Well, this comes from a conversation yesterday afternoon and, as such, ahead of the Texas A&M acceptance into the SEC, supposition the SEC might move to add WVU or Missouri and, of course, Baylor’s road block, but the Athletic Director does indeed have a feel for where things are going and what the Mountaineers must do.
No surprise, but Texas A&M tidied up its house the past few weeks and was accepted into the Southeastern Conference … though with a condition.
In a statement released Wednesday morning, the league said it unanimously approved A&M’s application but under the condition that the remaining Big 12 schools offer no roadblocks to the Aggies departure.
By every available indication, Baylor is throwing up gang signs and doesn’t want to let the Aggies out the door. We’ve touched on this before, but there’s no way to ensure civility over chaos, no authority figure to oversee these conference shifts, no figurehead to which actors go to to have their actions approved.
Someone somewhere was going to stand up and say, “Whoa. What about the rather significant consequences of this action? How are we to deal with them? What about us?”
Baylor — or whoever; let’s assume from here on out it is the Bears and their university president — isn’t suing, or threatening to sue, to get into the SEC. There are interests to protect and if the A&M shift precedes moves by some combination of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas and Texas Tech, then the Big XII is finished and schools like Baylor and Iowa State are in serious, serious trouble, especially when it appears the Big East has offered Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri a soft landing.
And look beyond them. Conference realignment and polarization puts into peril programs that want to grow into one of those contenders — like a Baylor, but also an Appalachian State. And don’t dismiss the idea what Baylor is doing is as much of a message to the Pac-12 and the schools that might bolt the Big XII for the Pac-12.
Or for the SEC.
Last night rumblings started and grew to suggest the SEC was ready to target Missouri and West F. Virginia as the 14th team. Baylor then postured. What if Baylor agrees to drop the suit under as long as the SEC doesn’t target a Big XII school as No. 14? That would preserve the Big XII since Missouri calls that conference home. Then the SEC has one fewer school to choose from, if those rumblings are true.
Suppose they are, just for this exercise. I have a serious question for you and I want you to think over an answer and explain it with detail and in depth: Do you want WVU in the SEC?
Dana Holgorsen has his weekly press conference at 1 p.m. and player interviews follow as WVU tries to accelerate an abbreviated week — and that’s awesome. Tuesdays are generally root canals and the shorter I’m in the dentist’s chair, the better. I’m sure he’ll go over the first game one more time and probably have a few things to say about Norfolk State and perhaps even Maryland, which has an open week before playing host to the Mountaineers.
I’m still at a loss to explain the outrage over how Sunday unfolded. I’m aware it wasn’t a tidy affair, but I’m legitimately puzzled how people would make it better. Oliver Luck was asked to discuss it again Monday night and I’m just not sure there were any other ways to proceed other than what we witnessed and experienced. Now, could those ways be changed? Absolutely.
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Dana Holgorsen thought his offense was pretty good Sunday, despite all that stood in its way. There were some nervous reactions throughout the stadium in the first quarter, but what the head coach was left feeling Monday was that he, too, would have liked to have played a bit longer.
“We had some things break down early on, but I think that had more to do with what the scheme was and us trying to figure out some first-game stuff – you don’t know what to expect and they did some things schematically that we didn’t know they were going to do,” Mountaineers Coach Dana Holgorsen said.
“Sometimes it takes four quarters to figure it out, but I really felt if we had another quarter we’d get to a point where we could do some more things.”
Can you get down with that? Do you, too, respect Marshall’s defensive front? Did you see those zone blitzes?
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Not much more to say about last night’s weather and the football game. Players and coaches and pretty much everyone somehow involved in that seven-hour production were pretty weary by the end of it. Hard to blame anyone for anything — though I knew one would try … and he did. You have to go to great lengths to try and fit that game in and you have you have to expect one team is going to want to get it over with and one side is going to play until the end.
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12:41: You are looking live at the scoreboard in the south end zone at Mountaineer Field. It projects exciting things for today’s season-opener. Just a reminder: Texts from Game Day is back in business. If you’re not familiar, get familiar.
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Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which has its eyes on a prize this weekend. Your over/under for total points Sunday is 55. I find that interesting. In the previous coach’s three seasons, the final scores against Marshall were 27-3, 24-7 and 24-21. With The Product? Try 42-10 and 48-23. Certainly Dana Holgorsen is going to move the needle, but to what extreme?
Consider this: In his first game at Houston in 2008 and his first game at Oklahoma State, Holgorsen’s offenses averaged 60 points, to say nothing of plenty of yards and a slew of superlatives for players, teams and first games. So you can believe WVU will score some points Sunday. Holgorsen has proved that through the years.
“The advantage in that style of play was the players had so many reps prior to the first game that they felt like they’d been in the system a year or two already,” said Oklahoma State Coach Mike Gundy, who hired Holgorsen from the Cougars to invigorate his offense.
From the beginning, when he was introduced in December as the offensive coordinator, Holgorsen surprised audiences with how simple he made his offense sound. The installation, he said, would take three days. Subsequent days would be spent revisiting the lessons from those first three and refining what was learned.
The playbook was thin and contained a small number of plays. He and his coaches would add almost nothing during the season and instead take the things they felt comfortable with and practiced most during game week.
That was the background for all of the time spent preparing for the first game. The players were prepared and Holgorsen feels the same now.
“I think our guys understand what to do,” he said. “We should know what to do, which means we’ll play fast. If you accomplish that, you should be moving forward.”
The Mountaineers are just half of the equation, though. Marshall’s offense is going to offer some unknowns and surprises and that will test and bend a defense that will be susceptible to those unknowns and surprises. There are new starters and new players on defense and you can’t ask them, or expect them, to be perfect from the outset. So the Thundering Herd will score, too.
Can they hold hands and get past 55? Or does Vegas know something we don’t know?
Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, don’t bare too much.
(P.S. I changed the Twitter avatar for the weekend. I’ll try to make the avatar appropriate for every game. Quick question: If you’re familiar with “icing,” can people “Mike” other people? Or did CSC cover that in the alcohol management training?)
Gordo said:
Can someone explain to me why Shawne Alston is not even being mentioned in the running backs competition among tailbacks or fullbacks?
I can now: He had an injury we never knew about and it kept him out of practice for three weeks. Prior to that revelation, I remember Holgorsen saying highly complimentary things and vowing to find ways to use the big back in the running game. I could have sworn he was even mentioned in that group of seven.
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Chat went swimmingly today and you can read it again for the first time right here. The only time we’ve had more readers and comments is June 8, two days before Dana Holgorsen was promoted. Glad to see we’ve sustained an audience there. Having some issues with the Daily Mail website today, but we should be up and running with some updates later.
Join me for Ask Me About Stuff (Anything) at 11a.m. tomorrow. Here is your link.
You can drop your questions in the queue ahead of time, so long as the window remains open. Never fear: I’ll open it again before we begin. If you must, toss questions in the comment section here and I’ll try to include them.
As for the name, I can’t thank you enough for the many, many suggestions. A lot of people had a lot of laughs. This title is not permanent and we’ll pick a new one every week as can. Perhaps we’ll pull from the original list. Perhaps we’ll be inspired by something someone says. It’s going to be like naming game captains, I suppose. This one, however, was just too good to ignore for such a special edition.
