Couches Beware: West Virginia Mountaineers Poised to Crash BCS Party

It’s been 11 months since Dana Holgorsen took over the reins at West Virginia. In this time, his team has changed offenses, changed conferences, gone to a BCS bowl and put up 70 points in that same BCS bowl.

WVU also started serving beer at its home stadium, a change that seems eerily fitting given Holgorsen’s casino track record and the city’s propensity to engulf anything (preferably a padded seated device, of course) in flames when the time is right. That right time is usually, well, there is no wrong time.

With their new coach at the helm, the Mountaineers have abandoned the sinking ship that is the Big East and hopped aboard the somehow-healthy Big 12 boat.

“Healthy” and the Big 12 still seem like an odd marriage given the turmoil the conference endured last year, but this match is also appropriate given recent developments. It has its new conference head honcho, a new television deal on the horizon and two new talented teams to showcase.

I’m sorry, Dan Beebe. We still love you in a bizarre, glad-you’re-gone sort of way that really isn’t love at all when you think about it. Tough love, maybe.

TCU and West Virginia will each have new conference foes in 2012, and with Robert Griffin III, Brandon Weeden, Justin Blackmon, Kendall Wright, Ryan Broyles and other NFL-worthy talents headed on to the next level, the conference is ripe for the taking.

That's especially true for West Virginia, which will benefit from this talent departure and look to build on the solid foundation already established under college football’s ultimate offensive mastermind in year one.

Year two under Holgorsen could be a massive step up, and there’s absolutely no reason anyone should be surprised if this surge takes place. You could label West Virginia as a “dark horse” national championship pick, but such proclamation needs no WARNING label.

This team is talented. It'll have a superb home-field advantage over Big 12 foes that get their first taste of Morgantown (good luck with that) and a quarterback who could post video game box scores on a weekly basis.

Geno Smith seemed to adapt to his coach’s offense sooner than expected and put together a solid season (4,385 yards, 31 TDs, seven INTs) in 2011. That should only improve going forward, and with a schedule that will garner him more national recognition, he could very well find himself in New York when it’s all said and done.

In fact, the online sportsbook Bovada has Smith listed at 7/1 to win the award, behind only USC’s Matt Barkley, Michigan’s Denard Robinson, Wisconsin’s Montee Ball and Oklahoma’s Landry Jones.

Although Smith will be the one throwing the ball upwards of 50 times a game, he’ll have plenty of familiar faces on the other end. Wide receivers Stedman Bailey, Tavon Austin and Ivan McCartney are all back, as are their combined 222 catches, 3,050 yards and 23 touchdowns.

Dustin Garrison, the team’s leading rusher, will be only a sophomore, although he’s still recovering from a torn ACL suffered just before the team’s bowl game. As long as someone on the roster can pick up the occasional first down on 3rd-and-short, the running game should do its part.

If there’s a weakness of the offense, it’s the offensive line. Three starters are back, and while they struggled at times last season, they should improve with another year in the offensive scheme. If they can give Smith and Co. any time at all, they will likely be the most potent offense in the country. Playing against Big 12 defenses won’t hurt, either.

Much like most teams in the conference, the defense for the Mountaineers is a legitimate concern. They’re embarking on their first year in a 3-4 under co-defensive coordinators Keith Patterson and Joe DeForest, and they will lose the talent behind the 14 sacks created by Bruce Irvin and Julian Miller last season. They will, however, have six starters back on that side of the ball.

It certainly won’t be the strength of this team, but if the 3-4 can generate big plays and make a stop every now and then, the offense should take over from there.

And so the mold is in place for a successful season, but it’s not that easy. It never is. It’s not just about their team, but also where they’ll play, whom they’ll play and when they’ll play 'em. WVU’s inaugural Big 12 season isn’t a walk in the park by any means, but there are certainly much tougher schedules out there and most of them will be played by teams picked to finish in front of them. 

Back-to-back trips to Texas and Texas Tech followed by a Kansas State meeting at home certainly stand out early on. After a bye week, they’ll take on TCU in Morgantown, head to OK State for a fascinating tussle, and then welcome to Oklahoma to West Virginia for what could be a massive game from a Big 12, and likely national, standpoint.

We’ll learn a lot about WVU—and Texas, for that matter—when the two teams meet in early October. If the Mountaineers can win in Texas, which will be a challenge given some of the evolving playmakers on the Longhorns’ roster, they might keep their foot to the floor and never look back.

Don’t underestimate what home field will mean to this team in 2012. Morgantown, especially at night, has become one of the most incredible atmospheres in the game. A team like Oklahoma, which has to travel to WVU late in the year, is in for an out-of-state, less sober version of Bedlam. Every week is bedlam, and the culture change in this 11 months has been staggering. 

The city finally has a coach that matches what it's been dying to see, and while Bill Stewart wasn’t a dud by any means, Dana Holgorsen is a constant reminder of what he wasn’t.

In all likelihood, West Virginia will drop a game or two at some point during its season—perhaps in a shootout it simply couldn’t keep up in or a turnover that did it in—and it will find itself just outside of the championship picture.

You could say the same thing about almost every team in the country that is looking to build on its success from a year ago. It’s the nature of the beast with only two teams left standing (for now). 

However, this team—with this coach and this offense—is on the verge of greatness, and 70 points in a BCS blowout could pale in comparison with what it can accomplish.

Don’t be surprised if the Mountaineers sneak into the championship picture at some point this year, and don’t be surprised if they stay there, either.

The talent is there, a little more settled in now, and that’s a scary thought. It's even scarier if you're a couch seated comfortably in Morgantown for the time being, waiting for the fall.