MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – To say Saturday was strange and surreal would be the mother of all understatements!
 
Entering Milan Puskar Stadium for West Virginia's season-opening football game against Eastern Kentucky was like reliving a scene out of the old Vincent Price movie The Last Man on Earth.
 
The oddity for me actually began the moment I left the driveway and headed to the stadium. What normally would have taken at least a half hour negotiating bumper-to-bumper traffic from the I-68 exit on Pierpont Road all the way to the stadium was a breeze on Saturday morning.
 
It took me less than 10 minutes from the time I left my house until I parked my car in the staff lot above the Steve Antoline Family Practice Field.
 
There were two lonely football staffers walking down the hill behind the Caperton Indoor Practice Facility and the parking lots next to the Milan Puskar Center - normally packed with tailgates and the pleasant aroma of barbeques - were completely empty.
 
The stadium was barren, too, the exception being a smattering of parents and family members relegated to the lower section.
 
The official attendance announced for Saturday's season opener against Eastern Kentucky was 976, which also reflected those permitted in the press box to cover the game. The last time West Virginia University played a football game before a crowd that small was well before 1918, which, incidentally, was the last time the world experienced a pandemic.
 
The 30 people allowed on the third level of the press box were dispersed throughout the facility in a bizarre setting emblematic of the times in which we are living.
 
This is our new normal, at least for now.
 
West Virginia coach Neal Brown began his postgame remarks by touching on the extraordinary atmosphere surrounding the most unusual home opener in the 40-year history of Milan Puskar Stadium.
 
"First of all, thank you for being here," Brown said to the 25 or so media members logged in to his virtual press conference. Normally, twice that many would have been sitting in the team room asking him questions in person. "Hopefully, our guys took good care of you up in the press box, and I understand you all had plenty of space.
 
"I'll say this as a lead in," he continued, "we're just very grateful to have the opportunity to play today. For all of these teams playing today, and in the last couple of weeks, just playing college football is a win."
 
It was a win for college sports - an industry currently being ravaged by the COVID-19 virus. Seeing the daily D-1 Ticker in your inbox and reading about all of the furloughs, layoffs and buyouts throughout the country is like scanning the obituary section in the newspaper.
 
It's beyond depressing.
 
COVID-19 is still undefeated right now, but playing college football yesterday (fans or no fans) was really the first positive step toward a return to normalcy.
 
Consider it a first down in our drive toward the end zone, or the end game to this terrible virus that has claimed almost 200,000 U.S. lives in just six months.
 
Keep in mind, it took four years for our country to lose 400,000 brave soldiers during World War II!
 
So, when we eventually get past this, what will the new normal look like? 
 
One of the reporters asked Neal Brown that question following Saturday's 46-point victory over outmatched Eastern Kentucky.
 
Brown gave a thoughtful response.
 
"I'm not comparing (the pandemic) to 9-11, but if you can think back to playing post-9-11, it was completely different, and I think that's going to be the case with the things we did pre-COVID," he said.
 
What that fully means is still anyone's guess.
 
But Saturday was unlike anything thousands of Mountaineer football fans from Weirton to Welch, Martinsburg to Matewan and all points in between, have ever experienced before.
 
Many of them would have been stuffed inside Milan Puskar Stadium cheering on their beloved West Virginia Mountaineers. 
 
That is what we've come to expect ever since the stadium opened 40 years ago in 1980.
 
Some of the newer WVU players, such as New Hampshire transfer Alonzo Addae, whose diving second-quarter interception was the play of the game, very easily could have mistaken the atmosphere here on Saturday for just another game at an empty Wildcat Stadium in Durham, New Hampshire.
 
Playing in front of 60,000 screaming college football fans is normally at the top of the list of reasons why players transfer up to Power 5 programs in the first place.
 
"Honestly, it was no different for me just because of the love for the game," Addae said of Saturday's atmosphere. "I think that's one thing me and my teammates all share is just a true passion for football, and obviously not having the atmosphere and the environment and the fans here (is disappointing), but we're still suiting up and representing West Virginia as a state and we want to do that proudly."
 
Quarterback Jarret Doege, another guy who made the move up to Power 5 football, recalled his old days at Bowling Green.
 
"I've been waiting for this question because I played in the 'MACtion' on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and my family was about the only people in the stands at the time so it was nothing new to me," he laughed.
 
"I could hear my mom scream and you could see her in the stands," he added. "Usually you couldn't find her, but I could see her sitting in the front row."
 
It was the same deal on Saturday. It's a new normal this year, for sure, but at least we're playing.
 
"I was probably as relaxed as I've ever been on game day, and it didn't have anything to do with who we were playing or where we were playing," Brown said. "It was just understanding the feeling of gratefulness."
 
Grateful and surreal … that pretty much sums up the 2020 West Virginia University football opener!