HERTZEL COLUMN: Backyard Brawl victory is huge in many ways

By Bob Hertzel

MORGANTOWN — The uniform of the day for the West Virginia University Mountaineers was blue tops and blue pants, blue on blue as it were, which in retrospect is terribly fitting.

One of Bobby Vinton’s biggest hit songs, you see, was entitled “Blue on Blue,” a song of love lost that began this way:

Blue on blue, heartache on heartache

Blue on blue, now that we are through

Blue on Blue, heartache on heartache

And I find I can’t get over losing you

It is not much of a stretch to take those blue on blue uniforms worn by West Virginia and apply them to the nearly unbelievable goings on at Mountaineer Field Friday night, when the Mountaineers left Pitt singing “Blue on Blue,” with only a slight variation in the final line of the chorus.

Blue on blue, heartache on heartache

Blue on blue, now that we are through

Blue on Blue, heartache on heartache

And I can’t get over losing TO you

See, this was not just another football game. it was The Backyard Brawl, it was West Virginia’s first chance to get the Panthers on Mountaineer Field and pay them back for that humbling 2007 upset in Morgantown, the 13-9 debacle that cost WVU a chance at a national championship and cost them their coach Rich Rodriguez.

There was no way Rodriguez was walking out that door if he had beaten Pitt, and ever since, as Vinton put it, no one down this way had gotten over losing to Panthers.

And now the ledger was wiped clean. Revenge belonged to the Mountaineers, and they did it on the strength of a dominating defense led by a dominating safety in Robert Sands, on the dancing feet of Noel Devine, who broke loose only once but it was enough to break Pitt’s heart, and on the twinkling toes of place-kicker Tyler Bitancurt, who became a modern-day Bill McKenzie as he kicked his fourth field goal of the night through the uprights from 43-yards out to give WVU a 19-16 victory.

Coach Bill Stewart, his voice a scratchy whisper after spending the evening screaming on the sidelines, summed up this 2009 West Virginia team that finished the season unbeaten at home for the first time since 1993 this way:

“We’re not as talented as a lot of people and we don’t win pretty. What we do do is bounce in there, roll around in there, but do we find ways to win.”

And winning this one was crucial to Stewart’s team, maybe even to his future, and certainly to the people of West Virginia, for in the end the program is all about them.

This is a state that had far more going for it than even it knows, despite all those ratings you see that has West Virginia down near the bottom because its citizens are too fat, too poor, too poorly educated.

They are beat down every time they turn around, even though they are among the nicest people in the world, people who would do anything but give Pitt a first down. They take their pride in themselves and in their athletic teams, and that is why winning this 102nd Backyard Brawl was so important for the football program seemed to be on the skids.

Now, however, they have a shot at a 10-victory season, a Gator Bowl bid and own bragging rights. It is more meaningful than anyone can really imagine.

Consider, for example, the words of Matt Keissling, a WVU graduate who has gone on to work in politics in Washington, D.C. Asked for his view on the Backyard Brawl, Keissling replied:

“For Mountaineers, the Backyard Brawl is often the make it or break game of the year. No matter how successful a season is, losing to Pitt is the sort of ugly mark that leaves a sour taste in your mouth that lasts until the following fall. In the same vein, beating a ranked Pitt team can ease the pain of an otherwise dismal season. And when there is actually something on the line, whether it’s a Big East title, a bowl berth, or a chance to play for a national championship, the game takes on an even greater importance — just this side of life or death.

“Losing out on a national championship shot two years ago was bad, but having Pitt deliver the death blow was borderline unbearable. Being in the stands to watch that was easily the worst sports experience of my life. It was like showing up for a coronation and having a funeral break out.”

The game is taken no less as a matter of life and death by former players, such as Jason Colson, a running back who scored the only WVU touchdown in a loss to Pitt in 2004. Colson, now a member of the Meineke Car Care Bowl committee, explained what Pitt and West Virginia is this way:

“As a player our first goal always is to win the Big East championship. But after that it is to beat Pitt. No matter how bad a season is, if we beat Pitt, our job is done.”

Beating Pitt, said Colson, is “like winning the Super Bowl.”

“You are protecting the rights of every man, woman and child in West Virginia,” is the way he put it.

And protect them they did in this game that was filled with high drama and heroics at every turn.

Take Devine, whom Pitt had bottled up for two and a half games before he took a handoff from Jarrett Brown on the first play after Pitt had tied the game at 6-6 and ran 88 yards for a touchdown.

“He looked like a rabbit coming out of the briar patch,” is the way Stewart described it.

And then there was Bitancurt, whom Stewart had bypassed twice early in the game with a chance to take the lead, once opting to go for it on fourth-and-goal at the Pitt 2 rather than take the gimme field goal.

All he did was come back and kick four field goals to “protect the rights of every man, woman and child in West Virginia.”

And after the last kick went through, players jumped upon him, leaving him gasping for breath at the bottom of the victory pile.

“I thought I broke my sternum,” he would say later. “I couldn’t breath. But I’ll take the pain.”

Somehow, he hurt a lot nicer than did Pitt, which ended the night not blue on blue but black and blue.

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