COMMENTARY: Why WVU Could Actually Win This Bowl Game
By Stephen N. ReedSpecial to HNN
It always seemed to me that former WVU football coach Don Nehlen let his guys have a little too much of a good time during the week leading up to the bowl games they played in. Did they deserve a little fun in the sun? Sure! But wouldn't they also like to...win a big bowl game? Nehlen's eight straight bowl losses--a national record, by the way--were sad ways to end otherwise good seasons.
Moreover, though going to bowl games are fun, not only for the game but all the other associated activities, if you go all that way and pay all that money, after awhile losing gets really old. Especially when the team plays like a bunch of Pee Wees instead of 11-0 champions, as in the 1989 Fiesta Bowl versus Notre Dame. I was there for that one, and we were gone after the first quarter.
Not worth the price of admission. Especially with all the arrogant Notre Dame fans rubbing your nose in it.
So yes, I freely admit it: I came to enjoy jokes like the following one. They helped somehow to ease the pain:
Question: "Why does Mrs. Nehlen always feed Don his breakfast cereal in little saucers?"
Answer: "Because Don can't handle bowls!"
I still enjoy that one for some reason. Must be the memories of those eight straight losses before a national audiences. I know, I know: at least he got us there, and he *did* finally win that Music City Bowl. Good ol' Donnie.
But the reason I have to root especially hard for this year's team, heading to the Sugar Bowl to play the formidable Georgia Bulldogs, is three-fold:
1. I hoped for years for Nehlen to finally step down to get some new blood on the Mountaineer coaching staff. So in that respect, Rich Rodriguez is "my man," and I have to support him, even with that silly "Spot the Ball" deal in the first season. But he's made great progress, don't you think? He's in command now, and his team is peaking at just the right time this year.
2. We played darn well last year against Florida State in the Gator Bowl. For once, we held in there for three whole quarters, a vast improvement over most of the appearances during the Nehlen years. I took this as a very hopeful sign. FSU and Bobby Bowden are never a slouch. So we were beginning to play well--on national television, no less-- against a quality team in a major bowl! Who'd a thunk it?
3. 10-1 is more realistic somehow than 11-0 in regular season. It's hard to never lose, and while those two seasons in which we posted 11-0 records were exhilarating, I think it's nice that we've got our loss out of the way. Besides, everyone thought LSU was the bigger threat, and now we don't have to play them.
Now, could it be intimidating playing the Dawgs of Georgia IN Georgia--in fact in the Georgia Dome?
Sure. But we Mountaineers like being underestimated. And something tells me that we're just DUE, that this is going to be the year we pull it off. So much so, that I'm even going to the game, even after going to that lame Continental Tire Bowl a couple of years ago in Charlotte, where the University of Virginia "marching band" (if you can call it that) made fun of us hillbillies, as they love to do.
That was a disgrace. But so was losing to UVA that badly. Yet redemption is just one more game away in Atlanta. But leave your couches at home. We don't want it to burn down again.
Stephen Reed is a former Charleston talk radio host and proud WVU alumnus.