So far this season, we’ve sloppily beaten the Fighting Chanticleers of Coastal Carolina and barely survived the Fighting Thundering Herd of Marshall University. Does any of that point to a demolition of the Fighting Terrapins of the University of Maryland? No. It doesn’t. Even a bit.

Of course we should demolish them. We’re fast and talented and capable of laying an absolute thrashing upon the ‘Terps which means we’re probably looking at a 17-10 game that leaves us incredibly nervous until the very end and likely features Maryland as the team with 17. While I like our team this season, it’s tough to like our program. Everybody lays those sorts of observations at Bill Stewart’s feet, bellowing that if only we had *insert the name of anybody else* we’d be 2-0 and ranked! Nevermind the fact that we actually are both 2-0 and ranked.

There are times when I want to blame the coaching staff, because they’re the easiest way out. There are times when I wonder pleasantly to myself about what somebody like Mike Leach would do with our team speed and our conference schedule. But it’s hard to be convinced that the problem lays entirely at the feet of Stewart, who, frankly, has performed better than anybody reasonably expected.

So maybe that’s the problem: expectations. (Some) Mountaineer fans have come to believe that unless the team goes 12-0 with a National Championship, it has failed in some profound way. And while I know where those fans got those ideas (the scrumtrulescent career of Pat White comes immediately to mind, as does the Steve Slaton/Noel Devine combination), I’m not sure I understand them. With the exception of the four years that we had White as a starting quarterback, WVU football has always been relatively modest in its accomplishments. We never won bowl games and our record was almost always something like 7-5. Then White arrived and our bowl and seasonal performances improved. Considerably.

But then those players left and the offense that was built around them was forced to change. (Some) WVU fans though? Their expectations didn’t change. After all, we’d had multiple seasons of double digit wins within four years, as well as two BCS Bowl Game triumphs, representing the highest highs us fans had ever experienced with our (god-forsaken) program. Why couldn’t we maintain that in perpetuity? Why couldn’t we become Florida, or Oklahoma, or Alabama? The answer too painful to acknowledge was simply this: we’re not Florida and Oklahoma and Alabama. We never were, even during those highest highs. We were an over-achieving program whose long history of repeated disappointment had briefly lifted. Now it seems likely that we’re back where we’ve always been, a good if not great college football program capable of doing things that makes everybody, including the most die-hard fans, cringe and wonder what they personally did to deserve this team.

So going against Maryland, is it reasonable to assume a victory? No. Not at all. But we can hope for one, the same we do during every game, and for that reason I’ll lean toward something like 24-21 WVU on a Tyler Bitancurt field goal at the end.

A recap of the game as told through stats both in and out of the box score

3 – touchdown receptions for Brad Starks against UNLV

4 – receptions for Brad Starks against UNLV

0 – receptions for Brad Starks in 4 games leading up to UNLV

100 – yards receiving by Brad Starks against UNLV

-15  – yards attributed to Brad Starks in 4 games leading up to UNLV (10 yard illegal block penalty –Coastal Carolina, 5 yard false start penalty – Maryland)

12,6 – number of TD receptions and players who have caught a TD pass this season for WVU (Stedman Bailey and Starks with 3 each, Tavon Austin and Jock Sanders with 2 each, and Will Johnson and J.D. Woods with 1 each.  Noel Devine has caught 16 passes, but none for TDs) With 12 TD passes this season, WVU has already matched last year’s season total.

2 – more TDs that WVU has scored with a hurry-up offense.  By my unofficial count, 8or 9 of WVU’s TD drives have come in the hurry up offense (1 against Coastal Carolina, 2 against Marshall, 2 maybe 3 against Maryland, 1 against LSU, and 2 against UNLV)

0 – people who have given me a good reason why we don’t run the hurry up more.  Look, I know there’s a time to milk the clock, but that time is when you’re up by more than two scores in the 4^th quarter.  We have a tough defense who I’m sure would much rather play with a lead than get to sit down for an extra couple minutes.

