It all started in October 2011. That was when the West Virginia Mountaineer bolted from the rotting Big East Conference to the more appealing Big 12 Conference. Gone would be the talks by fans and pollsters that the Mountaineers had inflated records due to easy schedules. Replacing them would be discussions of West Virginia as a new national power, and not some gimmick styled offense. That was what everyone in the West Virginia camp hoped, and truly believed could happen. Then something else happened: critics of the team were....right.
Before this announcement, Morgantown had already experienced a a few years of shuffling on the fly. Former alum Rich Rodriguez, who coached from 2001-2007, left for the greener pastures of the University of Michigan (or so he thought). Bill Stewart stepped in to coach the team on an interim basis, leading the Mountaineers to a 48-28 blowout of the Oklahoma Sooners in the 2008 Fiesta Bowl, largely in part to running back Noel Divine. From the sudden high of BCS victory came the permanent head coaching job for Stewart. It was largely criticized due to the fact that he had no track record as a head coach, and would only end poorly. The critics were right. Stewart ended up going 28-10, but never again coached in a BCS bowl game.
Former offensive coordinator of the high powered Oklahoma State Dana Holgorsen was hired as West Virginia's offensive coordinator in 2010. He was initially brought in to coach under Stewart, in hopes that he would be head coach in 2012. It was obviously a situation that was never going to work. It would be like telling your wife you are going to have a girlfriend, and bring her along as a third wheel and telling her you would be doing this for two years. Your wife would obviously feel less appealing and become more jealous, and would feel like nothing she did actually mattered. Stewart became to feel just this way, resenting Holgorsen's mere presence. Colin Dunlap, a former reporter from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette claimed that Stewart had asked him and another reporter from the Charleston Gazette to find out any dirt on Holgorsen that they could. This led to an eventual resignation and contract buy out for Stewart, as Holgorsen became the official head coach of West Virginia in 2011. Besides, its not like finding out dirt on him was very hard to do. Holgorsen has had several run-ins in the past with being inebriated in public, most recently in 2011 at a Charleston casino.
The next season, the team was now Holgorsen's. In his first season he led the team to a 10-3 record. They were the 13th highest scoring offense n the nation at 37.6 points scored per game. Their defense allowed 26.8 points per game which ranked 62nd out of 120 teams. Not great, but then again not terrible. After a convincing Orange Bowl win against Clemson last January which saw the Mountaineers put up seventy points on a solid Tigers squad, it put every team in the Big 12 on notice. West Virginia was coming; try and stop them. They had the returns of senior quarterback Geno Smith, senior receiver Tavon Austin and junior Stedman Bailey to look forward to. Or so they thought.
The 2012 season started out with so much hype and hope. Critics still wondered if the Mountaineers could handle a new conference with a tougher schedule. They started off the season 3-0, averaging 47.3 points per game behind the arm of Smith and the legs of Austin and Bailey. But none of those wins were against any team from the Big 12. On September 29th, they faced the Baylor Golden Bears who were led by quarterback Nick Florence. While not on the level of Oklahoma or Texas, they were still a higher quality opponent with an equally high powered offense. The scoring started early and often for both teams, but West Virginia prevailed in their first test, 70-63. It was like watching an NCAA Football video game. Smith went 45-51 for 656 yards and 8 touchdowns without an interception. Bailey had 303 yards receiving and 5 scores. But he wasn't even the leading receiver of the game. That honor belonged to Baylor's Terrance Williams who had 314 yards and two scores. Welcome to the Heisman Race, Geno.
So they beat Baylor? Big deal. Surely they couldn't beat Texas.....in Austin. In a back and forth game which was never decided until the final minute, Holgorsen's team prevailed again, 48-45. Smith once again put up big numbers, throwing four touchdowns and no picks, while leading the Mountaineers to their highest ranking of the season at fifth in the polls.
On October 13th, they finally hit their first speed bump in a game against Texas Tech, which was actually the edge to a cliff where their season dropped off. They lost 49-14. While a significant loss, they could surely make up for it the following week against #4 Kansas State. But they didn't, losing even worse, 55-14. Smith's perfect season of 25 touchdowns and no interceptions thrown came to a halt as he threw two. The national title aspirations came to a halt. The next three weeks were against TCU (rinse), Oklahoma State (wash) and Oklahoma (repeat). All three games were losses, where the defense gave up an average of 48 points allowed per game. That's not just a red flag- it's a white flag of surrender drenched in the unstoppable bleeding of points by a defense that couldn't stop a quadriplegic from getting in the endzone. This officially signified the end of any Heisman hopes Smith once had.
The losses ended when they strung together two wins in a row against lesser opponents in Iowa State and Kansas. This put them at 7-5 on the season, after starting out 5-0. They finished the regular season with a defense that surrendered 457 points (most in school history) with the 38.1 points per game "earning" them a 117 ranking out of 124 teams in the FBS. Holgorsen sent a message by dismissing cornerbacks coach Daron Roberts on December 9th. Their 7-5 record gave them their latest "honor" on Saturday- the New Era Pinstripe Bowl played at Yankee Stadium versus Syracuse.
In a game that saw plenty of snow, they were dismantled 38-14 in large part because of 'Cuse junior running back Prince Tyson-Gulley's 215 yards and two touchdowns. Their offense never was in sync. Their 14 points came off two scores from the always consistent Stedman Bailey who finished with 25 touchdowns on the season. One was a single coverage he beat down the field, while the other was him simply not giving up on a 33 yard scamper through the Orange defense.
Austin was held in check, and the rest of the team's performance was sluggish at best. You could see it from the first quarter that they didn't want to be there. Their expectations along with fans of the team were much higher. At worst they'd finish in one of five BCS bowls, right? Not. The players looked like they felt they were better than Syracuse. All of them except one - Geno Smith. He still felt the sting of last year's loss to Syracuse, 49-23. This was his last game and his final chance to prove he could handle the game like a true field general before April's draft. There he was on the sidelines, with the team down 21 points, hollering "We are only down three scores! LET'S GO!" As Bane said, "Admirable, but mistaken." Geno, as much heart and talent as you have- none of it would make a scratch on the surface of such an unmotivated team.
Now that their "once-promising-turned-downright-depressing" season is finally in the books, Holgorsen can now focus on re-tooling. Gone are Smith and Austin, with Bailey possibly leaving for the draft as well. Left are a bunch of unknowns, such as quarterbacks Paul Millard and Ford Childress, as well as running back Andrew Buie. Holgorsen's biggest concern should be his porous defense, the problem with being such an offensive-minded coach. Not so much their running defense as much as their coverage which was beat quite frequently.
Defenses win championships while a lack of one loses not just games, but once promising seasons. As the age old saying of optimism goes, "There's always next year."
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