The Sock 'Em, Bust 'Em Board Because that's our custom

A little something to get fired up for football

July 26, 2010 by Mike Casazza

Hey, football players report Aug. 6 and practice begins Aug. 7. You’re almost there, a place that seemed pretty far away four months ago when we entered the valley between the end of the basketball season and the Coastal Carolina game.

Now, after a string of so-so summer stories about workouts and bonding and 7-on-7, things start to change. I had an hour-long talk with Bill Stewart a few days before I left and it was remarkable entertaining and enlightening and fodder for a few upcoming stories I can’t wait to write.

Others are revving their engines as well and you’ll now begin to get a taste of the season. And when I say taste, Bob Hertzel means a taste …

That is a deeper subject than you may give it credit for being, for those who believe football is just a game also believe that Ben & Jerry’s is just an ice cream and Jimmy John’s is just a sandwich shop.

Clearly, we are not among them and we recognize the one thing we lack during the summer is the combination of camaraderie, combat and competition that is unique to football. That, of course, is the point Chef Hertzel, with the help of an intensity-inspiring sidekick, was making.

A couple of weeks ago the veteran defensive line coach Bill Kirelawich was discussing the society that is a team, which he believes is what separates football from so many other endeavors, especially sports that are individual in nature.

Kirelawich admitted that he enjoyed such games as golf and tennis, but they lacked the infrastructure that makes team sports different and that is magnified with what football teams must go through year round.

“It is,” Kirelawich said, as only he can, “like going to a movie alone.”

After giving his listener a moment to think about that and let it sink in, he continued.

“You know how it is, you really like the movie and you want to nudge the guy next to you in the ribs at the good parts, but there’s no one there. You want to talk to someone about it when it’s over, but there’s no one to talk to.”

Any news break while I was gone?

by Mike Casazza

My phone was off or abandoned throughout my vacation … until Friday night when I charged it for the first time all week. Rolled over at 8 a.m. Saturday and saw someone texted me hours earlier with the news about Huggins and his ribs. I was sure I was hallucinating. But no, that did happen … while I was gone. Jim Clements is now requesting I not take the first two days off next week, as was previously planned.  

Huggins and numerous other college coaches were in Las Vegas to recruit at a major AAU event. His brother, Larry, was in the city also as the coach of a team from Ohio.

Drew Payne, vice chair of WVU’s Board of Governors and a friend of Huggins and members of his family, spoke with Larry and said Huggins was injured while he packed and readied to leave for the airport and a flight to another AAU event.

“He’d been to a couple of games Friday and went back to the hotel room and he tripped on something and fell and hit a table going down,” Payne said. “He messed up his ribs and maybe even hit his head a little bit. But it was around 4 o’clock in the afternoon and he had to call his brother for help. He was in pretty bad pain and couldn’t really move.”

In a brief statement Saturday, Director of Athletics Oliver Luck said he believed Huggins, 56, would be released later that day. That later changed and Payne and Director of Athletics emeritus Ed Pastilong were under the impression Huggins needed to rest and doctors wanted to monitor the injury.

Broken ribs hinder breathing and simple movements and can’t be stabilized because that can increase pressure and pain and restrict breathing. Doctors also want to make sure the ribs and fragments hadn’t – and perhaps wouldn’t – cause internal damage.

Specifics are very unavailable right now and we’re probably going to be made to live with that … much the same as some people are probably going to have to live with presumptions and suspicion. You know what’s out there. Do with it what you like and I’ll continue my M.O. here. Perhaps we get some details sometime soon.

 I’m going to need a little time today to get my feet back beneath me, to get caught up and get ahead and to try to get to the bottom of some things, to schedule stuff, to answer emails and fire off several of my own. In the meantime, I’m not a guy who brags about vacations and I doubt this is bragging, but I thought I’d share two items …  

Continue reading…

Jorts: Threat, menace or much ado about denim?

July 19, 2010 by Mike Casazza

(Remember to participate in the Big East poll!)

Couldn’t resist. So here’s your open post about jorts: photographs of people wearing jorts, jorts as a status symbol, jorts throughout history, the looming jorts renaissance and how to cope, jorts in sports and anything related to jean shorts.

Continue reading…

WVU football prop bets

by Mike Casazza

There are a ton of great things about Las Vegas — O’Shea’s is probably not one of them … unless you like midgets who stand atop a bar and pour shots down your throat … which now makes me re-think the point of this double-dash — but within sports betting, which is the best for me, is prop betting.

It’s amazing and often amusing what you can bet on within a game. The Super Bowl is the nexus of this tomfoolery and you can bet on things like the color of the Gatorade poured on the coach, whether an offensive or defenisve player pours the Gatorade, how long the national anthem runs, who the MVP thanks first, etc.

I actually bet with some friends last year on the number of windmills Pete Townsend would do during The Who’s halftime show. I took the over at something like 26.5. I was with people I didn’t really know back then and I was counting “…nine…10…11, 12, 13…” and after a while I had a crowd rooting with me. Pete then went crazy and ended up at something like 273. Easy money.

Anyhow, it adds some spice to the games and the season and I’m pretty sure we can come up with some ways to really evaluate the Mountaineers this season as only you can. I’m not so much concerned with over/under number of wins as I am over/under kickoffs out of bounds, turnovers caused by the defense that the defense immediately gives back to the opponent and heartwarming stories written before Sept. 1 about Scooter Berry.

And forget season-long measurements. We need a “tremendous” calculator for WVU v. Syracuse week.

Let’s set the parameters and possibilities for 2010 football, shall we?

