I’ve mentioned it before in a YouTube video of mine, but I think it’s time for WVU to realize who they are. This is mainly a conversation centered around the football and basketball teams, because it certainly doesn’t pertain to our Rifle Team (21 National Championships and counting). West Virginia University and the people of my home state deserve something to cheer for and get excited about, and there just hasn’t been a lot of that over the last…. two decades.
We now live in a bastardized reality where conferences don’t mean what they used to; I mean for god’s sake Stanford (located in Stanford, CA) is playing in the ATLANTIC Coast Conference. Conferences used to be about geographical location. Travel, especially air travel, used to not be as easily accessible as it is now so it was a necessity to have conferences with teams within close proximity to each other. It really wasn’t that long ago when conferences were that way; prior to our move to the Big 12 we belonged to the Big East conference and with the exception of one team (the University of South Florida) all 14 other teams were essentially in the same section of the country.
Of course once the Big East decided that maintaining schools with football teams was too costly (not to mention the fact that A LOT of money was being thrown to schools leaving the conference) it was only a matter of time before the Big East shut down and WVU would find a new home. Since we left in 2012, though, there hasn’t exactly been a lot to get excited about.
Our football team has gone barely over .500 with a record of 92-82 in the 14 years we’ve been in the Big 12, including 7 losing seasons and going through 3 head coaches. We’ve gone 3-7 in Bowl Games and none of them were anywhere remotely close to playing for a National Championship. Speaking of championships, we are fresh out of those are well because we haven’t won a single Big 12 trophy.
Our men’s basketball team has seen more success than our football team, but it still isn’t anything to write home about. We’ve gone 271-197 in 14 years but it should be mentioned that we’ve failed to make it past the Sweet 16 in that time, we’ve gone through 4 head coaches, we’ve suffered 4 losing seasons, and it shouldn’t come as any surprise that we haven’t seen a real level of success since Jevon Carter graduated – who knew that having a future 8 year NBA veteran on your team would help you win games??? It also shouldn’t come as a shock that we haven’t won a Big 12 regular season OR Big 12 Tournament title, although we’ve gotten close on a few (very few) occasions.
I do want to give a special shoutout to our women’s team because they’ve at least won some hardware while in the Big 12 (one regular season title in 2014 and two tournament titles in 2017 and 2026) but when you compare it to the powerhouses of the conference (Baylor, Iowa State, and Oklahoma) it seems a bit lacking.
If that wasn’t enough, we’re now entering an era of NIL, brand deals, and private equity that puts us at even more of a disadvantage. If this is the first article you’ve ever read from me, PLEASE know that I’m the biggest WVU fan there is, but I just want a chance for us to compete for championships that we actually have a chance at winning. In football we aren’t Texas Tech, Houston, or Arizona. In basketball we, ironically, also aren’t Texas Tech, Houston, and Arizona, but we also aren’t Kansas or Iowa State. We are being priced out of the market because “West Virginia University” as a brand isn’t as valuable and won’t bring in enough ROI as the aforementioned teams.
If I’m being fair to myself as a fan, and to all of the fanbase, I think that we could be there someday if we were given the same opportunity and funds. If I was going to be critical, if we take away the Pat White/Steve Slaton era, the Geno Smith and Will Grier years, the Final Four run with Da’Sean Butler, and the Jevon Carter years, what would we be? If I had to guess, probably just another university in the country that would be decent but not great.
Furthermore, when you think about the economics of West Virginia as a state we truly don’t belong in a power conference that features teams from Texas, Florida, and Arizona. West Virginia is ranked 42nd in GDP (as of 2024) and NONE of the states below us have a team in a Power 4/5 conference. As a matter of fact there are two states with a HIGHER GDP that also don’t have a team in a Power Conference. By almost every metric, we don’t belong.
Now that’s not to say that I think we’re destined to be a borderline D1/D2 school like other teams are; I think the opposite, actually. In case you missed it, I’ve spent a lot of time watching college basketball this year. I watched one game from each conference in college basketball, and I learned a lot.
I learned that you don’t have to be a big school to compete. I watched the likes of Miami (OH), St. Mary’s, and St. Louis wreck everyone in their wake and still make a little bit of noise in the postseason despite having a “weaker” schedule.
I learned that despite playing in a Mid-Major conference, as long as you have the coaching personnel, you can still showcase A LOT of talent like I witnessed with Liberty, Yale, and Dayton.
Lasty, I learned (really more of a reinforcing) that as long as you have a good system and a good coach, good players will flock to you which allows you to always be competitive like we’ve all watched with Gonzaga for the last 27 years.
Maybe this is a lofty claim, but I’m a fan damnit, and I think that if we really committed to the idea we could be the Eastern Standard Time Zone version of Gonzaga. I really do believe in Coach Hodge; he’s displayed his ability to recruit talent at every stop in his career, I think he actually overperformed this year given this roster makeup (although we had some baffling losses), and he’s proven that he can bring 5-star talent to a place like the Mountain State with Miles Sadler committing to be a Mountaineer.
I’m writing this about two hours before the Stanford/WVU tipoff in The College Basketball Crown Tournament. Regardless if we win or lose my opinion won’t change. We could win this entire tournament and my opinion wouldn’t change. The only way that my opinion would change is if we won a National Championship. I’ve been waiting on that for my entire life and it just doesn’t seem like we’ll ever come close.
I could either pretend like we have a chance like I have for 20 years and become disappointed every single year after either falling short of expectations or stumbling at the finish line to seal our fate…
OR
We could accept who we are, which is a Mid-Major school. We’re the underdogs, we’re the warriors, we’re always counted out. We never get a fair shake, we’re always screwed out of the standings or Bowl Games or tournaments, and we just don’t have the funds to compete with teams who have literal billionaires (sometimes multiple) funding their programs.
I just want a chance for WVU fans and the great people of West Virginia to be able to celebrate something. I still talk about our Final Four run and Big East Tournament Championship over 15 years ago because that’s the most success we’ve ever had. My dad, however, used to talk about winning the 1989 A-10 basketball Conference Championship the same way that I’m sure Ohio State fans talk about the 2024 National Championship in football or how Kansas fans talk about the 2008 and 2022 March Madness Championships.
I was a Freshman in high school the last time that we’ve seen real success on the basketball court, and I’m now a 31 year old man. I don’t want to spend the next 40-50 years of my life hoping and praying that we might/potentially/could/almost/maybe/be in conversation for a National Championship if EVERYTHING goes our way. I would much rather spend the rest of my life on Earth competing for a Sun Belt Conference Championship. I’d much rather get an automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament by winning the Mid-American Conference Tournament and going on a Cinderella run during March Madness. Most importantly I’d much rather be able to tell my future kids that we’ve won something this decade.
Despite all of the hardships that the state has faced in it’s lifetime, and especially in the last 25 years, I believe that the state is full of winners. I think that it’s full of hard workers, overachievers, and passionate fans. I think that after everything we’ve been through we deserve the right to call ourselves and our favorite university champions, no matter the conference. I want to live in that world, because I can promise you that I would talk about winning the 2029 Conference USA Championship until they lay me down in the dirt.
Round The Game 
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