West Virginia: Big 12 Bound and Ready to Compete

West Virginia Mountaineers. What else is there to say? They absolutely obliterated the Clemson Tigers in the Orange Bowl. They put up 70 points against a team that was actually favored.

Usually, when you see a team get 33 points you would normally assume that if they did lose, they didn't lose by a whole lot. Now you see Clemson did put up 33 points, yet they still managed to lose by 37 points. They didn't even get half the amount of points that West Virginia did.

As you can imagine, multiple scoring records were broken. Heck, they were broken by halftime. How often do you see over 100 points scored in a BCS bowl game? This was a lopsided basketball game.

If you remember Pat White and Noel Devine, then you remember the Mountaineers as a run-heavy team. This past year, Geno Smith threw for 4,385 yards and 31 touchdowns. Guess what? Smith will be back for his senior season.

Don't be too surprised if you see him as an early season Heisman candidate. If, like a lot of players who return for their senior season, he improves from last season, I could see him being a Heisman front runner.

On the coaching staff, Dana Holgorsen will be the head coach just like last season. The big coaching change that happened was the hiring of former Oklahoma State assistant Joe DeForest to be the newest co-defensive coordinator.

Have you heard of Mr. DeForest before? I'd be a little surprised if you had. He's worked with some big names in the past, including Les Miles.

The best part for West Virginia is that he's considered to be one of the best recruiters in the nation. If he doesn't make an immediate impact as a co-defensive coordinator, give him a few years. He'll bring in some top-notch recruits from all over.

As for the other co-defensive coordinator, there hasn't been one hired quite yet. Some names have been floating around, such as former Houston Cougars and Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator Brian Stewart and former Miami Hurricanes head coach Randy Shannon. Oh yeah, and you can't leave out current Oklahoma Sooner defensive coordinator Brent Venables.

I can already tell you that West Virginia will be very highly ranked in the preseason poll. I'm talking being in the top 10, easily.

They play a huge game early in the season when they head down to Tallahassee and face the Florida State Seminoles. If they win this game, and FSU really is the team they're expected to be, then the Mountaineers have a good chance of at least making it to the Big 12 championship in their first year in the conference.

Before they get to that point (their schedule isn't completely set in stone yet) they have conference foes such as Oklahoma, Texas, Oklahoma State and (if they're still an unexpectedly good team) they have Kansas State. Suppose Kansas State falls back into their old routine of struggling within the conference, then that, for all practical purposes, eliminates Kansas State from even competing with West Virginia.

I think that some of these in-conference games of the Big 12 will be very entertaining to watch. The Big 12 isn't a conference like the MAC or Sun Belt. It's an automatic-qualifying conference, and one with some major national powerhouses in it.

Since the Big 12's inception in 1996, teams within the conference have combined to win three national championships. Oklahoma and Texas are the usual teams to beat.

West Virginia stands a chance of being up there with Texas and Oklahoma. With a great recruiter, good coaching staff and an already great football program, seeing them being mentioned as a national title contender this upcoming season would do nothing but make me say “I told you so.”