WVU sports as a Jimmy John’s menu item

by Mike Casazza

It’s the 1988 Fiesta Bowl. National championship game. Notre Dame. Four more quarters and that hunger for the games biggest prize is satiated.

Finally, it arrives and you can begin!

Then you unwrap the thing and discover it’s a J.J.B.L.T. Underwhelming. Plain. Not nearly as exciting as all the other options. About three-quarters through, you’re ready to ball it up and throw it in the garbage.

Or perhaps you think Ira Rodgers is more of the J.J.B.L.T. Classic. Stands the test of time. Contemporaries have superior equiptment, but everyone still appreciates its simplicity. It’ll always have a spot on the menu, so to speak.

It’s up to you. Pick from the past, present and even future of games, players, stories and anything else you can attach from the vast realm of WVU’s sports and the slightly less vast JJ menu.

And after looking at the menu and, more specifically, the item names, I’m somewhat frightened where this might go … but also very excited.

What if?

by Mike Casazza

An interesting item passed along to me a short time ago was an ESPN discussion that asked “What if The Product went to Alabama?”

I’m paraphrasing, of course. I believe ESPN opted for P-Rod. Irregardless, it does make you stop and think about the way college football would be very different today.

I’d guess Bill Stewart is not your head coach today. I’d listen to an argument that perhaps Nick Saban would be. Who knows if the Mine Mule sticks around WVU? Michigan isn’t in NCAA trouble and maybe the Big Ten isn’t looking to expand if its most storied football institution wasn’t in the gutter for two years.

WVU’s 2007 season never happens, which means no 13-9 and no 48-28. We never meet Marvelous Marv, who then never likens the plight of his client to that of a slave. The curtain is never pulled back to reveal the WVU athletic department, either, and Larry Aschebrook maybe never goes west.

Hell, the way we talk here changes an awful lot. I made seven casual references to people and events in the first four paragraphs and never said Oll Stewart.

It’s actually a great conversation piece … and a great segue into this particular post. What are the most notable “What if …” scenarios in WVU sports history?

I often think about 2006 Sweet 16 game. What if Kenton Paulino misses that running 30-footer? I contend WVU wins in overtime — and so does everyone I still talk to on that team. Then it’s LSU in the next game … and I often doubt Mountaineer fans would have had to wait 51 years between Final Fours.

And had WVU gotten through and been part of what was a flimsy Final Four that season, it would have played George Mason in the national semifinal. Win that one and it’s either Florida or UCLA in the final, both of which would have been bigger challenges.

Florida was a really young group, though, and the very type of team WVU’s offense/defense could feast upon if it clicked. And, of course, WVU beat UCLA earlier that season at UCLA.

Makes you think, huh? What do you think should make others think?

Open appeal to change retirement requirements

by Mike Casazza

In talking to Major Harris last week, he got to reveling in how the College Football Hall of Fame was something he’d never considered as a player here and then later throughout the rest of his life.

He reasoned, though, that the CFHoF really did validate his career. He said a college player’s goal is — or should be — to get to the NFL. Many do, himself included. Not all of them get into the CFHoF. He did.

On a certain level, it made sense. And then I said, “And yet you can’t have your jersey retired at WVU.”

To which Major replied, “Well, you know how surprised I was to get into the college hall of fame. I’d be even more shocked to get my jersey retired.”

Um, me too … because it can’t happen.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me — and in this case, I’m very sure it’s not — but this is wrong. I don’t get into “change the system” things like this very often because I don’t like to rage against the machine, but Major Harris went into the College Football Hall of Fame over the weekend. His jersey isn’t retired? One club is more exclusive than the other … but I wonder if maybe it should be the other way around here.

How about Pat White? He’s arguably the greatest player in school history. He owns very important NCAA records for statistics and for winning. His jersey isn’t retired?

I understand it’s a great honor and there should be steep standards to earn it. I just wonder if they’re too steep. There comes a time — and in the case of these two players, the times come 20 years apart — when you just gave to say, “Damn, that guy was a great player who did great things for our school and we should return the favor. We’ve go to retire his jersey.”

Suppose WVU reads this. Explain why should there be a change and how WVU can make the change while keeping the club exclusive, but also making it accessible to players like  Harris and White?

And for the record, there’s nothing wrong with the requirements to retire a number.

The football post

by Mike Casazza

We’re in football news season … and I think you’re going to see some football news this week. Will, say, two players break their silence and join the 2011 recruiting class? Is “You Know Who” one class away from stepping foot on campus? And what about “the issue?”

Discuss football news as it happens!

Oll Encyclopedia refresher

by Mike Casazza

I get mad at myself quite a bit about this. A while back there was an idea to file all the inside jokes and quirky things said around here. The result was Oll Encyclopedia.

Well, our server went haywire and the post was lost for quite some time. Look at the comments on the posts — the ones that remain — and you can tell some are severed and many are missing. It happens, I know, but I lost track of that post because I thought it was gone. It was then retrieved and I always intended to get back to it. Never did.

Until now. Time has changed and added so many things to the lexicon. What’s next in Oll Encyclopedia?

What big thing is going to happen?

by Mike Casazza

To newcomers, every vacation/honeymoon I’ve taken has been marked by something significant — ie, Larry Aschebrook, Doc Holliday, P-Rod signing his final contract — happening in my absence. I know better than to play this up too much because not only does it sound a little sensationalistic, but it’s also possible nothing will happen. Something else I’m known to do is write about something and then watch it fall on its face. In this case, that’d would be a situation in which life is normal when I’m gone … and I’d be OK with that.

That said, have at it with what think could happen this week.