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  • Go Mountaineers!!!

    "West Virginia one step from ultimate goal
    DICK WEISS / Special to FOXSports.com
    Posted: 11 minutes ago

    It's almost heaven in West Virginia, where the state's beloved Mountaineer football team will face Pitt this Saturday night in Morgantown for a chance to play for the BCS national championship Jan. 7 in New Orleans.
    Fans from the Blue Ridge mountains and the Shenandoah Valley will make way on country roads to sold-out 57,000-seat Mountaineer Stadium to witness what they hope will be a coronation in the 100th annual Backyard Brawl.

    West Virginia (10-1) is ranked second in the BCS standings and is a healthy 28-point favorite over the 4-7 Panthers, who have serious defensive liabilities, giving up 49 points to Navy and 48 to South Florida.

    So it seems unlikely the Mountaineers will follow in the footsteps of teams like USC, Cal, South Florida, Boston College, Oregon and Kansas that soared into the championship picture, then crashed and burned after reaching No. 2.

    West Virginia has already clinched the Big East championship, rushing for 517 yards during a 66-21 victory over UConn last week in Morgantown.


    "It's not like we were trying to be the Patriots and run up the score, but we had something to prove to the rest of the country," cornerback Vaughn Rivers said. "There are still people out there who don't want to see West Virginia in the national championship game. This is for them."

    West Virginia and the Big East still don't get the respect they have earned and deserve. This is a conference that was left for dead after ACC expansion took away Virginia Tech, Miami and Boston College, but the Big East has resuscitated itself the last two years. Three teams — Louisville, West Virginia and Rutgers — surfaced in the final AP Top 12 last season and the Mountaineers are now poised for greatness.

    "We want to finish the deal in a big rivalry game," West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez said. "We haven't played Pitt with more at stake."

    Pitt may lead the series 59-37-3, but the Mountaineers have dominated play during the Pat White-Steve Slaton era. White, the Mountaineers' exciting junior quarterback rushed for 220 yards and two touchdowns while throwing for 41 yards and another score during a 45-13 victory over the Panthers his freshman year in Morgantown. He came back last season to run for 220 yards and two touchdowns and threw for 204 yards and two more scores during a 45-27 victory at Heinz Field.

    Slaton, a junior tailback, has rushed for 394 yards and four touchdowns in 57 carries in his first two games against Pitt. "This is the biggest game in my lifetime," White said. "I don't think it will be tough to be focused."

    Not with so much at stake. West Virginia has only played in one national championship game, back in 1988 when exciting quarterback Major Harris, who came from the Pittsburgh Public League, led the Mountaineers to a perfect regular season, then was injured during a 31-24 loss to Notre Dame at the Fiesta Bowl.

    There is no love between these Big East schools, which are located just 75 miles apart and recruit many of the same Western Pennsylvania prospects. The history of animosity have led to some surprises in the past.

    In 1954, a mediocre Pitt team that fired its coach during a 4-5 season took West Virginia out of the national title picture with 13-10 victory, the Panthers' only loss.

    In 1997, an underdog Pitt team earned a surprise bowl bid when it rallied for a 41-38 triple overtime victory in Morgantown after quarterback Pete Gonzalez completed a 20-yard pass on a 4th-and-17 play in OT.

    But the game Pitt fans always focus on is the one in 1970.

    Bobby Bowden was coaching the Mountaineers that year, and they were blowing away the Panthers, 35-7, at halftime in Pitt Stadium. Bowden went conservative, content to sit on a lead and the Panthers stormed back for a 36-35 upset victory. West Virginia fans were so disturbed, they beat on the locker room door demanding Bowden come out and explain what happened.

    Bowden can laugh about that today, claiming he wasn't as worried about being hung in effigy as he was about being hung for real.

    But what's happening to Pitt football is no joke. The Panthers have lost seven of their last nine games and this is the program's third straight losing season under Dave Wannstedt, a star lineman at Pitt in the early 70's who was an assistant on Johnny Majors' 1976 Panthers' team that won the national championship.

    "The West Virginia game was always the one you circled and said it didn't make any difference what the records were at that point," Wannstedt said. "You're always looking for something when you're struggling like we are."

    Pitt's best chance to remain competitive lies with LaSean McCoy, a freshman All-American running back who has rushed for 1180 yards and broke Tony Dorsett's school freshman record with 14 TDs.

    But the Panthers may be staring down the throat of a threshing machine. "


    I am SO pumped up for Saturday night.

    When I went there we REALLY stunk. This has been a great year for Mounties fans.
    “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
    Mark Twain
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