“You can’t always get what you wantBut if you try sometimes, well, you might findYou get what you need.”
(Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, 1969)
You could feel it all week in Morgantown, and the intensity of emotion just kept rising as the Backyard Brawl approached Saturday night. Every game in a 12-game schedule has its own degree of significance, but the Pitt game was going to be different.
The renewal of the Backyard Brawl, the first appearance by Pitt in Morgantown since 2011, the disappointing loss last year in Pittsburgh, the struggles of the WVU football program, the fate of Coach Neal Brown and his staff were all in play.
The sell-out crowd demonstrated that the fans had not given up on Brown or the program. They were at Milan Puskar Stadium to do their part, to will the Mountaineers to a victory in the storied rivalry and to release their own anxiety.
The fans made a difference, and they were rewarded.
The Mountaineers delivered with a 17-6 victory that was ugly, but somehow fitting, for a rivalry that is nicknamed a “brawl.” Style points? There were none. But what the game did do was satisfy a deep-seated yearning for Mountaineers everywhere.
Brown said it best after the game:
“It has been since November 25, 2011, since the State of West Virginia and our fan base experienced a win and been able to celebrate a win over Pittsburgh on the gridiron, and our state needed this, our University needed this, our program needed this, and so this is a huge win for a bunch of different reasons,” Brown said.
It would be a mistake to be overly analytical of the game itself. By Brown’s own admission, “It wasn’t pretty, but we were able to grind it out.” He knows his team’s deficiencies better than anyone, and Garrett Greene’s injury is a good reason to worry about the upcoming games.
But excessive scrutiny at the fan level diminishes the pure joy from Saturday night. No, you can’t always get what you want, and there is frustration in wanting more than you can get. But sometimes you get what you need.
And that’s enough.