November 30 Notebook
November 29, 2004 10:58 PM | General
November 30, 2004
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Mountaineer fans give yourselves a pat on the back. You got West Virginia into the Gator Bowl.
 |
||
| More than 30,000 Mountaineer fans traveled to Jacksonville for last year's Gator Bowl game against Maryland.
WVU Sports Communications photo |
Last year, more than 30,000 of you went down to Jacksonville, Fla., with your wallets and checkbooks open and the Gator Bowl -- its board of directors and community leaders -- haven’t forgotten.
That’s why they made the decision Monday morning to invite an 8-3 Mountaineer football team that has lost back-to-back games against Boston College and Pitt to end the regular season.
The Gator Bowl could have very easily waited until after this Saturday’s Miami-Virginia Tech game and paired the loser against a Boston College Eagles team that was seemingly destined for a BCS bowl berth before Syracuse poured cold water on them.
After all BC is said to be the better TV draw and certainly a more appealing school, considering the fact that it will become the 12th member of the Atlantic Coast Conference next year.
But the Gator Bowl, perhaps looking at its own record book and noticing that the Mountaineers have played in three of the game’s 10-best attended games, decided that it might help the local economy to have 15, 20 or 30,000 Mountaineer fans make the trek down I-95 once again this year.
So for that Mountaineer Nation, we salute you.
This Week’s Notebook:
Current coach Rich Rodriguez is now 0-2 in his two bowl-game appearances, having lost 48-22 to Virginia in the 2002 Continental Tire Bowl and 41-7 to Maryland in last year’s Gator Bowl. West Virginia is 9-14 all-time in bowl games.
But you can take solace in the fact that Nebraska went seven straight bowl games without a win before Coach Tom Osborne’s Huskers team won it all in 1995. All-time, the mighty Cornhuskers are just 21-21 in bowls. This year Nebraska is sitting the bowl season out for the first time since 1968, showing that even one of the nation’s best football programs can endure tough times in post-season play.
I would suppose there is a great deal of resistance up in Providence to that idea. The Eagles are dead weight as far as Big East schools are concerned and it will be interesting to see which side gets its way.
If Connecticut winds up in Charlotte, Boston College could very well be headed for the blue turf of Boise, Idaho, for the MPC Computers Bowl. I, for one, find that an appropriate destination for the cold-blooded Eagles.
As a part of its negotiations I’m certain the Big East is pointing out the fact that Connecticut has fervent fan support in men’s and women’s basketball and is expected to travel well to Charlotte. It might also be a good idea to remind the Tire Bowl folks that West Virginia single-handedly put them on solid financial ground in the bowl’s inaugural game in 2002 when 73,535 of you showed up.
Whatever happened to just talking about the game in front of them?
Hartford Courant writer Ken Davis pointed out on Sunday that Big East boss Michael Tranghese was not in attendance at Saturday’s BC-Syracuse game to crown the league’s champion.
Orange quarterback Perry Patterson was quoted after the game as saying that he preferred “anybody but Boston College” taking the league’s BCS bid.
Of course to those involved, the most galling aspect of BC’s decision to leave was the fact that it did so after it had reaffirmed its commitment to the league when the ACC didn’t have the votes to invite the Eagles the first time around two summers ago. It was only after Notre Dame turned down an invitation to join the ACC last fall did Big East schools fully realize how deeply involved Boston College was in the entire process.
At any rate, I found it amusing reading Coach Tom O’Brien’s comments in last Saturday’s Boston Globe after his football team performed the biggest belly-flopper in school history against Syracuse.
“I am not going to play anybody in the Big East for what we went through,” O’Brien said. “It didn’t have to end this way … but, for whatever reason, there’s a lot of animosity toward Boston College.”
Actually, there isn’t that much animosity toward Boston College. But there is a lot of animosity toward those current decision makers at BC who decided to undo a 25-year investment in the Big East Conference -- a league that essentially helped bail out Boston College when it endured an embarrassing gambling scandal in the mid 1990s.
“It’s been a tough year and a half,” O’Brien said.
It certainly has been a tough year and a half, and not just for those wearing and supporting the Maroon and Gold.
Now switching gears …
 |
||
| Jerry Porter scored the game-winning touchdown for Oakland Sunday night against Denver.
AP photo |
Sauerbrun and Gramatica have a famous feud that has been going on for years and Sauerbrun said after the game that he put a “mental hex” on his long-time nemesis.
Wrote The Observer’s Tom Sorenson: “Sauerbrun went to college at West Virginia. They know secret mountain stuff up there.”
Apparently that “secret mountain stuff” has led Coach Jon Gruden to hold open auditions for the Tampa Bay kicker job this week.
By chance does anyone out there have some of that “secret mountain stuff” to use for this year’s Gator Bowl?
After the game instead of getting on the team charter and flying back to Morgantown, Todd decided to hop in the car with his family and drive back to Setauket, N.Y., for an extended weekend visit. He did so without telling a sole and it wasn’t until Monday when the team was ready to practice special teams that anyone in the program realized that Sauerbrun was gone.
He had to go all the way back to the 1986-87 season when West Virginia won 57-55 at Notre Dame. The Irish won 24 games that year and made the NCAA tournament “Sweet 16” under the direction of Coach Richard “Digger” Phelps.
Now Enochs is going to take his chances in Pittsburgh, recently signing a free-agent contract with the Pirates in hopes of making the team as a reliever.
Enochs spent the entire season at Triple-A New Orleans last year were he finished the season with a 6-8 record and a 4.14 ERA in 113 innings. Enochs told the East Liverpool Review that his main criterion was signing with a team that would give him an opportunity to join a big-league camp at the start of spring training.
“Basically they called my agent and said one of their scouts saw me play and recommended they go after me,” Enochs said.
Hopefully Enochs can stick with the Buccos.
Have a great week!
Note: The views and opinions expressed here don’t necessarily reflect those of West Virginia University and the Mountaineer Sports Network.
