By Bob Hertzel
PISCATAWAY, N.J. — There were an awfully lot of things that had to break just right for West Virginia to find itself heading for Jacksonville, Fla., and the Gator Bowl this year after it dropped a stink bomb in South Florida.
To begin with, they needed nothing short of a miracle for Cincinnati to come back and beat Pittsburgh to win the Big East championship while they were slipping and sliding their way to unimpressive but unquestioned 24-21 victory at Rutgers, a win to be cherished if for no other reason than it was on the road.
Then there was, as one may recall, the matter of Tyler Bitancurt’s last-second field goal from 43 yards out a week earlier to defeat the snake-bitten Pitt Panthers, who are suffering from terminal heartbreak after their final two games.
But let it be said that they had something else working for them, which may have slipped them in the back door of Gator Bowl even if Cincinnati had not torn out Pitt Coach Dave Wannstedt’s fingernails, one at a time, 45-44.
As it played out, the head of the Gator Bowl’s section committee this year is one Brian Goin.
Now the name may be familiar. His father is one Bob Goin, who was the long time was athletic director at Cincinnati.
You may think with that branch of the family tree as part of the background, that Cincinnati would have been a cinch to have gotten the nod had it not knocked off the snakebitten Panthers.
“It would have been a consideration,” Brian Goin admitted.
But in this case it isn’t so much like father, like son, for Goin, you see, attended Morgantown High (although he played his high school football at Bethany) when his dad was an assistant athletic director at WVU. He also graduated from West Virginia University, and if you think that isn’t the kind of thing that would pull on his heartstrings as he and the committee raced toward its decision.
Goin has a whole lot of blue and gold in his closet.
“My dad went to Cincinnati when Bobby Bowden left,” he said, something of an irony since it appears that Bowden’s Florida State team is the front-runner to opposed WVU in the Gator Bowl. “I lived next door to Curt and Frankie Cignetti. I helped Vic Bonfili coach at Morgantown. I was at Shippensburg State with Dave Johnson [WVU offensive line coach]. My sister was friends with Eddie Pastilong’s daughter.”
Goin first went into coaching, was a G.A. at Tulane — not while Rich Rodriguez was there, but that is just another bit of this strange tale that always seems to tie itself between the Goins and West Virginia.
There is even the matter of Bob Goin’s stay at Cincinnati, where he and Bob Huggins worked together. In fact, Bob Goin was Huggins’ athletic director while President Nancy Zimpher was running him through the ringer, backing Huggins by the way.
“I thought he got a bad deal,” Bryan Goin said of Huggins. “And I thought Bobby Bowden got a bad deal at Florida State, too.”
That, however, might work to his benefit, for if he can pull off matching WVU with Florida State he has a sure sellout and grand attraction.
Bowden will be looking for his 389th victory as a college coach, which is second all-time to Joe Paterno of Penn State, which will turn the game into a media circus and a national event.
A couple of decades back Goin got out of the coaching business and began working with the PGA, becoming the executive director of the Players Championship, which is played at Stadium Course at PGA Sawgrass, which is the hotel in which the Mountaineers stay when attending the Gator Bowl.
Considering the connection between Goin and West Virginia, there are those who will wonder if WVU deserves the invitation, but considering that they finished their Big East season at 5-2, tied with Pittsburgh, and possess a victory over the Panthers, they certainly are a legitimate selection.
They also are something more than just a Rocky Baloboa to Bowden’s Apollo Creed, should he wind up there. They are an attraction of their own, winners of four consecutive bowl games, including two BCS victories. In 2005 they beat Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, in 2006 they beat Georgia Tech in the Gator Bowl, in 2007 they beat Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl and last year they defeated North Carolina in the Meineke Car Care Bowl.
What’s more, the Mountaineers have a true star player in Noel Devine, the slippery running back who now has 3,213 rushing yards for his career and 1,297 yards this year, more than his total last year.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
