By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — There are those who would tell you that this 102nd edition of The Backyard Brawl is all about the Pitt Panthers, just as the 100th two years ago was supposed to be all about West Virginia and a national championship.
It was wrong then, as Pitt proved, upsetting the apple-in-the-throat cart that was the Mountaineers, not only sending the WVU program spinning off track, but igniting a fire that has carried the Panthers into the nation’s Top 10 and with a chance to run past the Mountaineers and Cincinnati and into a Big East title and BCS bowl game.
And it is wrong now, as West Virginia middle linebacker Reed Williams will tell you.
“It’s more about us than it is about Pitt,” Williams said as he prepared for his final game in Mountaineer Field at Milan Puskar Stadium. “We need this game for ourselves.”
The truth is that Pitt now has national respect and attention, win or lose. Pitt’s is a program on the rise, maybe even at its apex.
West Virginia’s chart, however, looks like a dangerous ski slope, straight downhill.
Lose this game and the Mountaineers will have gone from 11 victories in 2005, 2006 and 2007 to nine last year and seven or eight, depending upon the outcome of a road game at Rutgers following the Backyard Brawl.
The last time they won seven or fewer games was 2001, Rich Rodriguez’s first season when he struggled in at 3-8.
From that point forward the Mountaineers built a winning tradition and an identity of their own, a way for which they were known for playing the game.
That identity is now lost.
“We haven’t been able to find our identity all season long,” Williams said. “We keep waiting for that game where everything’s put together and I haven’t seen it yet. With only two games left, it’s got to happen soon. Maybe Friday will be the night.”
People listen when Williams talks. Academically he is at the head of the WVU list, a bright student who is in his fifth year. He’s given everything he has and then some to the program, fighting through painful shoulder injuries that never really will be right to try and keep the Mountaineer program significant as such programs as Cincinnati and Pitt rise around them.
He came back for this year with high hopes that never were realized, with an offense that has deteriorated as the season went on and with his defense never rising into a dominant force that some thought it capable of being, perhaps because of injury and suspension.
Williams is smart enough to know it isn’t a total failure, but success was denied because of a limited number of moments that all turned bad.
“I think there are about three or four plays in a game that define your season. You could be 7-3, 10-0, 9-1, whatever it may be [because of] those three plays,’’ Williams said. “We didn’t hit when we needed to hit or make a play when we had a chance to. We just let the opportunity slip through our hands.’’
If Williams is right, and somehow it doesn’t seem they came that close to being 10-0 or 9-1, these weren’t dramatic, last-second plays that grabbed defeat out of the jaws of victory. They were, instead, turnovers against Auburn or an inability to contact B.J. Daniels at South Florida.
If you allow yourself to think about it, that loss to Pitt two years ago was more typical than atypical when it came to important games. In 2007 and 2008 it was Pitt, in 2006 it was South Florida and 2007 it was South Florida.%
This year it was Cincinnati, another game where WVU had a chance to turn the season into something special and let it slip away.
Bowl victories are great and certainly the upsets of Georgia and Oklahoma in BCS Bowls were special, but they are still exhibitions of sorts with a month to prepare and come after you have won or failed to win your conference.
WVU’s chances at the conference title and BCS are gone now. What isn’t gone is Reed Williams’ final chance to grab that victory at home that could change the direction WVU is headed, to be part of two rebirths in the program.
He has only one more home game in a career that been courageous and heroic.
One more.
“I haven’t really thought about it. I try not to,’’ Williams said. “You never think it’s going to come, but it’s here. You can’t push it away anymore.’’
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com
