WVU football officially kicks off a week from this Sunday. If you haven’t read Sam’s excellent season preview set as a montage to “You Never Even Called Me By My Name” read it now. I’ll wait.

I agree 100% with Sam on this—at least I think I agree—anyway, here’s what I think:

-Everyone’s Holgorections (trademark still pending) are a little much and a tad premature. Why? I don’t know. Maybe because it’s a new system, Geno may not be on his feet long enough to pass the ball, and just because guys are good OCs, doesn’t make them great head coaches.

-A lot of those things that championship teams have (strong O lines, experienced defenses, dozens of NFL draft picks, SEC conference affiliation) we don’t have, however the things we do have (Geno, Tavon, Bruce, a down year in a weak conference) are enough to send your internal “What If” machine into overdrive

To say that “anything from 8-4 and 12-0 wouldn’t surprise me” is kinda lame so I’ll avoid saying that. Instead I’ll go the opposite direction and say this: this year’s Mountaineer team WILL surprise me in some way. Why? Because, if I’ve learned anything in my 30 years of being a Mountaineer fan (and of living) is that we will always be surprised, whether for good or for bad.

Sam previously linked to one of the bigger let downs in Mountaineer history during our lifetime (Tremain Mack) but here are some more surprises for your pleasure/displeasure. (click on the name for link to video)

Phil Brady Fake Punt

Pleasant surprise – Just when we thought we were going to have to give the ball back to the Bulldogs with WAY too much time on the clock, this sealed the win for the gold and blue 

Kellen Winslow’s catch

Unpleasant surprise – His catch on 4^th down and a mile extended the drive and became the highlight of the game, instead of Quincy’s run one minute earlier which almost caused Morgantown to erupt. (If you’re calling that play again, do you really bring the house and leave him in single coverage?)

Louisville 2005

Pleasant surprise - Was at this game and thought we were done for until an unreal come from behind win due to improbable (and illegal) onside kick recovery, and three overtimes.

The Good
-WVU wins, WVU wins, WVU wins!

-Here are the statistics of one of the weirdest games that I can remember as a fan. The weather delays and eventual agreement to abandon play is something that I cannot remember happening in my tenure as a Mountaineers fan, but surely it has happened before? Anybody?

-Now that we’ve discussed the weather - and you can prepare yourself for more weather coverage in the coming days, as intrepid City of Morgantown reporter Scott Taylor reports on his experiences from inside the ThunderDome - let’s move on.

-We’ll get to the things that didn’t work well shortly. But what did was this: everybody all over the field became an offensive threat. 9 receivers caught the ball. 4 players rushed the ball. Ours wasn’t a team limited to particular targets at particular times, but was instead a team in which anybody at anytime could get their hands on the ball. That makes it a difficult team to prepare for defensively. Tavon Austin, thought before the game to be our biggest threat (and the man who did score on a kick return touchdown that was oddly credited as having been 100 yards…didn’t he catch it several yards deep in the endzone?), was basically non-existent, almost as if Marshall dared us to beat them with somebody else. That proved no problem for Geno Smith and the offense. Touchdown passes to Stedman Bailey (best name on the team?) and Ivan McCartney (my god, really?) plus a touchdown running from Vernard Roberts was all the offense we were going to need.

-Geno Smith completed 26/35 passes. That ain’t no joke. Yes, his shovel pass to four defenders that mercifully dropped to the turf was stupid, but his throws otherwise were great. And again, he’s got targets everywhere. The only problem he really had last night was that he couldn’t sling it downfield something he obviously wanted to do. He constantly had his eyes on the bomb only to dump it off short. He played great.

-Also good: the team’s defense. Bruuuuuuuuce Irvin was limited to a single sack, which was disappointing if only because he was going against a freshman quarterback. Then again, the entire offensive line was keying to keep him away from that same freshman quarterback. The rest of the defense was flying around, save for Marshall’s field goal drives. They looked slightly shaky on those.