Looking ahead to South Florida tonight

180.4, 63.9 – Passing and rushing yards per game for B.J. Daniels in 2009 (in games in which he was a starter)

136.8, 37.2 – Passing and rushing yards per game for B.J. Daniels so far in 2010

2-3 – WVU’s record against South Florida all-time

7-0 – WVU’s record on Thursday at Mountaineer field (WVU is 5-1 in their last six Thursday games. Wins against Colorado in 2009, Auburn in 2008, Louisville in 2007, at Maryland in 2007, and at Pitt in 2006.  Their only loss was at Colorado in 2008)

I like to write posts about games well after they’ve actually occurred, thus decreasing the chance that anybody will ever read them or enjoy them. Call it a strategy. Call it a bad, failing strategy for a website. I model my website strategy off of the offensive strategy that West Virginia University football has had for the last, oh, I don’t know, entirety of my lifetime.

The strategy works like this: play conservatively for not particular reason, undermining the talent on the field at all times. In regards to this website, both Scott and I are capable writers, but we don’t want to post something until it’s just ready, and that usually means nothing goes up. In regards to our football team, it means never doing anything too exotic.

For instance, our football team needed a single yard to convert a fourth down, early in last Friday’s game. Our team’s strategy wasn’t to have our talented, athletic quarterback dive forward for the yard. It wasn’t for our talented, accurate quarterback to throw a short out pass. It wasn’t even for our talented, athletic quarterback to give it to any of our talented, athletic players in such a way that they could use their talent and athleticism to pick up a single yard. Instead, we decided to give the ball to our bruising fullback, Ryan Clarke, but rather than being the least bit liberal in our play calling, the team’s coaches decided to give the ball to Clarke five years behind the line of scrimmage, thus turning a play in which our team needed a single yard into one in which our team needed six yards. Wouldn’t you know it, Clarke got us five yards, leaving us a yard short and turning over the ball. What, if I might ask so gently, was the fucking point of that? It would honestly save the Mountaineer coaching staff significant time and energy if they’d just called me and said, “Hey Sam, you know that play we run that you hate? Well fuck you, we’re running it again.”

This problem has infected the Mountaineers for generations, most famously in our epic 13-9 disaster against Pitt, a game in which a supremely talented team on the cusp of a miracle appearance in the national championship game ran play after play into a stacked line of scrimmage against a team that did everything imaginable to tell our coaches that we weren’t going to beat them through the line. We could beat them through the air. We could beat them running left or right. But we weren’t going to beat them going straight up the middle. Our coaches though? They saw straight up the middle as the only possible offensive lesson and at the end of the game, we’d lost a hideous game despite having three times the talent. Very, very impressive.

Want to go further back in time? Coach Don Nehlen’s favorite play was the go-nowhere draw, in which via a carefully and precisely executed set of complicated maneuvers, our running backs got the ball, only to be tackled and accomplish nothing. It was very impressive, especially on third and long. I can tell you exactly how many times a draw play on third and long worked for Coach Nehlen: once.

The other absolutely incredible thing about our football program is how the lessons that seem so blindingly obvious are the ones they have the hardest time learning. For instance, the most obvious lesson to learn from Friday night’s Miracle Against Marshall was that we need to be running a super-fast, hurry-up offense, all of the time. Our athletes need to be allowed to be athletes, our players need to be allowed to play, and all of that speed we have has to be metaphorically turned on by the imposition of our hurry up offense upon our opposition.

So what did we do in overtime, after two of the greatest drives in the Vaunted History Of Mountaineer Football? We went right back to playing conservatively and barely managed to eke out a win against Marshall. In other words, even if the immediate aftermath of unbelievable accomplishment, it didn’t dawn on our coaching staff why we had just achieved something so unbelievable. The answer to why, in case you’re wondering, is because we did things entirely differently than our coaching staff usually does. We went not in the opposite direction in terms of play calling, but in terms of attitude. We played with resolve instead of fear, with confidence instead of conservatism, with aggression instead of passivity.

