MORGANTOWN — In the Bizarro World known as “Htrae” (please hold up to a mirror for translation), but represented on our Earth by the Internet, DC comics invented its own reality where black is white, in is out and fast is slow.

It was only a short jump across reality until it reached the Bizarro World of West Virginia football, where one of the nation’s better football programs has slid from playing in a game that would have put them into a national championship battle with Ohio State in 2007 and turned them into an impotent football team that is without so much as a single victory in its own league, the Big 12, this year.

The same coach, Rich Rodriguez, despite an 18-year journey to other schools both big and small, has returned to attempt to regain the Mountaineers’ place at the table of football success, but has found two areas of concern that rank at or near the top of his inability to get matters moving in the right direction in his first year.

The first reason, he has stated over and over, is that his team “has to get bigger, stronger and faster” while the second reason comes straight out of the Bizarro World in which they have existed this season with an endless string of injuries that has cost him the top layer of skill players from running back Jahiem White to quarterback Nicco Marchiol to wide receiver Jaden Bray.

The Bizarro World of the Internet has moved forward with this by adding 2+2 together and getting 22 or some such number, as they have pointed their crooked fingers at the Mountaineers strength and conditioning staff headed by Mike Joseph, a Fairmont State product who has run that program since 2008, the season directly after Rodriguez departed.

Indeed, that group probably has the most oversight on the areas of size, strength and speed while being one of the main factors in working toward injury prevention, but it seems to be more of a victim of the current misfortunes than the reason behind them.

Certainly, Rodriguez absolves them of all blame as he did on his radio show Monday evening in answering a text on the subject and did during his Tuesday media session as well.

“That’s a fair question because that’s the first thing we look at — are we doing something or is there something we need to look at in the strength room?” Rodriguez began by denying that any blame belonged with Joseph or his staff.

“I evaluate everything, and I evaluate what we do in the strength and conditioning, and I think it’s just 100% bad luck,” Rodriguez continued. “I really like what our strength staff is doing.”

Let us reiterate what Rodriguez was saying here by emphasizing the adage “I’d rather be lucky than good” for in what has turned into WVU’s own Bizarro World it has been bad luck rather than mismanagement that has turned athletic matters upside down.

This is a roster forged not of the steel of top recruits, but of players for the most part from lower-level programs who have not had the benefit of the strength, conditioning and nutritional assets a program such as WVU has had.

They are chronologically seniors or juniors, but physiologically have not been given the same opportunities to develop. A player such as receiver Jeff Weimer is one such example, as Rodriguez admitted during his press conference that it disappoints him that he will have Weimer for just one season rather than to bring him through the entire process.

Injuries hurt and often are inexplicable, as Rodriguez has learned.

“Our medical staff is top-notch,” he said. “I don’t even get into that; they know what they’re doing, and they tell me who can go, who can’t go.”

And while Rodriguez doesn’t concern himself with the medical issues other than following their directions, he deeply involves himself with the strength and conditioning of his athletes and believes he knows how they are doing.

“Our strength staff, I like to stay involved with what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. I’ve studied other strength and conditioning programs, too, and I think our guys are doing a great job.”

The injuries have not been sustained through overwork or something being overlooked.

“It’s just, you look at how our quarterbacks got hurt — freak things,” Rodriguez said. “Nicco’s, I guess, was hurt from before. I don’t know when. Jordan Walker breaks his arm, just bad luck. If we were getting a lot of soft tissue injuries, hamstrings, a pulled this muscle, a pulled that muscle, then you start thinking, ‘OK, either our warmup thing ain’t right or something like that.’

“But these are just freak stuff and nothing you could do in the weight room to prevent it.”

If Joseph and his staff had been part of the cause of injuries, you certainly would have heard of it from players or coaches who were involved, but he has gone through the Bill Stewart, Dana Holgorsen and Neal Brown eras while being promoted all the way up to assistant athletic director.

Rodriguez knows this was a start-over year and has offered up a challenge to his strength and conditioning staff that they must get to be “bigger and stronger.”

“What a kicker or quarterback bench presses, who cares?” Rodriguez said. “But all these other positions, what they test at the combine in the NFL, we need to test. And if we’re going to test it, we need to work it.”

Rodriguez said he will be looking at reports on it all.

“I want to know what every player on the team, other than the specialists, I want to know what they bench press. I want to know what they squat. They test 40-yard dash times, they check height and weight, and all that stuff. So, if it’s done at the combine, it needs to be done here,” he said.

“We’re doing that now, but I think it’s the first time we’ve done it in a while. I want our guys, if they get an opportunity to go to the combine and they sit on the bench press, I don’t want a lineman in there and he can’t put it up 20 times. That’s a bad reflection on us. I want him to be one of the top guys doing that deal.”

With an influx of offseason talent and with a new emphasis on working toward bigger and stronger athletes, Rodriguez believes he can escape Bizarro World and return to the reality of winning.