The Bad
-It would be safe to describe Holgorsen’s debut as one of the most disappointing imaginable, right? Yes, we won the game, and all the credit in the world goes to him for doing so (especially in those conditions), but let’s be honest: we all wanted the offense to score 70 points. We wanted the offense to be an unstoppable juggernaut and it just wasn’t. The running game was non-existent. Geno was constantly being harassed in the backfield. In fact…

-Let’s focus where ought to: the offensive line. Or, perhaps, the “offensive” line, because they were offensive to watch. (Editor’s Note: Oh…) There were no holes for the running backs, which might explain how 26 running plays produced 42 total yards. And Geno Smith, not known for being a running quarterback, was constantly side-stepping tacklers, inexplicably staying on his feet and keeping plays alive via his own ingenuity. I suppose those were skills he was able to hone after last year’s disastrous blocking constantly left him scrambling. While it ought to be noted that Marshall’s defensive line came into the game touted, the Mountaineers are going to face more thorough teams that won’t let Smith get away. If that isn’t our top concern, it ought to be.

-As for the special teams debacle at the beginning of the game and again during the touchdown…I don’t know. The disappointing results our kickoff and punt teams produce is an annual event, so at this point, we ought to be used to it.

Conclusion
-There were hints of what might come to be, but anybody who doesn’t acknowledge that it wasn’t all that we hoped is lying. And if the line doesn’t improve all of the offensive scheming in the world isn’t going to help against LSU.

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?

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.

Note: This post contains little to no discussion of actual football. In this post, which to the best of my recollection is one hundred percent accurate, football is merely the backdrop. For actual analysis of the game read this, or come back later for a deeper look into the statistics of the game

I’ve been to over 80 WVU home football games in five different states on four different days of the week spanning four different decades and I can confidently say I’ve never experienced anything like I did on Sunday.

After 2 ½ quarters of play, the sky started to hint of trouble ahead, further magnified by “in case of emergency” alerts from Travis Jones over the PA. I was seated with my wife, sister, cousin, friend, and four year old daughter (sounds like the beginning to a bad WV joke) near the Marshall band so we grew a bit more concerned when he started passing out the ponchos and delivering directions that he was being fed from an earpiece. There was a “when” to his directions, and not an “if” or “in case of.” My sister had taken my restless daughter to see her Gamma and Gampa at their seats on the other side of the stadium but not before we made our own “in case of” plans.

As you’re probably aware, right after Tavon took the kickoff return to the house the announcement was made to clear the stands. (This was about 5:50 PM) We actually were evacuated down through the visitors’ tunnel. As it was still not yet raining, the four remaining (myself, Corey (friend), Ben (cousin), and Danielle (wife)) left the cover of the tunnel for Corey’s car in the blue lot which 1) offered a safe location 2) served as a proposed meeting location for my sister and four year old 3) contained a cooler icy cold beer. As far as we figured, it was a much better location than an already packed visitors’ tunnel.

(Not familiar with the stadium layout? Use this annotated map to help you follow along while you read)

We had made it to the student side of the stadium when lightning hit and within 15 seconds it was raining sideways. Ben took shelter under a parked tractor trailer (in hindsight, the fact that at the time this seemed like a perfectly good and sound idea to him—an intelligent college graduate—and the 60 other people congregating underneath it tells me that people do ridiculous things in times of crisis). In a scene straight out of Band of Brothers he told us to go without him and that he’d be okay and look for us later in the parking lot. For some reason, I didn’t feel like I’d see him ever again and went off to escort my bride. After trekking through the pouring rain, and helping some guys with their tent that was buckling under the wind (who kindly thanked me with a beer) we made it to Corey’s teal (not light blue) Subaru and settled inside soaking wet with Corey, his wife, and my wife. We listened to the radio, watched everyone walk by even more soaked than us and only because of time stamped activity on my phone do I know what happened next.

At 6:19 I received a text from my parents telling me they had my daughter and all was good.
At 6:33 I noticed Ben had texted asking where we were. I gave him our approximate location and told him to look for the light blue Subaru.

