WVU Football: Upcoming Lame Duck Season for Bill Stewart and the Mountaineers

With the 2010 season in the books for the Mountaineers at an unimpressive 9-4, the eyes of the Mountaineer Maniacs will turn toward to 2011 and seeing how the Bill Stewart and Dana Holgersen situation will play out in Morgantown.

For a quick update, Holgersen signed a six year deal with WVU that will make him the offensive coordinator in 2011 and replace Stewart as head coach in 2012 as Stewart moves to a more front office type role within the athletic department.

As other programs have had coaches in waiting, like Florida State with Bobby Bowden, the view of Bill Stewart from many Mountaineer fans, including this one, feels that he should have stepped down after a disappointing loss to NC State in Orlando this past Tuesday night.

Since the likelihood of that scenario playing out is minimal, the 60,000 fans in attendance at Mountaineer Field on game days combined with all West Virginia fans will be scrutinizing every decision made that affects the win/loss column in 2011.

The biggest game of the season will be in late September when LSU comes to Morgantown for the first time in the program’s history and Touchdown City will be rocking probably from earlier in the week all the way to Saturday kickoff.

As an LSU game draws much attention, the yearly rivalry game between WVU and Pittsburgh might be down this coming season as former coach Dave Wannstedt resigned from the head coach position, later replaced by Miami (OH) coach Michael Haywood.

Besides the Pitt game, the remaining Big East conference schedule will still be a tough path to a seventh league title as Louisville, Syracuse and Connecticut have become a force to deal with year in and year out since catching up with WVU.

In the safer end of the schedule, the Mountaineers will have home games with Bowling Green for the first time since 1991 and MEAC team Norfolk State for the first meeting ever in either program history.

After a near upset by instate rival Marshall, the game will move back to Morgantown after being in Huntington last September. Marshall head coach Doc Holliday will have the Herd even more prepared than in the last game and could cause problems with the recruiting knowledge that he has in the recruiting hotbed of Florida.

So with all that said, will the Mountaineers improve on their 9-4 record from this season?

Will West Virginia make another run at a Big East title or more with Holgersen in control of the offense?

How will Stewart deal with the pressure that will be laid on him as soon from the first spring practices all the way up until kickoff on September third?

We will have to see about those questions and more, hopefully Stewart ends his lame duck season with a bang and not a harmless pop next year.

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