By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — This is the time of year it strikes, coming out of nowhere.
You might go to bed with a tickle in the back of your throat or a dull headache, but you don’t pay much attention to it.
Not that it matters. There is no remedy, no vaccine.
By morning you know that you’ve caught it, though.
Football fever is upon us.
As July heads toward August the Pirates have always dropped out of sight, the players you wanted to root for were wearing uniforms of other teams. Basketball has had its summer run and now was over. The Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open are gone and tennis … well, there’s just not many people playing that game anymore.
And so it is that the mind automatically turns to football. Anticipation mounts early in these parts.
Camp is just around the corner for both the West Virginia Mountaineers and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
You pick up the newspaper or look on the Internet and it seems to be coming at you from everywhere.
Steve Slaton is the subject of a Sporting News Q&A.;
Ben Roethlisberger is the subject of a sexual assault lawsuit in Nevada.
Miami is still buzzing over the thought of Patrick White running their Wildcat formation.
Owen Schmitt is pleading guilty to reckless driving in Washington.
The sale of the Steelers is completed to Dan Rooney, our ambassador to Ireland.
The conversation in the bars begins to change. You don’t hear Tiger Woods name as much. Albert Pujols is a summertime distraction who has had his run.
You hear more and more talk about Jarrett Brown and the task he has of taking over the Mountaineer offense.
They’re questioning the strength of the WVU offensive line already, hoping it can just get in someone’s way long enough for Noel Devine to find a crease, a hole, an opening.
Newspapers are running previews of games that are still three and four months away, talking about coaches who have yet to ever coach a game, talking about strengths and weaknesses on opponents where starting players have yet to even be selected.
It doesn’t matter if it is right or wrong. There is no right or wrong at this time of year.
What matters is that it’s football.
Coaches are on vacation, unavailable for comment. Players are putting the final touches on their conditioning before the long, hot, dog days of August and camp where Gatorade replaces beer as the liquid of choice and where tattoos and bruises seem to be as one on the a defensive end’s forearm.
It’s almost time to watch as jobs are won and time is lost, where you hit hard and hope not to injure anyone, yet you almost know that one player who is being counted on will fall by the wayside, testing the depth of talent and giving opportunity to some unknown where none previously existed for him.
Coaches can’t wait to get home from the shore to start watching film, to start putting in the plays that need to be tested out. Players actually begin thinking about what it takes to better that 9-4 record of a year ago, about how bad it tasted not to be a Big East champion.
Bill Stewart has the itch to go out there and prove that he was the right choice to replace Rich Rodriguez, that his second year will show improvement over his first year and the public will take his offense that he hopes is more fancy passing than a fancy passing.
It’s all starting to come back to all of us, the dryness in the mouth, the tremble in the hands.
As difficult as it is to imagine, a football game has not been played in Morgantown since last Dec. 6 and a Mountaineer touchdown has not been scored at Milan Puskar Stadium since Tyler Urban caught a 12-yard pass from White on the game’s first possession.
Since then, though the long winter, the spring and now the summer, football has been in hibernation, but now we anticipate its return, much the way children anticipate the arrival of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.
It’s just two weeks now until camp opens.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