At this point it had pretty much stopped raining. Corey and I got out of the car and heard some commotion coming from the light blue lot. Turns out fans had taken to sliding down the muddy hill into several feet of water that had gathered where the team had walked earlier for the Mantrip. I took some video from the steps that connect the light blue and blue lots as several people slid down the hill and splashed (YouTube version from a different angle here). I’m 90% sure a girl went down topless. I was pretty far away but the petite frame and the increased commotion leads me to believe I’m correct in that assessment. For reasons having nothing to do with the previous two sentences, Corey and I walked closer so we could see from below and were miraculously reunited with Ben. (I cannot describe to you how hilarious that moment was. It was a chance meeting where Corey and I positioned ourselves on either side of a guy wearing a clear poncho as the three of us watched the mudsliding and after 30 seconds we realized we were flanking my cousin. It was a reunion that provided perfect symmetry to the Band of Brothers goodbye that took place nearly an hour before. We deliriously laughed as we thought of what the chances were of running into each other again out of the tens of thousands of people)

We returned to the teal (not light blue) Subaru where it was pointed out to me by Ben that it was in fact not light blue and were soon joined by my parents with sister and my 4 year old in tow. They had been hanging under the concourse. After some debate and a jump start from stadium support personnel, the girls and my dad headed home in the Subaru and Corey, Ben and I vowed to re-enter the stadium.

We then wandered around this post apocalyptic scene for another 90 minutes that felt like days trying to meet people and bum beer. Some of the highlights:

-Corey trying to cleverly get some beer from a guy on RV row in a way that someone could have easily misinterpreted as trying to solicit sexual favors.

-A group of three guys who were treating the Blue lot like a scavenger hunt to equip their next barbecue. Us: “Where’d you get that (really nice” cornhole set?” Them: “We found it” Then they opened their “newly acquired” rolling cooler and showed us their “discovered” bottle of Stoli, “borrowed” airplane bottle of Jameson, as well as their “recently ascertained” beers

-A dozen people in a Gold and Blue painted 15 passenger van singing Counting Crows. We spoke to one of the folks in the group who was outside. When they informed us they were from Mullens, my exclamation of “Herbie Brooks!” established our credibility as true WVU fans.

We re-entered the stadium and sat in the seats where Ben and I grew up sitting with our families and grandparents—my grandmother whose life we had just celebrated the day before at a funeral in Bridgeport—and cheered on our Mountaineer defense on a 3 and out, and cheered as we scored a touchdown to put the game away. I don’t know how many fans were there, but I feel like I’ve seen more at the MHS band spectacular.

When the next delay was announced and the stadium was evacuated, we headed to the Beanery for pizza and a dry place to sit. In the spirit of the conservationists we had met earlier, Corey rescued a very nice folding chair from the northwest corner of the Blue lot on our way. After food and thinking that someone had been struck by lightning (still waiting on that retraction ESPN) we made it home right before 11 and soon after calling it a night but not before posing for this

Going into this game I told you I anticipated being surprised, I didn’t anticipate having one of the craziest and most enjoyable experiences of my entire WVU fandom.

Almost two years ago I made this observationon Mike Casazza’s WVU Sports Blog

Kiffin is still in the “walks on water” phase here in Volnation. The fans consistently defend his arrogance, his rookie mistakes, his lack of respect for others, and he’s committed multiple recruiting violations before summer workouts have even started. I’m not saying he should be fired and given his $7.5M buyout yet, but they just replaced the guy who had the longest tenure in the SEC and they need to manage expectations a bit if they want to avoid being like every other team in their conference. There’s some elements of the Product in Kiffin that give me some bad vibes. I think they both possess this mentality where they feel bulletproof and are drinking their own Kool Aid. It must be a result of being sought after and being wined and dined and such. The Product only had that towards the end after the Bama near miss. Kiffin walked into Knoxville that way. 