Which brings us to Saturday’s game against Maryland, one in which I can guarantee our coaches will again try desperately to win with the emergency brake pulled tight. How do I know this? Because it’s the West Virginia way. It’s not specific to Stewart. It’s specific to football coaches almost nationwide, men convinced that going against the game’s dominant paradigms will lead to disaster. But what of a loss to Marshall? I’d rather lose playing at a breakneck speed than lose the same old way. Frankly, I think the same’s true of the entire Mountaineer Nation.

Over the past several weeks that led up to Christmas, the televisions in my home, as well as in the homes of my many relatives I saw over the holidays, were often tuned to one of several classic Christmas movies.  After pondering last night’s bowl loss, it occurred to me, what if WVU football were a holiday movie. 

It’s an Honor and a Privilege to Live this Life

Plot synopsis: Bill Stewart, after finding out he’s worth more to the University as a figurehead for the MAC than a coach, finds himself on the South High Street Bridge about to jump into Decker’s Creek when an angel named Clarence shows him a life in which he’d never been born. 

In it, WVU doesn’t win the Sugar Bowl because he’s not there to call the Phil Brady fake punt.  Rodriguez doesn’t leave after the Pitt loss and WVU loses to Oklahoma in a second consecutive game where the offense fails to score a TD against 10 men in the box.  Rod then makes WVU a top five team again with Pat White but then leaves before a BCS bowl to go coach the University of Tennessee and promptly runs it into the ground.  WVU hires Doc Holliday and stays a middle of the pack Big East team after the conference loses its automatic BCS tie-in after a string of Fiesta Bowl losses.  The Mountaineers lose their first game to Marshall in 2011 to the Herd and their new head coach—up and coming Mike Tomlin who is stuck in Conference USA because Stewart wasn’t around to give him his first job at VMI.  After Stew sees his bride as an old maid he tells Clarence he can’t take it anymore, telling him he wants to live again and runs through downtown Morgantown, yelling “Merry Christmas, Dairy Queen!” “Merry Christmas, Bent Willies!”

A Mountaineer Christmas Carol

Plot synopsis: On the eve of the Champs Sports Bowl Game, we see a Mountaineer fan posting angrily on every message board He is visited in his sleep by the ghost of Pappy Lewis who tells John Allen that his attitude is very un-Mountaineer like, and he doesn’t realize how good he has it.  He tells him that he’ll be visited by three spirits and can possibly avoid being a grizzled fan for life if he heeds their advice and changes his outlook. He is visited first by the Ghost of Seasons Past who takes him to1992 when the Mountaineers went 5-4-2, and 1987 when the Mountaineers went 6-6.  The ghost reminds John Allen that the team went 11-0 following each of those seasons and suggests that John Allen perhaps reconsider the team’s recent success as just that, recent success, and not an expectation of something that can happen every year. 

The Ghost of Seasons Present takes him to Austin, Texas, where their team isn’t bowl eligible a year after being removed from the National Championship game.  Then to Knoxville, Tennessee where they’re on their third coach in three years after they fired a coach with a 75% career winning percentage, a year after taking them to the SEC Championship game.  Then to Oxford, Mississippi where their current coach is on the hot seat after taking the Rebels to 4^th in the country at one point last season and going 9-4 in each of the previous two seasons before this year’s down year.

The Ghost of Seasons Yet to Come takes him to 2021.  The Mountaineers are on their third coach since Stewart despite four co-Big East Championships and two BCS bowl appearances in the past decade.  The grizzled fan base, fickle big dollar donors continue to force Luck’s hand to “stay competitive.”

John Allen wakes to find himself in his bed on Champs Sports Bowl day.  He’s not happy with the 23-7 performance, and while he wishes things had gone differently, he concedes they could be worse and avoids the message boards for the offseason.

If time allows, maybe I’ll develop them a bit more, but in the meantime, would love to hear what other possibilities are out there.  Miracle on Don Nehlen Drive? Bill Kirlawich’s Christmas Vacation?

