West Virginia Not Headed for National Championship Game

West Virginia's coaching staff has a tough task ahead of them.

It is typical for a school with a new coaching staff to have a drop-off their first year, yet the fans of West Virginia seem to believe that their team is immune to such happenings.

But there are some fans in Mountaineer territory that need to start getting a grip, or they will find themselves disappointed before the end of the season.

Here's the problem that West Virginia faces—they have no margin for error.

The Big East is populated with teams that were Conference USA teams just five years ago.  Teams named after metro areas (Louisville, Cincinnati, Syracuse, and Pittsburgh), as well as so-called "directional" schools (South Florida), tend to be seen as lightweights because historically, they have been.

If you put a bunch of these types of schools in the same conference, some team will probably go undefeated, and some team will probably lose just one game...but that doesn't mean those teams are of the same caliber as a team with an equal record from a conference of heavyweights.

The voters are keenly aware of this.

For this reason, West Virginia will be the odd man out if there are more than two teams that have their same record or better.

Last year was a good example.  Ohio State was undefeated, LSU had one loss, and WVU had one loss heading into the next to last week of the season.  The polls had LSU playing Ohio State for all the marbles if LSU won out (remained at one loss), even if West Virginia also remained at one loss.

LSU went on to lose to Arkansas, so WVU had its chance, but they blew it in the Pitt game.

Thus, LSU and WVU were both two-loss teams, and we see which two-loss team got to go play for the title...LSU.

Many believe that the winner of the USC-Ohio State game this coming season will run the table on the rest of their games.  This is especially true if that team is USC.  But if it happens for either of them, then one slot in the NC game is taken.  The other will go to a one-loss team (unless there aren't any).

So where does that leave WVU if they aren't either undefeated or the only one-loss team?  It leaves them on the outside looking in.

In no particular order, here are a collection of teams that have a good shot at being one-loss teams this year:

• Georgia
• Florida
• LSU
• Auburn
• Ohio State
• Oklahoma
• Missouri
• Clemson
• Virginia Tech

At least five of these teams have a good chance at starting the season ranked ahead of WVU in the polls, meaning that WVU would have the further difficulty of having to leapfrog them during the season.

Adding more complication is the fact that eight of the nine teams play in conferences with championship games, which means an automatic additional top-15 team on their strength of schedule and a 12th win (for a 12-1 record, versus WVU, which with only one loss would be 11-1).

That means that even if a team is ranked below WVU before their conference championship game, the voters could easily be persuaded to switch the order if they win that game.

Given that being a one-loss team probably won't be good enough, what are the obstacles to going undefeated?  For starters, only three coaches in the last 20 years have gone undefeated in their first season.

During that same time span, across all the Division I football programs, hundreds of hires have been made.  So it's not impossible, but it's pretty darn rare for a first-year coach, even under good conditions, to go undefeated.

In the ongoing chess match between coaches, there will just be times that the inexperience factor costs the team, even though the team may be better than the one on the other sideline.  Anyone not prepared for that is just fooling themselves.

WVU, like most teams, always seems to drop a game to a less talented team.  It's just hard to be up every week.  Examples of these losses are Pitt (2007) and USF (2006-2007).  For whatever reason, USF has just seemed to have WVU's number in recent years.

WVU had not played a top 10 caliber team as one of their non-conference games in all of Rich Rodriguez's tenure but have one this year with Auburn.  Even as a home game, it will be difficult for WVU to win that game.  Tuberville has a very successful and lengthy "big game" record, while Bill Stewart has been a head coach for only one.

WVU fans will insist the same could be said about Bob Stoops, except that while he has been involved in a number of "big games," he hasn't won them.  He is on a four-game bowl losing streak and counting.

Finally, West Virginia had a lot of off-the-field distractions during the offseason.  There's the whole Rodriguez circus, a new coaching staff making the transition, and some players that have had to be removed from the team for disciplinary purposes.  This type of offseason has historically meant some trouble down the road somewhere in the season.

All of the above make the prospects for even a one-loss season seem far-fetched—and even if WVU reaches that one-loss mark, it will more than likely not be enough.