1. It’s way cool that we can use something that wrote years ago to help us prove a point today. (I think this internet thing could actually catch on). I’m just glad I didn’t make a Jersey Shore reference or say something like “Kiffin’s going to be as forgettable as this new “Hangover” movie they’ve been showing stupid previews for”
2. It does seem a little prophetic, though had I not been so ambiguous I may not have been as on the money as I sound now. Lane Kiffin is hated in Knoxville, though that probably wouldn’t have been the case had Pete Carrill not bolted for the NFL. I believed at the time that Kiffin would grow to be disliked because of his love to run his mouth and make too many regrettable statements. I was more on the money with my “rules don’t apply to him” statement as his recent testimony before the NCAA Committee on Infractions this month only confirms those suspicions (plenty of people saw this coming, but many in Knoxville were in denial).
3. As I’m geographically close to the Tennessee fanbase (I live 13 miles from Neyland Stadium), and spiritually close to the West Virginia fanbase I can’t help but see a lot of similarities between Holgorsen and Kiffin.

Alvy Singer’s Therapist: How often do you sleep together? Annie Hall’s Therapist: Do you have sex often? Alvy Singer: [lamenting] Hardly ever. Maybe three times a week. Annie Hall: [annoyed] Constantly. I’d say three times a week.

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

6, 13 – passing yards and rushing yards for WVU in the first quarter (made even more impressive that WVU finished with 431 yards passing on the game)

89%, 19.25, 3 – Pass completion percentage, average yards per pass, and touchdown receptions thrown by Geno Smith in the 4rd quarter

371 – passing yards by Geno (a career high, the highest at WVU in 13 years (Marc Bulger 429 – Missouri 1998) and Smith’s third 300 yard passing game)

13 – first downs by WVU in the 3^rd quarter

6 – of those first downs that were earned via Norfolk State penalty

10 – teams in FBS that haven’t allowed more than one touchdown this season in two games (although it was a special teams TD, it still counts against WVU as a TD, but they also did only play 3 quarters against Marshall) Central Florida, Florida St. – 0; Michigan St., Florida, Illinois, Texas, Arkansas, Temple, Kentucky - 1

236 – yards allowed per game by WVU’s defense (and remember, Marshall, 3 quarters)

2 – of the 10 teams who have only allowed 1 TD through two games are allowing more yards per game than WVU (Temple (272) and Kentucky (308.5))

0 – turnovers lost by the offense this year (only 4 other FBS teams can say that – Cincinnati, San Diego St., Texas A&M, and Wisconsin)

0 – turnovers caused by the defense this year (only 3 other FBS teams can say that – Nevada, North Carolina, and UAB)

17, 9 – number of carries, and the yards of the longest run by Vernard Roberts. A WVU back hasn’t had that many carries in a game without a run longer than 9 yards since Noel Devine carried the ball for 19 times with a long run of 9 against Cincinnati in 2008. In that time, 20 different ball carriers have had 17 carries or more and all had had at least one run of 10 yards or more

1 – lady whose day was made when Bruce Irvin gave her a big hug during the Mantrip  

18 – consecutive home wins against non conference opponents. Last loss was against Virginia Tech in 2005 (who was ranked #3 at the time). Will it make it to 19? What will LSU be ranked when they come to Morgantown?

It’s been years since Dana Holgorsen would have been subjected to any kind of standardized testing, but if I had to guess, he may not have been the best at SAT analogies remember those? At his Tuesday press conference this week (aka Holgorsen’s Rant, Holgs’s Harangue, Holgs-oration, the “Air-Raid” of Grievances), Dana was presented with the following internal analogy to complete WVU : Bowling Green :: ________ : ________  a)     LSU : Kentucky b)     Ole Miss : Southern Illinois c)     Mississippi State : Louisiana Tech d)     Oklahoma State : Louisiana Lafayette e)     Texas Tech : Weber State Let’s check the tape (from msnsports.net)

So why did we have 20,000 less people out there for this one than that one? The funny part of it was we all were talking about it two weeks ago how much difference the fans and the crowds are going to make to the LSU people. LSU played well in front of 62,000 of our people and then turned around and went home and played a 1-4 Kentucky team at noon and had 95,000 fans. You want talk about an elite program, that’s one. I don’t know about this place.

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!)

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.)