Saturday’s galling loss to Louisiana State University was almost unthinkably bad for one very specific reason: the coaching staff seemed to believe that we were leading when the score was 14-17 and, as is predictably the case with football coaches playing on the road in an incredibly hostile environment, the offensive gameplan was chucked out the window in favor of conservative play-calling that all but ensured the resulting 14-20 loss. How else can we understand the fact that players like Tavon Austin and Jock Sanders barely touched the ball after producing one of the fastest touchdowns in recent memory, their two player, thirty yard score at the beginning of the second half?

One would think that the coaching staff would have seen Tavon’s 12 yard scamper followed by Jock’s 18 yard dash and thought, “Let’s get those two the ball, especially considering the fact that Devine’s running at 60 percent because of the dirty hit he took earlier in the game.” One would think.

But then, one isn’t a WVU football coach. The coaches saw in Devine a player not injured but capable of withstanding the same play being called for him, over and over and over again, drawing the LSU defense to the line where they were able to hurry Geno Smith at will for those few times when he wasn’t gamely handing the ball to an injured Devine.

Trashing the coaching staff has become passe amongst WVU fans, and on more than one occasion I’ve thought to myself, “Screw this, I’m joining the masses and turning on Stewart,” before remembering the fact that I genuinely like the guy, more so than I ever did Don Nehlen or that douchebag Rich Rodriguez. But on Saturday night? It took everything I was capable of not to whip my cellphone through the hotel television whenever they showed Stewart’s face. Where was the pizzazz? Where was the hurry-up? Where were the Mountaineers of the final two drives against Marshall, the first half against Maryland, and the first two minutes of the second half against LSU? Where had they gone?

Especially considering Stewart’s halftime comments to whatever sideline reporter dutifully retrieved them. She pressed Stewart, twice, about what the team would do given Devine’s injury, and when he responded that the Mountaineers always find a way, I managed to entirely forget the following problem: the Mountaineers almost never find away. Or at least, the Mountaineer coaches almost never find a way. So should I have been surprised when Stewart’s answered to an injured Noel Devine was to give the ball more to an injured Noel Devine? I suppose not.

But there I was, gawking at the television screen as he was plunged into the line, into the line, into the line, a grim repeat of the 2007 loss to Pitt playing out before my eyes, as the collective wills of the Mountaineer coaching staff produced a childlike offensive strategy that amounted to my son’s freaking out when I won’t take him outside to play. My son truly believes that if he sits there long enough, that if he screams loud enough, that if he kicks the floor hard enough, I’ll eventually break down and take him outside. Nothing else occurs to him. He’s two. Nothing else should occur to him.

Grown coaches though? Something else ought to occur to them. Somewhere. Deep within the recesses of their imagination, some distant lightbulb ought to flicker after the 47th failed draw, toss, or sweep, and the plan ought to be changed. Let Geno through. Let Jock and Tavon run. Better to lose having fought than to lose having conceded. To put that another way, there is nothing wrong with LSU winning Saturday night, but there is everything wrong with us having not made it as difficult as possible for them to do so.

I have spent a lifetime perfecting my involvement with Mountaineer Sports. That involvement could be described as casual. I only regularly visit one Mountaineer blog (although I occasionally stop by Aaron Hawley’s work). While I will read any Mountaineers news that pops up on sites like ESPN, I don’t subscribe to the local papers or listen to the local call-in shows. My money and time are better spent elsewhere. Can I tell you the starting lineup for this year’s Mountaineers? Nope. My fandom is entirely casual compared to the facepainters…

…and yet, there I was yesterday screaming at a co-worker about his insane contention that Pat White’s number shouldn’t be retired, lest we start retiring too many other numbers. This is an insane thing to say. Pat White will go down in history as the greatest Mountaineer football player the program has ever had. It’s fine for people to worry that too many numbers will start getting retired if White’s is, but nobody else in Mountaineer history has his resume. Nobody. That’s how you end up red-faced, screaming at a co-worker, wondering how he could possibly compare somebody like Pat White (most successful Mountaineer ever) to somebody like Jeff Hostetler (grew a mustache).

