Jan. 1, 2006
 
West Virginia Finds Sugar Bowl Bittersweet
 
By Chuck Finder
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
 
Atlanta -- The West Virginia Mountaineers ride around Atlanta in buses that bear the Sugar Bowl's signature logo, the name emblazoned across a silver bowl popping with Mardi Gras confetti. They walk along streets festooned with banners celebrating Monday night's game.
 
Still, this doesn't feel quite like the Sugar Bowl.
 
Not the one familiar to the handful of West Virginia Mountaineers players and coaches who hail from the slip of below-sea-level Louisiana between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River where the Sugar Bowl flowered for years until deadly Hurricane Katrina blew across New Orleans last August.
 
"I kind of want to take it back home," West Virginia defensive tackle Craig Wilson of Kenner, La., said before practice for Monday's date with eighth-ranked and Southeastern Conference champion Georgia.
 
"I'm making the best of it," said wide receiver Darius Reynaud of Luling, La.
 
"It's definitely strange," added offensive coordinator Calvin Magee of the 17th Street Canal section of New Orleans.
 
"I grew up watching the Sugar Bowl. That's my home." He paused. "That's tough."
 
Through Magee and a series of recruits, the team's roster is dotted with players from the Gulf states. In addition to starters Wilson and Reynaud and quarterback Pat White of Daphne, Ala., there are five others: rotating defensive tackle Andrae Wright of Mobile, Ala.; backup cornerback Abraham Jones of Prichard, Ala.; and, more inland, starting cornerback Dee McCann from Greene County, Miss., reserve defensive back Tyler Benoit from Broussard, La., and reserve linebacker Matt Sinclair of Crowley, La.
 
Wilson spent four days around Christmas at home in the west New Orleans suburb where, as in many places, the lake's levees were broken apart by the storm surge from Katrina. His family escaped to a relative's home in Baton Rouge, though they couldn't locate one uncle for more than a month.
 
His holiday wasn't so festive.
 
In fact, he said, he became ill after one long look around his hometown.
 
"I went into the city to see where the damage was," said Wilson, a 6-foot, 280-pound junior who topped all Mountaineers defensive lineman this season with 31 tackles. "They have lines on every building where how high the water was. The homes ... there are a lot of homeless people.
 
"It was devastating. I took sick because it was so depressing. Didn't leave the bed for two days."
 
For Magee, the hurricane compounded his family's woes. In the hours before Katrina struck, he buried his mother in Columbia, Miss., roughly 105 miles from their New Orleans home, then had to turn around and drive back to Morgantown, W.Va.
 
In the end, his five brothers and sisters plus their 20 children moved to Texas, where they continue to ponder whether to return to New Orleans or to stay in Texas..
 
"They kind of relocated to Dallas," Magee said of his family. "Got all the kids in school. They're thinking about (moving) right now."
 
Reynaud remembers bonding with the Mountaineers from the Gulf that Aug. 29 weekend, a week before they were to play at Syracuse in the season opener. He was unable to reach his family by telephone for seven days. Some of the other players went long stretches without family contact, too.
 
"When we first found it was going to hit New Orleans, a couple of us players, we sat down and saw what it was going to do," Reynaud said. "Then, over a while, we got hold of our families. The players, we're even closer now."
 
Reynaud was among the 79,342 in attendance at the 70th annual classic in 2004 to see home state LSU upset top-ranked Oklahoma for the national championship. ("Good seats, too.")
 
This fall, after bowl officials decided Oct. 8 to temporarily move the game to Atlanta, he used the home-away-from-home Sugar Bowl as motivation for himself and his fellow Mountaineers.
 
"I was like, 'We got to get down there. We got to get down there,' " recalled Reynaud, a 5-10, 200-pound sophomore, who ranked second on the team with 24 receptions. The Mountaineers did get there, going 10-1 on the season and earning the Big East conference berth in the BCS.
 
"Coming down to Atlanta, it's kind of like home, too," Reynaud said. "Just getting South."
 
The New Orleans Superdome, where thousands of hungry, desperate evacuees were stranded after the levees broke, is scheduled to be rehabilitated by Nov. 1, possibly in time for part of an NFL Saints season and the next Sugar Bowl. West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez has attempted to downplay the venue change and accentuate the challenge posed by Georgia (10-2), even though he's a former New Orleans resident with friends there from his 1997-98 days as Tulane's offensive coordinator. To him, and this is the message he tries to impart to all his Mountaineers, it's still the same game.
 
"Heck, it's still the Sugar Bowl," Rodriguez said. "We're in the Sugar Bowl, but just not back there.
 
"Atlanta's a great town, too, but. ... New Orleans has been a very unique and entertaining city for a long, long time. I don't know if it could ever be the same. But I hope the Sugar Bowl and other events can get back down there soon."
 
E-mail Chuck Finder at cfinder(at)post-gazette.com.
 
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.)