MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WV News) — How often from 2010 to 2012 did these words — or words like them — echo through the mountains of West Virginia:
"Geno Smith back to pass, looks downfield, he finds Tavon Austin open, he slips a tackle, cuts back, to 30, to the 20, to the 10. Touchdown, Tavon Austin."
Or:
"Third and 12. Smith is looking, looking, there's Stedman Bailey. He's covered but Smith threads it through a tiny hole to Bailey. He makes a leaping catch, an impossible catch. First down, West Virginia."
They were the heart and soul of an offense that was almost, if not completely, the equal of the Pat White/Steve Slaton offense just more than a decade earlier.
And so it is fitting today that they together are being inducted in the West Virginia University Sports Hall of Fame.
They join five other Mountaineers — men's basketball star Kevin Jones, women's basketball record breaker Donna Abbott, cross country/track star Marie-Louise Asselin, rifle trailblazer Marilee Hohman and rifle coach Marsha Beasley — in the 2022 class.
The induction ceremony will take place on Sept. 17 before the Mountaineers play Towson in the football home opener.
You can't mention Smith without Austin and Bailey. They go together like peanut butter and jelly, Abbott and Costello, like Samson and Delilah.
They told the world that West Virginia football had changed. Gone was the Don Nehlen era and his power running game; gone was the Rich Rodriguez era and the spread option. Dana Holgorsen brought in his version of the Air Raid, and it would probably have gone down in the annals of college football had he figured out a way to stop the other team.
As an example, WVU rode Smith's arm and Austin and Bailey's pass-catching and unmatched ability to make yards after the catch to 513 points in 2012, matching the school record set by White and Slaton's 2007 mark. But while that 2007 team went 11-2 and reached the point where it was in line to play for the national title; the 2012 defense gave up 495 points.
That led to a 7-6 season despite being a team that scored 69 points on Marshall, 70 on Baylor, 48 on Texas, 49 on Oklahoma and 59 on Kansas.
But if that took the glitter off the triumvirate of performances turned in by Smith, Austin and Bailey, it did nothing to diminish it within the state, where people often would ask each other, "Did I just see what I just saw?" on plays from the threesome.
The signature game, of course, was the one in which they announced to the Big 12 that there was a new kid on the block.
West Virginia's very first Big 12 game at Mountaineer Field saw both teams put up video game numbers.
Consider some of them:
Smith completed 45 of 51 passes — that's no typo, just six incompletions. He threw for 656 games and eight touchdowns.
Austin caught 14 passes for 215 yards and two touchdowns.
Bailey caught 13 passes for 303 yards and 5 touchdowns.
Last year, WVU was led in touchdown receptions by Sam James and Winston Wright with 5. Bailey caught that many in one game.
"It did feel like one of those classic Texas shootouts," Smith said after the game. "That's kind of what the Big 12 is all about."
And it was what Smith, Bailey and Austin were all about.
It's probably fair to say that there never has been a player at WVU like Austin. Some could catch. Some could run. But Austin also was as good a kick and punt returner as WVU ever had.
And he was as elusive as a national championship has proven to be for West Virginia.
Austin with a football in his hands turned the game into two-hand touch. He was so slick that tackling him was almost out of the question. He'd spin, he'd sidestep, he'd jump out of bounds.
They didn't use the statistic yards after contact where he was concerned because there seldom was contact.
Just think about this — Austin was mostly a receiver, but Holgorsen, faced with an Oklahoma team that was hard to beat, decided to switch up on them and moved Austin to running back.
On that day, Austin set the school record for yards rushing in a single game with 344.
Again, how many yards really is that? Well, in 2019, Neal Brown's first season as coach, Leddie Brown led WVU in rushing for the season with 367 yards.
That's just 23 more yards than Austin rushed for in one game.
Austin is the only player in NCAA history (think about the dimensions of that) to score a touchdown four different ways in one season (catch, rush, kick return and punt return). Too bad he didn't recover a fumble for a TD, too.
He passed Avon Cobourne and Noel Devine to set the school's all-purpose yards record with 7,286 — about a mile and a half — and passed Jock Sanders to set the career record in receptions with 288 and went by David Saunders to become the school's career receiving yards lead with 3,413 yards.
And don't forget, WVU had Bailey lining up on the other side from him.
It is difficult to describe what Bailey was like. His hands were like fly paper. If a football flew into it, it was stuck there.
He was big enough to deal with any defensive back, fast enough to run with them, smart enough out-fox them.
He, like Smith and Austin, worked at his trade, put all that was within him into what he was doing and probably got the most of his ability.
And there's little doubt in this mind that had he not been victimized in a random shooting while sitting in his car with his children that he would still be playing in the NFL — as Smith and Austin are — and probably getting ready to head off into a coaching career.