My passion then, though subdued, is capable of rising to the surface at a moment’s notice. It’s better that way I think, better than constantly living on the razor’s edge of Mountaineer wins and losses. As it is, I’m a wreck during games. I’ve learned during a long career of cheering for the Mountaineers that things are more than likely to go horribly wrong with the team. I sit on the edge of my couch, rocking back and forth like Leo Mazzone (himself a West Virginian) during games, getting progressively more nervous as I wait for the inevitable other shoe to drop. This never dissipates. It is rare that we have a game in which a fan can safely say to himself, “This one’s over.” The exception was our Fiesta Bowl victory against Oklahoma several years ago, in which it was possible to enjoy the last seven minutes without wanting to pass out and wake up when it was all over.

Which brings us to the precipice of yet another football season. As with every season’s beginning, there is the optimism of the outset. New players! New opponents! New opportunities! New, new, new! And there is also the recognition that as with almost every Mountaineer season during the entirety of my fandom, there will also be all of the old things too: grumbling about the coach, inevitable disappointments, inexplicable play calling, and a refusal to keep our foot on the gas when things are going well. That is literally every season I’ve ever experienced as a Mountaineer fan. There’s no reason to assume that this one will be any different in that regard. I suppose we could, for fun, throw in some talk about making a very serious run of things, what with the talent we have on the team, the (more) experienced offensive line, the defensive strength, and the entirely weak schedule save a daunting trip to face LSU at its own stadium, but we have that conversation as fans every year, and every year it is more realistic to assume 9-3. That stands, incidentally, as my prediction for the season.

So then, why do this? Why prepare for a season that’s probably going to end up playing out like every season does? Because I can’t not do it. I have friends from bigger places who have bigger teams to obsessively follow. My team(s) are the Mountaineers. There’s no shaking those memories and those experiences. There’s no forgetting them. There’s no ignoring them.

(Tomorrow: a totally unsatisfactory preview of the game against the Mighty Whatever The Hell They’re Called of Coastal Carolina!)

WVU’s offense isn’t quite anemic, but it’s close. Ranked 66th in rushing and 72nd in passing, WVU’s offense never seems to be consistently doing anything. WVU fans, predictably, are desperate for answers as to why this is. The answer, as it always is, is the conservatism of football coaches.

Simply put, they’re terrified of losing in new ways. They’re happier losing in familiar, older ways. It’s why WVU, when the chips were down against LSU, chose inexplicably to continue trying to pound the ball against a stouter, stronger defense. It’s why WVU, when the chips were down against LSU, chose inexplicably to abandon the only offensive strategy (the hurry up, passing offense) that has worked worth a damn this season. Although this isn’t necessarily surprising, it is infuriating.

Any Mountaineers fan knows what works for our team. Stewart and Mullens know too. Four games deep into the season is enough to know that WVU’s only going to hum offensively when it is pressing its most obvious advantage: speed. It bailed us out against Marshall, it lead to a fantastic first half against Maryland, it stung LSU at the beginning of the second half. What didn’t work in any of those games was slowing it down and pounding the ball. This is true regardless of the opponent. Although there are many reasons for this, the most obvious is that our offensive line is incapable of playing that kind of game. It doesn’t press forward enough to ensure the runner enough time to make the sort of substantive progress that keeps drives moving.

Unfortunately for both Stewart and Mullens, the world of football is occupied by primarily conservative people who remember what worked when they were kids: four yards and a cloud of dust. Those people, the ones with the memories and the power, are comfortable losing so long as its done pursuing those four precious yards. It’s why they’re not howling with outrage when Noel Devine, one of the school’s most talented running backs ever, is run directly into a pile of men twice his size as a matter of routine. It’s why they’re not howling with outrage when somebody like Ryan Clarke is trotted out onto the field, even though his presence means he’s getting the ball and going straight up the middle, something the other team knows as well as the fans in the stands do. It’s why they’re not howling with outrage about losing to LSU even though the same team with a more fearless offensive strategy could have come out of that stadium with a win. Just so long as we’re losing in a way that those people are familiar with, Stewart and Mullens are given a pass.

