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MORGANTOWN -- It seems so strange when the feeling hits, as it did Saturday when the final gun went off West Virginia's football season with a 34-31 victory over Baylor securely written into the history books in the final game of the regular season.
Normally, in recent years, when the final gun went off to end the season the feeling was one more of "Thank God, it's over."
It didn't take long to turn the page onto basketball season, for hope was being born there as we said goodbye to another losing football season.
But this year, it is different. The regular season has ended in the warmth of victory, an amazing come-from-behind victory on the arm of quarterback Garrett Greene and the legs of freshman running back Jaheim White.
The record was 8-4, a bowl game is in the offing and there were heroes everywhere.
From Penn State to Baylor, the season seemed to fly by.
"I say it every year … the days are long but the years are fast," Coach Neal Brown said on Saturday. "This has been an enjoyable year."
Throughout the state, with the rise of Greene and White and Rodney Gallagher and Hudson Clement and CJ Donaldson and Ben Cutter and Wyatt Milum the feeling wasn't "Thank God, it's over" but instead, "Thank God, it isn't over."
If they keep the heart of the team together, the future glows brightly.
Oddly, it is the same kind of feeling sultry Peggy Lee sang about many years ago in the song "Is That All There Is?"
It was hardly a football anthem, more a sad love song, but the chorus wrapped up the feeling that any West Virginia fan had as the Mountaineers turned the corner on a football revival.
Is that all there is
Is that all there is?
If that's all there is my friends
Then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is
And so it feels here.
Four wins in the last five games. Scoring 34 or more points in 6 of the last 7 games of the regular season. A quarterback who has learned how to win. Running backs who don't turn what should be 6-yard runs into losses but instead break tackles, slip through holes, side step and spin their way to breakaway gains.
There's wide receivers now not only catching the ball most of the time, but doing something with it after they have caught it.
It would have been celebrated if the offense had just been good enough to win, but this offense that has risen from the ashes has become something to get the blood churning, the feet stomping.
You see it and you think Let's keep dancing, let's break out the booze and have a ball.
It's like the old days when a game would end and the party would begin on High Street, dancing, boozing, having a ball.
And if it weren't a holiday weekend, downtown would have been going batty as Greene led the Mountaineers on a thrilling final minute touchdown drive with no time outs, capping it with a touchdown pass to White to put the game in the win column with 23 seconds left.
And that's not all there is. There's a bowl game on tap. Which one, where and when, WVU will learn a week from Sunday.