoma State, they have the conference title.

It’s very simple, even if the Big 12 is as weird as ever.

Tonight, though, answers a lot of questions for the Mountaineers, the folks involved and the people in charge. The person asking some of these questions? That’d be the athletic director, Shane Lyons, who’s having a pretty good time watching this all unfold.

“They’ve played hard, and we’ve had the ball bounce our way a couple times when probably the last few years we haven’t had the ball bounce our way,” Lyons told me. “Good football teams, those things happen. But what I really like about this team is the different units have stepped up at some point when they were needed and made a difference in the game.”

As many of you have noted, Lyons is around the program as a matter of routine. He travels. He’s in the locker room. He’s in press conferences. This is not new. He did this last season. His presence may seem more noticeable now because his role is more significant now. This season began with Dana Holgorsen, at the minimum, in limbo. Sooner or later, he needs to acknowledge The Holgorsen Situation, and while the outcome may seem different now than it did in, say, September, his work is not.

“I don’t think you can ever evaluate a program if you’re not around it,” he said. “I’ve been asked about this, even before now, even last year, because I think it was kind of an anomaly that I was around. My philosophy as A.D. is if you’re going to have the pulse of the athletic department, the programs and the student-athletes, you better be around to develop relationships with them and develop deeper relationships with the coaching staff.

“The way I look at it, we’re one big team, win or lose. To properly evaluate what the needs are or what direction we’re heading, I think I have to be around. I just can’t come to a game, in my opinion, as a general fan and watch a game and go home. I’ve got to be at practices. I’ve got to be in the locker rooms. I’ve got to be around the team and travel with them and everything else just to get the full experience as best as I can.”

As you might imagine, Lyons approves of what Holgorsen & Co. have done this season, and he’s looking ahead to how to sustain and enhance success in the manners in which a program and its infrastructure do. He said the training room — the place WVU oftentimes doesn’t take recruits — needs up dated in the next year. The locker room and the position meeting rooms “need some touch-ups.” Costs are a concern. Fundraising is a focus.

“Facilities, I think, are a very important ingredient to success,” he said. “I go back and look at the men’s basketball practice facility, which I think is one of the best in the country, if not the best in the country. I think we’re starting to reap the benefits of that. We bring kids in here on recruiting visits, and all of a sudden they think, ‘Wait a minute, I didn’t expect this.’ They see obviously a first-class coaching staff, a first-class training facility. We’re upgrading the playing facility. You throw it all together and it correlates to the success of the program across the board.

“Look at our women’s soccer program. Again, great facility, great coach who’s been here, and she’s having success. Coach Huggins. Great facility, great coach, he’s having success. Football continues to be upgraded, and we’re getting back on the right track to success.”

And there’s our segue. Lyons isn’t commenting on what is or is not happening with regard to Holgorsen and his contract. But given that quote in our conversation, I wondered if it might be fair to consider Nikki Izzo-Brown and Bob Huggins and the way WVU has invested in both of their programs and to project Holgorsen several years in the future with improved facilities.

“I think there are a number of ingredients that go into that,” Lyons said. “Going back to Nikki, she was a one-time coach who’s been around the head coaching job 20-plus years now. Coach Huggins, 30-something years. You look at Dana, he’s been the coach for five or six years. I think as coaches grow, as they learn and as they see more things, they know what it takes to win. With a football program, you’re taking about putting your staff together. You’re taking about your needs with student-athletes in certain positions. What’s going to work? What’s not going to work? I think all of that is a cycle you have to go through, and that’s what’s happening in the football program.”