For a brief history of this, look back at everything WVU football has ever done ever. It’s a point I keep repeating but the history of running talented running backs into the pile on the off chance that it this time accomplishes something is long and storied. Nehlen, Rodriguez, and now Stewart all have the same problem: a power structure happier to lose with four yards and a cloud of dust that even consider risk losing in any other way. Even if that other way actually represents the best chance that WVU has.

With the rest of the season before us, it seems clear that our only chance is to run the other team out of the building, regardless of who that team is and regardless of what they’re putting on the field. WVU’s coaches have to resign themselves to the possibility that they’ll risk the wrath of the program’s power structure if they put their best product on the field and it doesn’t work out; they have to accept that the best product isn’t always going to produce the best result (a win). But we all know after a lifetime of being WVU fans is we’d rather lose with our best option than lose with an option that causes remote controls to go whizzing perilously close to our televisions.

As we enter a new season, as I discussed yesterday, there are plenty of reasons to be excited about the upcoming season. There are also plenty of reasons to be worried but considering that I constantly worry about the team’s fortunes, and because those worries have been better described elsewhere, I thought it makes more sense to go into the season with a sunny disposition. That way, when something goes horribly wrong, it hurts more. This is a lifelong problem.

-I’m excited that we apparently only have one offensive coordinator this year. WVU fans have been murdering Jeff Mullen ever since he arrived on campus, mostly for his employment of the “bubble screen,” amongst the most useless plays in the history of Mountaineers football, and that’s including Don Nehlen’s patented draw-on-third-and-long. However, rumors abound that he was actually sharing play-calling responsibilities with Doc Holliday, a man who has since abandoned Morgantown for the greener pastures of Marshall University. I’ve been having a lot of fun thinking about the possibility that it was Holliday (a man who was around for the Nehlen era and thus knows something about ineffective offensive strategies) may have been responsible for the inexplicably conservative play-calling. Mullens, I keep telling myself, is a offensively minded offensive coordinator whose plans were choked off by Holliday’s staid..ed…ness. I’m not sure that’s a word but it communicates what I want it to.

-A more experienced offensive line. Although plenty of WVU fans pretend as though the offensive line just doesn’t matter - which is how you end up with Mullens getting blamed for plays that take time to create, something last year’s line was systematically incapable of producing - the fact that this year’s line is more experienced than last year’s hints at a possible situation in which our talented running backs are allowed the time necessary to actually be talented.

-Oh right, our running backs: we have 47 of them, each small enough to be carried around in my pocket, each reported to be very, very fast. The obvious concern is that it doesn’t take long for small players, no matter how fast they are, to get injured if they’re hit right. (A moment of silence if necessary.) But we’ve got so many of them: Devine, Austin, Hargett (a name that ought to give Mountaineer fans pause), Alston, etc.

-We also have fullbacks like Ryan Clarke, big guys who are capable of moving the ball on third downs. It wasn’t fun spending two seasons not knowing how we’d convert on third and short. Clarke’s got the goods; as with the rest of the offense, the question remains whether he’ll be allowed to show off on gameday. He was a beast against Cincinnati last year before being inexplicably taken out of the offense.

-Our quarterback situation looks equally good; some people don’t like inexperienced quarterbacks, but we won a Sugar Bowl while being lead by a freshman quarterback. Pat White was too young to understand that WVU was supposed to get summarily destroyed in that Sugar Bowl. It would be ideal if Geno Smith wasn’t paying attention last year thus inoculating him against any potential infection of know what WVU’s generally capable of.

-Finally, it ought to be noted that we’re not playing any teams generally thought of as being defensive beasts. That’s got to count for something, doesn’t it?

Be careful what you wish for, I guess.  My letter to Santa this year included a new offensive coordinator, a new offensive line coach, and an iTunes gift card.  Saint Luck brought me the new offensive coordinator I wanted (and presumably potentially a new offensive line coach?), but it brought about an end date for Bill Stewart’s tenure.

