MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Thursday night football is back for the West Virginia Mountaineers!
 
WVU, which has played just four Thursday night games during its decade-long association with the Big 12, will have three of them on its 2022 docket as games against archrivals Pitt and Virginia Tech have been moved to Thursday night, the Atlantic Coast Conference announced Monday.
 
West Virginia is now slated to open its 2022 season on Thursday, Sept. 1, at Heinz Field against the Panthers and will face the Hokies in Blacksburg, Virginia, on Thursday, Sept. 22. WVU will face Baylor at home on Thursday, Oct. 13.
 
The Virginia Tech clash will represent 28 years to the day when West Virginia played its first-ever Thursday night game as part of ESPN's College Football Thursday Primetime telecasts in 1994.
 
Fittingly, that game was also in Blacksburg where West Virginia native Mike Patrick handled the ESPN Primetime call with former Pitt coach Mike Gottfried and popular sideline reporter Dr. Jerry Punch.
 
Later that season, West Virginia got its first Thursday night primetime victory when it blanked 22^nd-ranked Syracuse 13-0 during its four-game winning streak to conclude the regular season.
 
Actor Jimmy Gary, who most recently has appeared in four episodes of the NBC series "New Amsterdam" and was also a regular on Netflix's "Orange is the New Black," ran for a career-high 119 yards in helping the Mountaineers to their big upset victory over the Orange.
 
Rabid Mountaineer fans surely recall a pair of big Thursday night wins over Pitt in 2005-06.
 
In those two games, quarterback Pat White and running back Steve Slaton accounted for a combined 1,079 yards from scrimmage and eight touchdowns in a couple of blowout victories. During the 2005 game, Panther coach Dave Wannstedt was asked at halftime what his team could do to slow down Slaton and White.
 
"Run faster," he answered.
 
Slaton also put on a primetime show against Maryland in 2006 when he ran for 195 yards and scored a pair of touchdowns in a blowout win over the Terps. A year later, White unknotted a 31-all tie against Louisville when he scored a 50-yard touchdown with 1:36 left on a Thursday night at Milan Puskar Stadium.
 
Then, in 2008, Auburn's Tommy Tuberville watched with dismay as Noel Devine ran for 207 yards and scored the clinching 30-yard touchdown with 2:26 left in a 34-17 Mountaineer victory. Devine's impressive statistical night overshadowed an outstanding performance put forth by wide receiver Dorrell Jalloh, who scored a pair of second half touchdowns in helping West Virginia overcome an early 17-3 deficit.
 
Since joining the Big 12 in 2012, three of West Virginia's four Thursday night television appearances have come on either FOX or FS1.
 
ESPN began the Thursday night primetime craze with a limited number of telecasts late in the 1991 season. The Texas Tech-Oklahoma game, played on Sept. 3, 1992, kicked off a full slate of ESPN College Football Thursday Primetime games that year.
 
Since then, Thursday night has become a college football staple with ESPN's coverage increasing in popularity in the late 1990s when Mike Tirico, Gottfried and Punch described the action.
 
Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit and Erin Andrews had a popular run in the mid-2000s before giving way to Rece Davis, David Pollack, Jesse Palmer and Samantha Ponder. The most current ESPN College Football Thursday Night Primetime lineup paired Matt Barrie with Mike Golic Jr., Roddy Jones and Harry Lyles Jr.
 
If ESPN does choose to air either the Pitt or Virginia Tech games (or both) as part of its Thursday Primetime lineup, it will be the 19^th appearance for West Virginia, its last coming at Baylor on Oct. 31, 2019.
 
WVU has played Pitt three times on Thursday night and Virginia Tech twice.