MORGANTOWN — Those of you who are versed in the history of the NFL’s Super Bowl remember the day that Broadway Joe Namath of the underdog New York Jets sat poolside in Miami before Super Bowl III and guaranteed that his team would beat the heavily-favored Baltimore Colts.

“We’re going to win Sunday. I guarantee it.”

Namath made good on his guarantee.

Perhaps it is time for Namath to make room for Geno Smith of the West Virginia University Mountaineers.

It was very early in this past spring, long before Dana Holgorsen had acquired full control of the West Virginia team, holding only the titles of offensive coordinator and coach-in-waiting, that his quarterback was advised that WVU had never won a national championship.

Without hesitation, Smith simply proclaimed:

“The time is now.”

Those four words said so much about the young man out of Miramar High near Miami, Fla., not far from that Orange Bowl site where the Jets won, and the confidence he carries in his ability as his school prepares to play its version of the Super Bowl, facing No. 2 LSU at 8 p.m. Saturday. It speaks, too, to the new coach, who took over one of the nation’s top teams over the past half dozen years and lacked the patience to do anything but improve upon it.

The stated goal of winning a national championship is normally a long-term obsession rather than a short-term dictum. Yet the Mountaineers are looking for it now, perhaps to erase the memory of that December day four seasons earlier when they had only to beat Pittsburgh to advance to the BCS championship game and a date with destiny.

Never in the history of the school and, perhaps, college football had a day been so badly gummed up, Pitt forgetting it was a 24-point underdog and winning the game outright, a decision that led directly and indirectly to the departure of coach Rich Rodriguez and the man who ran the entire athletic department, Ed Pastilong.

Now there stands another Mountaineer team saying it can be done and there is no time like the present.

The West Virginia football program possesses what is necessary to win a national title — a rich history, a strong fan following, a commitment from the school’s administration, a national recruiting footprint and good players.

What it lacked mostly was luck.

Or, to be more precise, Luck, as in Oliver Luck, the athletic director who opted to cast his lot with Dana Holgorsen’s MountainAir offense and with a player at quarterback who had even more potential than Luck himself had shown when he began WVU’s surge to national prominence as a quarterback in 1980.

In many ways, Geno Smith was a mirror image of Luck ... intelligent, accurate, team-oriented and totally unflappable.

He is the perfect quarterback for Holgorsen, someone with a tireless, accurate arm and an ability to read defenses; a quarterback willing to spend a lifetime and a day in the film room, while

Holgorsen was the perfect coach for him, a man with an unstoppable, innovative offense that had broken records at Texas Tech, Houston and Oklahoma State.



Love at first sight

The relationship began when Holgorsen was at Oklahoma State and Smith was playing for former Mountaineer linebacker Damon Cogdell at Miramar High, a school that has turned into a feeder for WVU players.

Holgorsen was on a recruiting mission to Florida, where football players are as plentiful as the oranges growing on the trees.

“From the first day I met Coach Holgorsen, I could tell he was a straight-forward guy,” Smith recalled. “First thing he told me was, ‘You are going to get your grades right and work hard.’ He didn’t say anything about numbers. He just said, ‘You take care of the small things, and the big things will happen.’”

And no, he doesn’t see himself evolving into the offense a little bit at a time, culminating with perfection a year from now. This isn’t a season to prepare for the next.

“No way,” Smith said. “We are going for it right now. I feel like we have a national championship team now, and we’re going to shoot for it.”



Building a foundation

To many of us, we think only of the sandy beaches, dog races and jai alai games and Joe’s Stone Crabs when we think of Miami, but there is another side, a darker side that we glimpsed through the television show “Miami Vice” and that we keep tripping across as football players from the area simply fail at life.

That is not the Miami that Geno Smith knew.

Eugene Smith Jr. is the son of Eugene Smith Sr. and Tracey Sellers, and they were intent on leading him down the right path no matter what went on around him.

“Leadership was built in at an early age by my mother and father,” Smith said. “I have three younger brothers and a younger sister. I have to look out for them. My mom always told me I had to set the bar high as far as the level of achievement went.”

And the way Smith looks at it, dealing with those younger siblings had him practicing his leadership skills for a long time, for it really isn’t much different than football.

“Football is the game I love. Being around these guys, they’re like brothers. Any way I can help them I will,” he said.

The family structure is something like that of a football team. In Smith’s family, if Eugene Smith, his father, is the tactician, his mother, Tracey Sellers, tends to compliance, making sure young Eugene, sister Geonte Smith and twins Ranny and Rianny Williams are heading down the right road.

“She didn’t care much about the high school games,” Smith said. “It was all about grades in high school. It’s pretty much the same way now. She’s always on my mix seeing what classes I got.”

It is on the field that his father enters the picture.