Sam has thoroughly covered a lot of my apprehensions on the ugly way in which this whole thing was handled and has rightfully defended Stewart from this undeserved resolution.  I will add though that I was also very upset by the smell of “good ol’ boy network” this transaction has on it.  The Black Coaches Association gave WVU an “F” in its hiring of Bill Stewart in 2008 (page 37) without interviewing, well, anyone. I can’t imagine there will be much of an upgrade when the next scorecard comes out.

As for my take, to all the fans who felt it was time for Stew to go (full disclosure: in all conversations I’ve had with anyone this season, I said I only felt Stew should go if he wasn’t willing to replace Mullen–indicating a failure as CEO), here is what I’m here to tell you: this is a slippery slope.  If Holgorsen (whose name I keep double checking to make sure I spell correctly–like I still do for Beilien Beilein) doesn’t win 27 games in his first three years, is he out?  If he doesn’t win the Big East outright, is he out?  If he doesn’t get to a BCS bowl, is he out?  Don’t laugh, the precedent has been set and you’d be surprised how desperately fanbases and university officials don’t want to be hypocrites.  If we begin to turnover coaches who experience success that members of our own conference would dream of, then we might as well join the SEC because that conference, my friends, is for the clinically psychotic. My handle on Mike Casazza’s sports blog is overtheSEC, because I simply can’t handle talking to most fans of SEC teams.

SEC fans are bipolar.  They’re always either one win away from naming their next child after the starting quarterback and getting a tattoo of the logo on their face, or one loss from hanging the coach in effigy and finding the nearest bridge from where they may jump to their death.  Half of the conference is coached by someone in their 4th year or less.  If you’re a coach in the SEC, it’s wise to lease and not buy. 

Here’s a highlight of some of the coaching turnover in the SEC over the past several years.  Houston Nutt was fired from Arkansas after the 2007 following seasons of going 10-4 and 8-4.  He was then hired by Ole Miss and after seasons of 9-4, 9-4, and 4-8 has the 4th hottest seat on the punctuationless CoachesHotSeat.com rankings.  The whole Lane Kiffin experiment is well documented, but don’t forget he replaced a fired coach who had a .745 winning percentage and had taken his team to the SEC Championship only a year prior to getting the axe.  Tommy Tuberville was fired after averaging 9.4 wins in his last five seasons!

Some WVU fans who expect a BCS bowl game every year are sounding way too much like the SEC fans I despise–the ones who its hard to hear them on sports radio with the gun in their mouth.  If this keeps up, I might have to change my handle to overWVUfans.

Last week, news broke that the ACLU had officially warned various state politicians about their social media behavior. One of those politicians was Monongalia County’s Tom Bloom. The County Commissioner has made a habit of blocking critical constituents on Facebook. The ACLU is balking at his doing precisely that because, while it is acceptable to ban people for obscenity and threats and other misbehavior, doing so simply because one of your constituents disagrees with you is a no go. 

The U.S. Supreme Court has referred to social media as a “modern public square.” When a government official cuts off access to a public square because of a constituent’s viewpoint, they are depriving that person of their rights under both the federal and state constitutions, said ACLU-WV Legal Director Loree Stark, who issued the notices.

“It’s unacceptable for public officials to deny their constituents access because of a differing viewpoint,” Stark said. “And it is just as unconstitutional to bar a constituent from engaging on an official social media account because they disagree with you as it is to ban someone from a town hall event.”

The more specific issue is that Bloom is using his personal Facebook page to engage in local political activity. He has a campaign page that he could use instead, but he prefers not to for whatever reason. But Bloom chooses to use his personal Facebook account to advocate politically, which in turn makes his personal page fair game for his critics. 

But Bloom, being Bloom, and having been caught redhanded, has persistently refused to acknowledge what he was doing, repeatedly insisting that the only people he banned were trolls operating under fake names, political activists who did not live in Monongalia County, and people who threatened both him and his family. He has now posted twice on the subject, once here when the complaint was first made public, and a second time today (although, oddly, he deleted that one after he got pushback from constituents who noted he was not actually allowed to simply ban people who had disagreed with him, because doing so was a First Amendment issue). 

