Rich Rod looks to avenge ‘the worst experience’ of coaching career
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MORGANTOWN -- College, if things go as they are supposed to, is where we send our sons and daughters away as children and expect them to emerge as responsible adults.
It has been that way since the rumble seats, bathtub gin and beanies of the Roaring 20s through the Happy Days of the 50s and 60s and into the Tik Tok era of the 2020s.
Even with the hormonic evolution that physically took place, the fad dances, the fraternity and sorority parties and the occasional classes that cut what most believe was the best times of their lives, we found a way to put football into a prominent position whether or not we ever had played a down ourselves.
While my own college days are hardly germane to any discussion of the Backyard Brawl, which renews itself for the 108th time at 3:30 Saturday on Mountaineer Field, there is a certain deja vu that few can say they ever experienced that reasserts this season as Rich Rodriguez comes home to try and avenge what he calls "the worst experience" of his football career that now is in Chapter II of his life.
That, of course, was the 2007 upset he endured the last time he coached WVU in the Backyard Brawl, a totally implausible and inexplicable 13-9 loss as a 28.5-point favorite over Pitt in a game he needed only to win to get a shot at the national championship.
Like so many of you in, or of, West Virginia, it was a moment you will never forget and one you thought you would never forgive, but you have backed off that vow to the degree that you have welcomed him home to try again this year.
Surely, we can forgive if not forget.
But let's return to our original premise here, for like so many of you, I was one of those children sent away to school to grow up and managed somehow to survive the experience despite those distractions of the college years.
A child of New York City, I was sent off to the farmlands of central America to attend the University of Missouri – Mizzou, if you must. And it was there, 47 years before you all were shot with the poison arrow of an unimaginable football defeat to Pitt, I first suffered virtually the same indignation.
The year was 1960 and then, as now, WVU and Mizzou were very similar schools. Both, at their time, were considered the No. 1 party school in the nation, Playboy Magazine that year going so as to leave Missouri out of their rankings because they were so far ahead of all other schools it would be an insult to compare them.
Needless to say, that was also the year Mizzou had a crackdown on fraternity parties.
But, as it is with WVU, football is king, and the Tigers rose to heights they had never seen before. Then playing in what was then the Big 8, they went into "The Border War" rivalry game with Kansas, undefeated and ranked No. 1.
A victory and they would have won the AP No. 1 final ranking and been considered national champs and there was no reason to think they wouldn't win. While Kansas had a solid team that season, Missouri had steamrolled Oklahoma the previous week and this was at a time when the Sooners totally dominated the Big 8, once actually winning 47 consecutive games.
To be a freshman student at Missouri that football season was filled with anything you could ever ask for except sobriety, just as it was WVU in 2007.
Then came the Kansas game. The upset that couldn't happen happened. Kansas won.
Sort of.
The Jayhawks had a fullback named Bert Coan. He had been one of the most celebrated high school players in Texas, standing 6-4, weighing 190 pounds and running a 9.5 hundred and broad jumping more than 24 feet.
He also committed to TCU, then transferred to Kansas. TCU asked for an NCAA investigation and got one as Coan sat out the 1959 season.
He started the 1960 season as a star in the Kansas backfield but in midyear, the NCAA announced its findings and ruled that Kansas had violated recruiting rules but did not cite Coan by name.
The Big 8, however, had a rule that read:
"Any violation of this section by a member school, alumni, or friends of the institution, with or without the knowledge of the institution, will render the individual or individuals concerned ineligible for competition at that institution."
Coan sat out the Colorado game the next week with an injured shoulder and KU fought with the conference about his eligibility. As Missouri week dawned, this was to be the first nationally meaningful renewal of the rivalry as Mizzou was No. 1 and KU No. 11 and while the Jayhawks had two defeats, they were unbeaten in the conference and a win would give them the Big 8 championship.
They decided to play Coan in the game at Missouri with a then record crowd of 43,000, including your correspondent here, on hand.
Coan scored two touchdowns, won the game, 23-7, and dreams died.
Or did they?
To make a long story short, there was a conference meeting, rules were argued and messed with and in the end Kansas was ordered to forfeit its wins over Colorado and Missouri.
It still wasn't settled. Still isn't, really, as Kansas continues to claim victory, as does Missouri.
That year for Mizzou was similar to WVU's 2007 season in that after the crushing defeat, Missouri beat Navy in the Orange Bowl with its magnificent defense holding Heisman Trophy winner halfback Joe Belino to minus-6 rushing yards.
After the Pitt flop and Rodriguez's exit in 2007, Bill Stewart held the team together as they went into the 2008 Fiesta Bowl and crushed Oklahoma to salvage their pride and get Stewart the head coaching job full-time for three 9-win seasons.
But nothing really, has ever been the same at either school and you are getting that from the mouth of someone who was there for both of them.