I have a love-hate relationship with the WVU-Marshall football series.
Sometimes my feeling about the game even changes in the same day, or the same hour!
Take Thursday’s Talkline. I started the second hour of the show explaining that I was finished with the Friends of Coal Bowl.
The 11th ranked Mountaineers, favored by more than three touchdowns, are expected to win. If they do, then there’s no news. If Marshall wins, it’s a major national story and a significant letdown at the very start of an otherwise promising season.
What Mountaineer fan needs the aggravation?
So, there is a part of me–the WVU graduate and loyal Mountaineer fan–who wants to get the final game of this seven-game series out of the way and move on.
So long Herd. Thanks for coming. Good luck with the rest of the season. Be sure to tip your waitress. Yadah, yadah, yadah.
But later on Talkline yesterday, I went one-on-one with Marshall Athletic Director Mike Hamrick.
We got into a pretty spirited debate about the game and the series. Now, suddenly, I’m interested again. Dispassionate reason gives way to partisan pride.
West Virginia Radio newsman and Thundering Herd Radio Network pregame anchor Dave Wilson is a Marshall grad. He proudly wears his Marshall swag to work and, with enough baiting, will go toe-to-toe with any one of the many WVU fans in the building.
I like that. It’s good-natured fun–a rivalry among friends that doesn’t have to devolve into spitting or cursing at each other.
Hamrick, Wilson, Doc Holliday, President Stephen Kopp–all pretty decent folks. Who knew?
A poll commissioned by the Charleston Daily Mail found that 76 percent of sports fans in the state want to see WVU and Marshall continue playing in football. And, as Hamrick loves to point out, the poll found that a majority of WVU fans support the series.
After some goading by me, Hamrick said it would be a “travesty” if the series did not continue. His suggestion is for a home-and-home series, but only play every other year.
WVU says it’s open to playing in the future, but I get the feeling the Mountaineer powers-that-be would rather make the team hitch-hike to a game in Hawaii than take the bus ride to Huntington.
Right now, Hamrick and WVU AD Oliver Luck are not talking about what will follow Saturday’s game. I just hope the politicians don’t get involved. The last thing this series needs is for Charleston to force the two schools to play.
That makes WVU fans resent Marshall even more because of the political interference and it marginalizes Marshall by suggesting the schools wouldn’t play unless forced to.
So let’s play the Friends of Coal Bowl Saturday under, hopefully, sunny skies and then allow both schools to go about their business. If it’s beneficial to both schools to continue the series, they’ll figure it out.