MORGANTOWN — They are Noel Devine’s protectors, these hulking gentlemen who make up the offensive line that debuts as a unit for West Virginia University Saturday against Liberty, but they are more than that to this miniature running back with the flying feet.

They are friends.

“We are always having fun at practice,” he said.

But more important than liking them, he trusts them.

True, he’s read the previews where they have been pointed to as the great unknown in the Mountaineer scheme of things, but he doesn’t believe it any more than if you told him that grass is blue and the sky is green.

He’s watched them grow through the spring and then through camp and now, whenever he’s around them, he tells them … well, we’ll let him tell you what he tells them.

“I tell ‘em they’re getting ‘gooder and gooder,’” he said.

Before anyone grabs this newspaper from their children to tell them that this is incorrect English and that he should be saying “better and better,” let me assure you that Devine and his linemen, most of whom are among the most intelligent athletes on the team, know this.

It’s a bit, a gimmick, this “gooder and gooder” thing that makes them laugh, an in-joke between them all.

Just walk up to any of the O-linemen and say you heard they’re getting “gooder and gooder” and they’ll smile and say, “You’ve been talking to Noel, haven’t you.”

“He just makes me laugh,” said Selvish Capers, the only senior on this offensive line, and by far the most experienced with 18 starts under his shoulder pads.

You mention it to Josh Jenkins, perhaps the most talented of the offensive linemen, and ask him if it’s true that the line has been getting “gooder and gooder” and he answers:

“I feel we have nowhere else to go.”

See, in many ways, this is one of the strangest offensive lines in history.

Take Capers, for example, he came to West Virginia as a tight end and wasn’t exactly thrilled when they asked him to become an offensive lineman. He was reluctant to accept the change at first.

It took coach Calvin Magee, who had recruited him for Rich Rodriguez, to come to him and tell him it was for his own good.

“Take a chance,” Magee said.

After thinking about it for a while and noticing that in Rodriguez’s offense the tight end was never thrown a pass, making him little more than a offensive lineman with a number in the 80s on his back, he made the move and found a position where he could start for two years.

The right guard is Eric Jobe, who was a center as late as in the middle of camp, before being moved to make room for Joey Madsen, a redshirt freshman, at center.

Don Barclay, the left tackle, has been said to be a star in waiting, but he did that waiting this off-season healing from a broken leg.

And then there’s Jenkins, the high school All-American out of Parkersburg who started five games as a true freshman before suffering a knee injury last year.

Jenkins believes in this group.

“I’ve said in every interview I’ve given this year, so I’ll say it again. Come Sept. 5 people are going to think differently about our offensive line.”

Danny Rocco is the head coach of the Liberty Flames. He’s spent a lot of time studying video of the Mountaineers, and he is not one who sees them as a problem for WVU.

“I coached in the ACC for 10 years and coached a little more in the Big 12 and the Big East, in fact,” he said. “I see a little more talent in this particular offensive line than I’m reading about when I see some of the media publications.”

Perhaps the most interested spectator is the man who coaches the unit, Dave Johnson.

“Kickoff is at 12:05 on Saturday. Ready or not, here we come,” he said. “Are they ready? We’ll find out.”

The problem is that this is not an experienced line and anyone who follows football tells you that experience is a key factor in an offensive lineman’s success.

Johnson explains it this way:

“You are asking them to do an unnatural thing. They are the worst athletes on the field trying to block the best athletes on the field.”

Asked if he told his group that they were the worst athletes on the field, Johnson said, “I don’t have to tell them. They can watch film and figure it out. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon.”

Now Jenkins takes a bit of exception when this is brought up to him, but in the end admits that compared with the linebackers and the defensive backs, that’s probably true.

To get around this lack of athleticism, Johnson says you go out and recruit the biggest, toughest guys you can get. Oddly, they often are also the most intelligent, too, perhaps because they have to figure out ways to win battles against better athletes.

At any rate, the days are ticking down before the wrapping comes off this offensive line and then 60,000 people will know if they have gotten “gooder and gooder” or not.

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.