As promised. Do enjoy.

Something came up yesterday afternoon in the form of an appointment I wasn’t anticipating, but it’s actually good news and I think I can put that appointment to use for the mailbag. Also, as of last night I’ve heard Dontrill Hyman and Mario Alford are supposed to be here today and ready to go tomorrow and that WVU is crossing fingers on Brandon Golson, Darrien Howard and Isaac McDonald. Doesn’t mean they won’t be or aren’t already here or that they won’t make it, but it means that as I type this they’re not in the same boat, to speak, with Hyman and Alford.

Better news? More time for your T4M questions.

Meantime, here’s a picture of Dana Holgorsen assembling his offensive depth chart last night.

“…X, H, LT, A Back, B Back, QB2…”

(But seriously, commence with the Tier 4 questions…)

Good news! The RFP process went smoothly and America’s favorite Charleston Daily Mail sports video blog about WVU shot at a basement office (CDMSVBAWVUSBO) returns tomorrow and will have regularly scheduled, if not irregularly hosted, editions throughout the season. You can exhale now.

To kick things off, how about a primer? It’s been a long time since we talked about football in much depth and I’ve been all over the Puskar Center and Dallas in between then and now. I think I can answer a lot of questions and I’ll simply wing it for the ones I don’t have answers to. I’ll tackle these in no pads tomorrow.

While we’re on the topic of new beginnings, let’s consider this for a moment. I’m a guy who thinks the third season is a big season for a head coach.

I’m off this week until the start of practice, but I pre-programmed some posts and some discussion topics to get us through the days — and I’m not mailing it in, honest. We’ll do more than one a day and I’m close enough to my base that I’d see a bat signal.

Still, I thought it was appropriate to gear down and then begin with this talking point.

Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which has been locked in a film room putting together a 2013 game plan. I think we’re going to change up our operation here at the WVUSBWMC for the football season, which, holy cow, starts Thursday. Not to give away too much, but I’m weighing quality and quantity and I’m trying enhance my footing on the newspaper end, too. It takes time, but it takes a plan and I want to get that together so I can give both platforms amble time and productivity.

There’s a lot going on here, and I think we had a pretty good scheme last year with some new stuff, and now we’ve established Tier 4 as a legitimate and lucrative, albeit somewhat tongue-in-cheek, vehicle. I just wonder if this needs to be a place people come to get information or a place people come to get TFGD and The Good and the Bad and F Double and any other uniquity for which we’re known. We’ve always been more content provider than content aggregator, anyhow, and those content aggregators are all over the place now.

So I ask: What do we need to do here? We have staples that hold everything together. There are favorites and there are things you could probably do without — and there’s a history here of me ditching things I or you don’t like. I guess what I’m asking is what, either specifically or generally, or perhaps even both, do you want to find here?

I’ll hang up and listen.

Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, stay tuned … and sleep inside.

netbros said:

Do some scholarship college football players have it so bad that they delude themselves into believing somehow that pointing a gun at other people and taking possession of their belongings will have a positive outcome?

I guess I’m just getting old. I simply don’t get it. Their room and board is paid for. They get a free education. They eat like kings. They’re idolized by little kids and old farts alike.

Is it drugs and/or alcohol talking? Is it peer pressure? Whatever it is, it’s totally beyond my ability to comprehend.

Let’s not let Korey Harris spoil the punch for everyone. The guy, allegedly, committed armed robbery with a ski mask, but also while wearing his personalized team-issued sweat pants. He is, quite clearly, not the norm. The twisted part? I’ve seen this used as incentive to pay athletes. “Nobody is robbing people for money they don’t have if they have a stipend!”

Tried to pin more details on this today, but I could not because people don’t like talking about things that are unfinished.

Nevertheless, WVU and Penn State will renew their football series in few years. A two-year, home-and-home series is being completed, though the sites and dates are not yet determined and we could be waiting a while for an announcement.

West Virginia (it hopes) will have nine junior college transfers on the field when preseason practice starts a week from today — and I use the parenthesis because Dontrill Hyman, Mario Alford and Brandon Golson, almost inarguably the three best juco players, are not yet here. It’s an unusually high number for the Mountaineers, but it’s near the norm, if only slightly above, in the Big 12.

And if all goes well for the Mountaineers, they’ll find starters at punter, outside receiver, inside receiver, defensive end and linebacker. That doesn’t even account for possibilities at running back and center. WVU has players there who might be better or more experienced, or both, than what WVU has, though the coaches won’t complain if a juco takes a sopt there because, well, that’s the point of recruiting those guys.

It’s an experiment, of sorts, for the Mountaineers, but it’s a necessity, too, and one they’re starting to learn about only now. They may have a lot to learn about the Big 12, but, fortunately, the Big 12 has a lot to share.

I’ll spare you the details of a South American couple walking off with my roller board at lunch at IAH yesterday, or the subsequent frantic search, or the joyous moment when I learned my bag had been located, or the intense encounter with IAH police, or the scene with the K9 sniffing my bag, or the likelihood I was added to a watch list. Let’s instead focus on the really interesting stuff from yesterday.

It began innocently enough with a tip in the morning.

Have heard today West Virginia Radio Corp. and IMG were negotiating, but that it’s broken down — perhaps permanently.

— Mike Casazza (@mikecasazza) July 24, 2013

Not really a surprise, though, call me crazy, I was kind of hoping they’d work something out because that would be best for the fans who rely on the radio. Yeah, it has to work for IMG and it has to work for WVRC, but, man, the people have no voice in this matter and it bugs me a little that they’re going to have their ears taken, too.

Side-effects? We’ve been over this before. It’s happening now. If they can’t get back at the table and work something out — and I’m told that’s not going to happen — then IMG has to hustle, or more accurately, hustle beyond the current hustle.

Then things got a little bit more interesting …

We laugh, I think, when wondering when Karl Joseph will get ejected from a game in the coming season — and by “we,” I mean you — but it’s no laughing matter to Joseph. He’s been hearing about the new targeting rule for days now and he knows why.

Joseph knows he’s an aggressive player and a big hitter as much as he knows the new rule has the best intentions. But it’s also awfully subjective and it’s going to be controversial. Joseph thinks it’s just another way to enable the offenses and he things an ejection is “intense.”

The rule is intricate, so much so that Walt Anderson could not manage all the skepticism yesterday, and players aren’t entirely sure what to think. They haven’t been able to meet with coaches or invited officials to understand it. But understand this: They don’t like it because it makes them “look like wussies.”

“It’s frustrating to guys like me who are hard hitters and vicious players,” Dixon said. “We have to slow down. We can’t run to the ball as fast as we can. We can’t hit guys like we want to hit them. We can’t really bring the boom like we want to.”

It’s going to be a mess, whether in the form of slipshod tackling that turns into bogus touchdowns or the controversy that comes from ejections, but it’s coming and probably fast. It’s a point of emphasis this season and coaches and players expect to see the penalties and ejections early because officials are being asked to enforce the rule and to force changes so many dislike.

“This is what we do,” Dixon said. “This is like me telling you, ‘Hey, don’t write down everything I say.’ That’s what you do. We hit guys. We make guys feel pain. That’s what we do. When you take that away from us, it’s like me telling you, ‘Hey, give me your notebook,’ and never letting you use it again because you wrote the wrong thing down.”

Some zings and some things we haven’t heard much about before. Not included: Dana and his son went to Africa.