MORGANTOWN — The snow that has strangled the North Central West Virginia region has everyone caught up with a little cabin fever, so what better time than now for the Mountaineers to get you thinking a little football?
The 2010 football season was announced and if you have a calendar, you might want to circle a few dates. No weddings, bar mitzvahs or christening on these days.
• The season opens on Saturday, Sept. 4 when Coastal Carolina comes to town, if the snow has been removed by then. The Chanticleers (There, you’ve learned something already) are coming off a tough season in which they went 5-6, taking a 58-13 beating by Liberty, a team WVU defeated 33-20 last season, and being roughed up, 49-3, by Clemson.
• A weekend later Marshall comes to town for the first meeting between new Herd coach Doc Holliday and the team he spent so many years with as an assistant coach. This Sept. 11 game carries the weight of in-state recruiting and, perhaps, of Florida recruiting, as you know Holliday will try to make a big push there.
• A week later it’s Maryland returning to the West Virginia schedule for a game that never should have left, a natural border rivalry between ACC and Big East teams that carries great weight as Terrapins coach Ralph Friedgen is coaching for his job after a dismal 10-loss season.
“We have a four-year deal with Maryland. It should be a 40-year deal,” said Stewart, who would like to see the Mountaineers also play either Virginia or Virginia Tech on a yearly basis as a regional rival.
• On Sept. 25 — the fourth of five straight Saturday games — WVU heads back down into Southeastern Conference territory, invading Baton Rouge, one of the craziest college football venues in America, to tackle (at least they hope they will) the Tigers of LSU.
This will be a 7 p.m. game, central time, and there is no television contract yet.
The Tigers were 9-3 last year before losing to No. 11 Penn State in the Capitol One Bowl.
LSU is one of the great destinations in college football.
“I was there in the mid-1980s when I was with North Carolina,” Stewart said. “I’ll be like a kid in a candy store.”
• The first bye of the season on Saturday, Oct. 2, before the Mountaineers move into Big East play by entertaining South Florida at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 14 for an ESPN game. The Bulls will come to town with their new coach, Skip Holtz, with whom WVU is quite familiar from some tough battles at East Carolina.
Holtz will bring with him talented quarterback B.J. Daniels, who put on a show against WVU during a 30-19 victory over the Mountaineers last year. He threw for 232 yards and rushed for 104.
• After an Oct. 23 Homecoming game against Syracuse and Friday night game at Connecticut that will be carried on ESPN2 on Oct. 29, the Mountaineers have a Nov. 13 home showdown with Cincinnati, a team that has beaten them each of the last two years and that comes in as the third opponent with a new coach, former Mountaineers’ assistant Butch Jones.
• That takes WVU into the home stretch, going to Louisville on Saturday, Nov. 20, followed by a trip up I-79 for the Backyard Brawl, which could have huge conference implications, between what might be the best two teams in the Big East.
The meeting with Pitt will be carried nationally by either ABC, ESPN or ESPN2, and the nation should be caught up in the face to face duel between WVU’s Noel Devine and Pitt’s Dion Lewis, perhaps the two best in college football.
• The finale will be held in Morgantown on Saturday, Dec. 4, before either an ABC, ESPN or ESPN2 audience, as Rutgers comes to town to try to find a way to win a game in Morgantown, where it has never won.
“I really like the way the schedule is set up,” said Stewart, noting four games and a bye week, four more and bye week and then four leading up to a big conclusion with Pitt and Rutgers.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
WVU Sports
Trip to Baton Rouge highlights 2010 WVU schedule
- WVU Sports
-
-
Local lineman commits to WVU
Morgantown High offensive lineman Amanii Brown has committed to West Virginia’s 2014 recruiting class.
Brown grew up in Clarksburg before moving to Morgantown during his sophomore year of high school. -
HERTZEL COLUMN- Nehlen talks evolution of football
In many ways, Don Nehlen spent the last football season feeling like a child from the ’50s who had been dropped into our modern society.
-
FURFARI COLUMN- Huggins says transfers not isolated case
Coach Bob Huggins will tell you that losing four players to transfer mode from his West Virginia University men’s basketball squad was not an unusual or isolated case.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Independent study of WVU finances needed
It is time someone gets to the bottom of what is going on financially within West Virginia University and its athletic department.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: The gamble of leaving college early
One of the first lessons they try to get across to a student-athlete when he comes to school is the evils of gambling.
In truth, college sports still echo with the basketball point-fixing scandal from 60 years ago and a few others that have surfaced over the years, both on a professional and collegiate level. -
FURFARI COLUMN: Compton fifth of WVU’s 11 consensus All-Americans
Mike Compton, who was the fifth in West Virginia University’s line of 11 consensus All-America football players, starred on the teams of 1989-90-91-92.
A 6-foot-7, 280-to-295-pound center, he not only excelled on the offensive line, but he was a team captain as a senior. -
HERTZEL COLUMN: WVU has its academic ship on course
In the real world the initials APR stand for annual percentage rate, a term with which everyone who has a car loan or home mortgage is quite familiar, but in the world of college athletics it is a term that has a somewhat a different meaning.
-
Kendrick donates to tornado relief in name of WVU baseball
Arizona Diamondbacks Managing General Partner Ken Kendrick has made a donation of $200,000 to the Mountaineer Athletic Club in the name of the West Virginia University baseball program to the Oklahoma City tornado relief effort.
-
FURFARI COLUMN: Mon County prosecutor says FOIA handling OK
It wasn’t until about a week ago that I found for certain who is responsible to make sure that the Freedom of Information of Act law is enforced in West Virginia.
You may remember that in February 2013, The Dominion Post of Morgantown filed a grand total of 33 FOIA requests against West Virginia University. -
FURFARI COLUMN- Guidi was all-time great wrestler, coach
Lewis Guidi, who unexpectedly died last week in Jefferson (Va.) Hospital at the age of 78, was one of the greatest wrestlers in West Virginia’s athletic history.
- More WVU Sports Headlines
-
Local lineman commits to WVU
