The Sock 'Em, Bust 'Em Board

So by now surely you’ve heard about or read this as well as this. Not sure what I can tell you to make you feel better, because reliving that chapter and overlooking a lot of progress in just standard operating procedure, let alone basketball, cannot feel especially good. There really isn’t much reporting to do on this because all you’re going to get are denials and no comments and the like — but understand I do know how to use my cell phone, and I lived this once before just as I was beginning as a beat writer.

I suppose the biscuit I could offer is that WVU policed itself quite capably during all of this as it happened and worked cooperatively with the NCAA. In the end, the Mountaineers ruled four people ineligible and successfully had three reinstated, which was a rather sizable achievement at that time considering how bad that whole ordeal looked.

And plus, what if Tyrone Sally never happened in 2003, 2004 and 2005? He was fantastic as a senior and people may have forgotten what he did against Creighton — the famed Sally Rally, from one of the worst games I ever saw him play to one of the most heroic clutch performances I ever witnessed, in a NCAA Tournament game he’d been praying to one day play in, no less — and how he pretty much saved WVU against Texas Tech. Yet he was always believed to be one of the four who were implicated in the scandal.

Still …

Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which has a major announcement about the weekly football chats … and will reveal it next week.

Let’s close the quotes around yesterday’s wholly avoidable hysterics. It would have been very, very easy to put that fire out, or even pour water on the matches before any fire ever started, and simply tell people there was a family emergency Geno Smith needed to tend to.

Better ways were available. Enough people on the staff and on the sports information staff knew about it before practice that we never need to go, or to be taken to, where we ultimately went.

That said, Dana Holgorsen has his ways and we should probably know by now he trusts his organization and his operation and will not betray either. Yesterday was a reminder, though unintended, that he has his ways. Those easier and better ways to handle that situation? Not his ways.

Coaches are all different in many ways, but they’re alike in a few ways, too. The best ones are stubborn and won’t be drawn out of their routines and boundaries. Consider one exception and then you start considering others and then the whole thing can get out of whack. Treat everything the same and you can predict or anticipate results and consequences — and this is a business that doesn’t often invite surprises and uncertainty.

Really, what happened yesterday was no different than what we’ve seen many times before. Remember, Dana doesn’t discuss injuries unless it has to to with missing games or corrective surgery. When asked, he’ll remind you of his policy before he talks with any depth about injuries.

The day he was hired, he was asked about the report he’d hire Bill Bedenbaugh and Shannon Dawson. Dana said he wasn’t going to talk about staffing — not that day and not in the future. In the offseason — and, honesty, before that — he wouldn’t address the defensive coaches he lost and the positions he’d fill.

I mean, he’s consistent, right?

It seems to me he’s also at home with his relationship with the media here — and that’s not easy. But he’s carved out a cozy little place and he knows when he can extend his legs and stretch his arms.

You do know he walked over to the media Monday after he put good on good for the first and only time in camp and said, “Are you guys happy now?” There was some sarcasm there, but I think he also wanted to show us something so we could tell you something.

So if you think he didn’t enjoy, even just a little bit, that his innocent adherence to his rules caused the histrionics it did, and that those histrionics were the strongest reminders available that his way is the only way here, I’ve got some land near the law school hill I’d like to sell you.

Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, show yourself.

Karl said:

I think people can relax a bit with all of the post-Rich Rod coach departure anxiety. We are no longer in the Big East — arguably the NCAA’s best proving ground for coaches on their way to bigger and better things. With this move to the Big 12, we are bigger and better things. We are one of the haves. The number of programs that may be more attractive to a coach has been cut significantly. The way up from WVU now is a group of maybe 10-15 elite programs. Yes, an Oklahoma or a Texas will still be a threat to poach our coach. But the days of worrying about some mid-level Big 10 team or almost any ACC team are over.

I’m inclined to agree with you on this. That’s probably the biggest and yet maybe most underrated aspect of the move to the Big 12. It always seemed to me the Big East was treated like a farm system for the other leagues — and that the Big East even accepted that. Not any more, unless you subscribe to the theory WVU can never big big-time or the big leagues. That’s why it’s critical to lock up Oliver Luck. Still, I think it would have been smart to include a no-compete clause, or at least some specific language, about going to another Big 12 school. The contract isn’t even. It tilts to Dana’s side, but it’s not unusual for a contract to do that. That said, there really isn’t an explanation for keeping that stuff out except that WVU wanted to avoid that issue in negotiations.