September 20 Notebook
September 20, 2004 04:45 PM | General
September 20, 2004
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – A wonderful email made its way down the food chain to my desk Monday afternoon from Spc. Weston Gordon, a WVU student and a national guard member who was called into service and is in Iraq right now.
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| Spc. Weston Gordon and his friends tailgating in Iraq before West Virginia's game against Maryland last Saturday.
Submitted photo |
Spc. Gordon, once a roommate of former WVU defensive tackle Tim Love, watched the West Virginia-Maryland game Saturday evening on television and even managed to work in a little tailgate in the sand before the big game.
Wrote Gordon: “The win and the whole season is a big morale booster for a lot of us. We hate to miss such a big year but we’re hoping and praying to get home to see the big one.” Weston ended his email by thanking the team and Coach Rod for “keeping their spirits up.”
Weston, I speak for all of us here at West Virginia University: We thank YOU and the rest of your buddies for defending our freedom!
By the way, I hope all of you can get home to watch the ‘big one.’ In the meantime, stay safe.
Random Notes:
And now on to some dirty laundry:
If you don’t know him or aren’t familiar with his writing, Doyel is one of CBS SportsLine.com’s senior writers who filed a scathing review of the West Virginia football team Saturday after witnessing in person the Mountaineers’ 19-16 come-from-behind victory over the No. 19-rated Terps.
The title of Doyel’s column referred to West Virginia as “a BCS train wreck” and he wrote that WVU quarterback Rasheed Marshall “can probably speak Latvian better than he throws.”
Doyel also wrote that West Virginia’s garden “has weeds.” And Doyel’s response to Orange Bowl official Joe Millsaps saying West Virginia “played a real good game” was to call him a “liar.”
That’s pretty tough stuff.
I don’t think West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez and his football team needs to issue any apologies. They didn’t publish Athlon Magazine, which had them ranked fifth, or vote themselves No. 10 in the preseason AP poll.
If memory serves me correct, Miami and Virginia Tech weren’t kicked out of the Big East either.
What Doyel was trying to do was indict the BCS system by implying that West Virginia would be an unfortunate Orange Bowl participant, which in itself is assuming an awful lot considering the calendar has yet to reach October.
My beef is this: Gregg Doyel could have made his point without throwing rocks at a 23-year-old college quarterback who happens to be one of the nicest guys on the planet.
At the same time, Doyel understands the chances are very slim that he’ll ever be confronted by either Rasheed Marshall or the rest of the West Virginia team for his harsh words. The same goes for all those chat-board clowns who continually choose to criticize players while at the same time hiding behind their catchy handles.
For this, I have to give Maryland offensive guard Kyle Schmitt credit. At least he is man enough to confront those he ridicules.
“I think it’s a little crazy that with Virginia Tech and Miami out of the league that all of the sudden the league is wide open,” he said. “Our contention is that it’s been wide open every year. Last year we tied for it and two years ago we finished second.
“It is going to bear out throughout the season that there are still a lot of quality Big East teams on the schedule,” he added. “Besides that, all of the criticism is headed toward the schools that remained. I kind of wonder where all of that is coming from? It’s not our fault schools decided to leave the program. It wasn’t like we said, ‘Get out.’ They decided to leave for their own various reasons and the rest of us have scrambled to adapt.”
I asked some of my friends about this type of behavior and they said that it is just par for the course. They added that it’s also not just confined to West Virginia fans, that it happens everywhere.
It may happen everywhere but that doesn’t make it right. Whatever happened to cheering for your own team and respecting your guests? And why is it that we have to always make excuses for the idiots? Why can’t an idiot just be an idiot … wherever they’re from?
Same goes for Chris Berman.
Now, on to more important things:
West Virginia has now won 29 times against nationally ranked teams and Rodriguez has five of them in 40 career games.
Here is the record of West Virginia coaches against AP ranked teams since 1940:
West Virginia coach Nikki Izzo-Brown owns a 126-52-11 career record including a 113-47-11 mark at WVU heading into Friday’s home match against regionally ranked Villanova.
Last fall, Herber missed the first three weeks of classes playing in the World University Games and still wound up with a perfect 4.0 grade point average in political science, earning academic All-America honors.
Missing some class time myself for other reasons during my college career, I can truly appreciate Joe’s academic achievements.
Way to go Joe!
The thoughts and opinions expressed here don't neccesarily reflect those of the Mountaineer Sports Network or West Virginia University .