Bloom used the pages of the Dominion Post to insist that he only posts about issues of local relevant interest on his personal page:

Bloom is active on Facebook, regularly posting to his own page as well as community forums.

“Today I posted about a five-car accident because I heard about it on the radio. Those are the kinds of things that I post. I try to put out information to help the community,” Bloom said. “If there are two goals that I have worked hard to achieve in my years of public service, they are accessibility and transparency, and I intend to keep my commitment to these goals.”

Bloom said he finds the timing of the claims interesting and speculated that he may have been included as a result of his recent public comments questioning how funds were used by the Appalachian Stewardship Foundation — a group formed when the Sierra Club, Trout Unlimited and the National Parks Conservation Association brought a legal challenge to the air quality permit being sought by Longview Power.

Of course, Bloom knows damned well that the ACLU’s rebuke had nothing to do with his critical comments about the Sierra Club, Trout Unlimited, or the National Parks Conservation Association. That is because Bloom knows who it was that he banned on Facebook*. Yes, he banned some of the same cowardly trolls anybody who has been on local Facebook groups have endured; he also banned folks who do not live in Monongalia County (although this was not a universal rule, but rather one he chose to create whenever particular critics got under his skin). But he also banned his critics. 

How do I know? Because I am one of the people he banned. Not because I have a fake account (I don’t), not because I don’t live in the county (I absolutely do), and not because I threatened or harrassed him (I most certainly never did either). 

He specifically banned me because I regularly asked him to explain why it was that he was always trying to mislead people via his Facebook feed. Bloom came up in local politics when he only had to make sure that good old boy outlets (like the Dominion Post and WAJR) were pleased with him. As long as he fed them stories they liked, they returned the favor by keeping their attention elsewhere. But Bloom’s addiction to social media has opened him up to mountains of criticism given his ongoing commitment to flying completely off the handle whenever anything happens anywhere in the county. 

And he has never evolved to the point where he was willing to accept the idea that other people might be interested not only in what he said but in the wild inconsistencies buried within his claims. Bloom has never found a topic he is willing to honestly engage on, and has always gone out of his way to bury the truth in a maze of misdirection, misinformation, and misleading public statements. So this website teed off on him. 

This page has relentlessly criticized Bloom’s dishonest behavior, whether than meant discussing his angry dissembling about who his friends are, his ongoing attempts to mislead people about Morgantown’s User Fee, his absurd desire to waste hundreds of thousands of tax dollars on a website, his ridiculous demand that he be allowed to skip work whenever he felt like it without using his allotted vacation days, and all manner of other egregious misbehavior. 

Bloom hates that. 

He always will. He believes he is owed worshipful coverage. He is a good old boy (although not local) politician who believes that his only responsibility is to take care of entrenched political interests throughout the county. He is too old now to change and has shown no interest in more honestly engaging in political discourse about local issues. His loyalties are where they are and nothing is going to change that. He is what he is. 

But nobody has to accept that.

That, of course, is a bummer, but if he is really so annoyed about having to endure constituents who disagree with him, nobody is forcing him to be a County Commissioner. That is work he chose to do voluntarily. And if he wants to remain a County Commissioner? Well, nobody is forcing him to use his personal page for political activity. He has a political page that he could use instead. But he lacks the discipline and wherewithal to do so. Which is how he ended up here, on the wrong side of a First Amendment that he very clearly despises, all while insisting that his goals are “accessibility” and “transparency,” two laughably ridiculous claims. 

So it goes though in our local politics. Bloom is following in the footsteps of other local politicos who have done the same thing, all insisting that they are owed our performed ignorance of their dishonest shenanigans, all insisting that to hold them responsible for the things they voluntarily say and claim is a bridge too far.  

(*Incidentally, Tom Bloom could have figured out this mystery immediately if he had done literally ten seconds of Facebook research. I’m right here replying to an open call for elected officials who ban their constituents.)