I’ve always treated this game like how I used to deal with going to my chain-smoking aunt’s for Thanksgiving….grin and bear it, it will be over soon and quickly forgotten. Yesterday’s game really showed me how meaningless this game is. Our players were much more amped up for Syracuse. SYRACUSE! As one who will hate Marvin Graves into eternity, I can appreciate that, but shouldn’t we have a special venom for our “rival”? But, the game comes, and….nothing. No one cares. Did anyone REALLY think Marshall was going to win? No, of course not. We can never beat them by enough to satisfy the Turd or some of our more ridiculous fans. We beat them by 17, we played like crap. We beat them by 80, they are a worthless opponent. And on top, they return tickets! I’ll take ECU over these clowns any day.

5-1, 17 pt wins, rankings…when will this misery end???

Or whatever zip code that is, will blame Coach Stew for Jarrett Brown not having enough air in JB’s helmet.

Politicians determining what a rivalry is in sports. Rivalries are born over years (think WVU-Pitt) not anointed by the governor of the state or the state legislature. Let the WVU-Marshall game die a respectable death. Marshall and WVU could both have a Friends of Coal game against a visiting team each year and profit from the game and benefit in the college rankings without the strained game now in existence.

I’ve been reading these posts for a few years now, and have been lifelong mountaineer. What I’ve got to say has probably already been said by someone else, and if not, I feel is long overdue.

I attended almost every home game for the majority of childhood up until my college years. It was about this time when I noticed how things started to change. Maybe for the better, many of you will argue, I’m sure, but I strongly believe we lost a lot more than we gained. Let me explain.

First, the new turf. Fair enough, nice stuff, easier on the feet and it looks a lot nicer. But say goodbye to the kids (those with dreams of being a mountaineer football player) coming down the metal bleachers (remember those ones the band used to sit in) and living their dream by playing pick up games and kicking field goals on the very field they just watched their heroes play on. That used to be me too.

But, understandably, we can’t damage the new turf we’ve paid so much money for, and maybe this change is one that we definitely needed. We’ll just stay off the field and “celebrate responsibly.” And after the game is over and everyone has cleared out, maybe the majority has forgotten those days when it was okay to go out onto the field.

My second topic—these “heroes” we have gained to look up to. And I can firmly point the finger at a certain individual that embarasses me everytime they mention he is from West Virginia. Just thank god he doesn’t live here any longer. Pacman Jones. Chris Henry. There have been other examples, but I’ve erased those quickly from my memory. These are just the standouts. I want to win a million times more than the next guy. I despise losing, just like many of you. Losing affects my quality of life until we have redeemed ourselves. But I refuse to sell my soul in order to win.

I am about to have my first child, a boy. And he will be born a mountaineer. He will hate Pitt from the day he learns how to dislike something. And he will look up to the mountaineer football players, just like I did, and just like many of you did. But I can’t in good conscience allow that to happen if we were to continue to bring trash like that into our program. In that instance, I can defintely say thank God above for HCBS.

Third on my list is the “Milan Puskar” stadium. KENH hit the nail on the head. It’s Mountaineer Field. Always has been, always will be.

Fourth, the stadium itself. Big jumbotron-like thing over the tunnels. That does look nice. Much nicer than the old scoreboard above the opposite end zone. It’s a crying shame that the jumbotron is louder than the crowd. Always. Maybe that because we decided to take out all of those seats to put in “sky-boxes.” I remember standing behind the end zone in front of the tunnels back in the day, and you could actually feel the stadium shake. Not because of a stereo, just the crowd noise. We would cram 75,000-80,000 people into the stadium. Now how many can we fit? 65,000? That makes a lot of sense. Lets take away seats and jack up ticket prices. Double whammy. Less seats available and less people that can afford to attend the game. Great idea for the fanbase…….(sarcasm intended)

As these changes came into place, I found myself going to fewer and fewer games. I never miss watching a game, but I almost can’t stomach the sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach I get when I see what has happened to Mountaineer football. Many of these changes came about due to the "image’ that RR had for our program. And I, just like everyone else in the state, drank the kool-aid and assumed it was for the good of the program and the university. But now I see the big picture.

My apologies for the long post, but it’s been a long time coming for me. We will rise to the top and get back at least some of what we once had. I just don’t know how much we can recover.