West Virginia in the Orange Bowl: Mountaineers Have Shot at Return to Glory

The Orange Bowl matchup is exactly as had been predicted Saturday night, with West Virginia taking on Clemson in Miami on January 4. 

Clemson was guaranteed a spot in the Bowl, as the ACC Champion automatically plays in the Orange Bowl.  West Virginia was the last auto-bid team remaining and thus the Orange Bowl had to take them.

While this bowl means a lot to Clemson, who hasn't won the ACC since 1982, the team with the most to either gain or lose in this game is West Virginia.

West Virginia has been one of the most maddeningly inconsistent teams in the country.  They certainly have the potential to be great, but have not lived up to that at times this season.

The Mountaineers put up 533 yards on the No. 1 LSU Tigers, yet still lost by 26.  They only played one half of solid football against FCS cupcake Norfolk State.  They also lost to inferior teams in Louisville and Syracuse.  No disrespect to the Cardinals and Orange, but West Virginia is simply more talented on both sides of the ball and yet still managed to lose to them.

It's common knowledge that West Virginia has playmakers on both sides of the ball, especially QB Geno Smith on offense and DE Bruce Irvin on defense.  Dana Holgorsen is an offensive genius, and deserves most of the credit for the emergence of Oklahoma State as an offensive juggernaut.

Yet, the Mountaineers have simply underperformed this season, and the past few seasons as well.  The end results of each season fall below the team's talent level.

The Orange Bowl presents an opportunity for West Virginia to change its fortune as well as national perception of the program.  A win in this bowl game would take the Mountaineers back to approximately the same level of national prominence that they enjoyed during the Rich Rod glory years.

The Mountaineers could really use that boost in prominence right about now.  As they prepare to transition into the much-more-competitive Big 12, they need any advantage they can get in trying to get the higher-level recruits needed to regularly compete with Oklahoma, Texas and Oklahoma State.

Winning the Orange Bowl would give West Virginia the recruiting advantage they need, as national perception of them would improve considerably.  No longer would they be "West Virginia, that undeserving Big East team that stole a BCS spot from much more deserving teams."  Instead, they would be viewed nationally as "BCS Bowl champs West Virginia, a powerful national contender."

That difference in perception could very well determine how WVU's immediate future in the Big 12 plays out.

West Virginia's appearance in the Orange Bowl gives them a chance to define what the next several years will be like for the program: Will the Mountaineers seize that opportunity and give the program a good start in its new conference, or will they once again underperform and continue to further regress from the glory of the Rich Rod years?