By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — The most important thing football coaches learn is that the worst thing they can do is actually believe they are as good as their last victory.
The second most important thing football coaches learn is that the next worst thing they can do is actually believe they are as bad as they were in their last loss.
The past, be it good, be it bad, is just that … the past.
While it takes an Einstein to explain it, the past is gone.
The British Invasion singers Chad & Jeremy, hardly Einsteins, may have put it best when they sang:
“That was yesterday and yesterday’s gone.”
You may be able to find it in the next day’s newspaper, you may be able to find it running endlessly on SportsCenter the next day, but in this dimension it is gone, to be called upon for instructional purposes only.
And so it was minutes after his West Virginia University football team dropped a stink bomb on Halloween Eve in Tampa, coach Bill Stewart gathered his forces around him.
The theme was not to pull the wings off cornerback Keith Tandy after he had a nightmarish evening, and not to belittle an offensive line that could open no holes for Noel Devine nor control either George Selvie or Jean Paul-Pierre on the corners.
It was to create a new focus immediately, give his team something to sleep on other than mental replays of B.J. Daniels dancing around outside containment all night long, throwing deep or running until he was out of bounds or out of breath, whichever came first.
“No. 1,” he said to the gathering, “it’s a four-game season, and it starts next week against Louisville.”
Forget Chad and Jeremy; it is now all about “Tomorrow,” you know, the song out of the Broadway musical “Annie.”
The sun’ll come out
Tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar
That tomorrow
There’ll be sun
Stewart is smart enough to know that if you have selective memory, there are lessons in yesterday.
“No. 2,” he continued as he addressed his team, “remember November.”
Ah, November.
Two years ago WVU lost at South Florida. The Mountaineers’ season seemed irreparably damaged, but they saved it by beating Louisville, Cincinnati and Connecticut in November.
“I told them two years ago we came down here and got beat and almost played for a national championship,” Stewart said.
Had November not become December, had Pitt not upset WVU that evening in Morgantown, the Mountaineers would have played for the title.
Now they face a similar situation, although there never really was a national championship chance this season. They do need a November to remember.
Stewart then had a third point for his team.
“No. 3,” he told the media, “each and every Mountaineer before leaving that locker room grabbed hands and said, ‘I will do more.’ It starts with Bill Stewart. ‘I will do more.’ Each and every staff member, ‘I will do more.’ Each and every football player, offensively and defensively, ‘I will do more.’”
Certainly more is needed. Cincinnati and Pitt, the class of the conference, loom large in the future that Stewart doesn’t yet want to confront, and if WVU’s two class opponents to date — Auburn and South Florida — are any indication, a whole lot more is needed.
If they think they had their hands full with B.J. Daniels, wait until the Mountaineers get a look at Tony Pike and Mardy Gilyard at Cincinnati and Dion Lewis and Jonathan Baldwin at Pitt.
True, yesterday’s gone, but the last time I looked out the window on what was yesterday’s tomorrow, it was wet and gray.
The sun did shine tomorrow in West Virginia.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