“Dad just encourages me. He tells me every day, let’s me know without this football thing it would be hard to excel in life,” he said of his namesake.

Former head coach Bill Stewart recalls recruiting Geno Smith and the way his mother, Tracey Sellers, led him in the right direction.

“When I recruited Geno, his mother or one of his teammate’s mothers picked the two up every day. They did their homework and played football on PlayStation,” Stewart said. “Then they ate and went home. Geno has always been a homebody. I don’t like dancers. Those are the kind of guys I like to recruit.”

Smith was a good kid.

“One thing my mom instilled in me was as soon as you think you’re good, that’s when you’re not making any progress. One of the things that stuck with me when I got to WVU was one of our strength coaches saying that ‘if you’re not getting better, then you’re only getting worse.’

“I took that to heart. I understand that. Every day is a struggle. I’m thankful my family put that work mentality in my brain.”



The defining moment

After Smith got some experience as a freshman, in the second game of the 2010 season West Virginia was playing at Marshall, facing their bitter, in-state rival that had never beaten them. Marshall was coached by former Mountaineer assistant Doc Holliday, who was passed over for the WVU job when Bill Stewart was named to replace Don Nehlen.

And it was ugly. Fourth quarter, down 15 points, only 8:28 to go when Smith and the offense took over the football.

He led WVU on two drives, one of 98 yards, one of 96 yards, to erase a 21-6 deficit, threw a two-point conversion to tie the game, then helped set up a field goal in overtime to win it.

“Ironically, I never thought we were down,” Smith said this summer, thinking back to the moment. “I looked up at the scoreboard and saw it, but it always felt like we were one play away. We stuck with it. That’s all I can say. We pulled it out.”

It wasn’t so much what he did as it was how he did it — coolly, calmly, collected. He was a sophomore acting like a senior, his leadership showing the way even more than his passing arm.

“I saw a lot of guys down and felt it was my job to fire them up,” Smith recalled.

There was fire in his eyes, fury in his voice as he pointed fingers and pushed his teammates.

“That’s the way I play, period,” he said. “I wear my emotions on my sleeve.”



Holy Holgorsen

Smith’s sophomore year was disappointing for the team despite nine victories, and it ended in turmoil with Holgorsen being brought in. Smith was torn, loyal to the coaches who had given him his chance and nurtured him along, but excited to play in a new offense, one that had been among the nation’s top passing and scoring offenses over the past decade.

The groundwork had been laid. He had a year of starting experience and that amazing attitude to drive him.

That he also possessed a tireless, accurate and strong throwing arm only completed the package.

Holgorsen would complete the quarterback and give him a system in which he could thrive.

“Coach Holgorsen and his staff have simplified it for us and given us a chance to get out there and play,” Smith said. “There’s not a lot of thinking involved. We learn our assignments and work on timing, then when the game begins we go out and execute.”

It takes a cool customer, a thinking quarterback, a dedicated quarterback who will spend time studying what a defense likes to do and who understands the opposition’s personnel and how it matches up with what the offense is trying to do.

“Every offense, especially passing offenses, you have to make a series of reads. You have to make a pre-snap read; then you snap the ball and you go through your progression. You try to find the open guy based on the coverages,” Smith explained. “All of that comes on game planning and execution over time. The more repetitions I get, the better I get at it. Anticipating throws, getting better at reading coverages, getting our timing down are some of the key things in our offense.”

The marriage of coach and player is perfect, for each looks at the offense the same way, wanting perfection, yet not worrying about who gets the credit. The numbers, the records for completions and touchdowns mean nothing if they come in defeat.

“We have similar goals,” Smith said. “He is very confident; I am as well. I am confident in his play calling and I’m sure he’s confident in my play. So as long as we stick together I think this offense can be great.”

Great, as in producing victories.

“What is most important as far as being successful is winning the national title,” Smith said. “You have to lock in. It starts in the summer. You have to be focused, have a goal and work toward it. You have to study film, watch it hard, as if you had an exam. That is what ultimately creates a good quarterback.”

Holgorsen is constantly working with Smith about his game, about his attitude.

“His confidence is so high that I have to bring him down a little at times,” Holgorsen said. “Last year with Brandon Weeden (at Oklahoma State), his confidence wasn’t very high because he hadn’t played football in eight years (having played minor league baseball). I had to do a lot of patting on the back with him.

“With Geno, we don’t have to do any patting on the back. If he makes a big play, he’s going to let everyone know about it. We’ve got to ground him a little bit.”

But in the end you want a confident quarterback, for if he doesn’t believe in himself, how can his teammates?

Smith believes, as WVU readies itself to play its biggest game of the season, a battle against nationally ranked LSU, one that can make or break its season, make or break Holgorsen’s respect as WVU coach, and make or break Smith as a quarterback.

Email Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com. Follow on Twitter @bhertzel.