WVU Football: Savoring the Fiesta Bowl

I’m certain my tens of readers have wondered where I’ve been, as I've thus far failed to write on West Virginia’s glorious Fiesta Bowl victory over Oklahoma last Wednesday.

The answer is, I was at the game, in what turned out to be the best travel decision of my life—and then took a couple of days to cruise up to Sedona, which aside from being magnificent, is supposed to be a place of energy vortices that will help you find inner peace and become spiritually sublime.

After the Fiesta Bowl win, I don’t think I could have been more spiritually sublime.

Where to start?

During the first half, I was a little tense, but not as much as I figured I would be. I went to Arizona with the hope that WVU could hang with the higher-rated Sooners. I wasn't worried about the Mountaineers’ mental state—it was clear from the days leading up to the game that coach Bill Stewart had the team loose, united, and ready to play.

I was, however, concerned that they would be outmanned by the Sooners, especially after reading about OU's monstrous offensive line and All-American defenders.

But it was clear by halftime that WVU was the better team. They played mistake-free, and were obviously much faster on defense. The concern was that Oklahoma’s O-line would adjust to the WVU blitzes, or that the emotion that carried Eric Wicks and others to the backfield would wear off, but neither happened.

The truth was that WVU’s speedy defense ran around Oklahoma’s fat guys, who had no choice but to hold. Johnny Dingle was held another half-dozen times that weren’t called.

On offense, by halftime, I thought, “The 2006 offensive line finally showed up.”

I've written that the O-line was largely to blame for Steve Slaton’s down year, and that Noel Devine was having more success because he’s smaller and quicker laterally—something Slaton himself said after the game.

By halftime, it was clear that the WVU O-line was manhandling the Sooners’ defensive front, partly thanks to new right tackle Stephen Maw, and partly thanks to the fact that center Mike Dent wasn't snapping balls over Pat White’s head.

But by halfway through the fourth quarter, I was speechless.

Moments after Bob Stoops’ strange onside-kick call (my friend at the game noted that Stoops coached the third quarter like it was the fourth quarter, and the fourth like it was the third), Devine scooted untouched into the end zone below my seats, which were in the lower row of the upper deck at about the 5-yard line.

Very good seats, it turned out.

Three minutes later, Darius Reynaud was zipping around the left end in front of me and “frog flopping” into the end zone. If you watch the replay, you'll see that Reynaud put such a high-speed, ankle-breaking move on the Oklahoma defender that he almost fell down. But he recovered his footing while maintaining a beeline to the end zone.

In the fourth quarter, when White dropped back and fired a 30-yard strike to Tito Gonzalez (TITO-FREAKIN-GONZALEZ!), I was waiting for the ball to pop loose. When it did

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