MORGANTOWN — As college sports have moved from their amateur-based innocence to a professional model that arrives complete with agents and revenue-sharing, creating a society that changes from the classroom to the boardroom, it also threatens to minimize the one overwhelming charm the college game has always leaned upon, no matter what the sport.
Rivalries.
Rivalries are the heart — if not the heart and soul — of college athletics.
It is built on Army vs. Navy, on Alabama vs. Georgia, Ohio State vs. Michigan, Oklahoma vs. Texas — regional and conference trophy games that date back to Knute Rockne and Grantland Rice.
In the midst of that, of course, is West Virginia’s own true rivalry, that being its longstanding competition with the Pitt Panthers, a party waiting to happen, be it on the football field or the basketball court, be it men’s or women’s sports, be it home or away.
We, as sportswriters or broadcasters, have cast hatred built over the years through upsets and routs, with performances from the athletes being magnified in significance when they come against each other.
It’s a rivalry that has pushed John Denver and Neil Diamond beyond the Beatles or the Stones in terms of music to turn you on or off, depending upon your rooting interests.
But somehow, in our efforts to make it us vs. them, no matter which side you root for or which postal zone in which you reside, we have focused upon the differences when, in truth, if you can do a bit of an adjustment, you can see that these two sides need and have benefitted from each other.
Just this past week, the depth to which Pittsburgh athletes have contributed to West Virginia’s athletic success seemed to be driven home completely.
On Sunday, pitcher Jack Kartsonas, out of Pittsburgh and Vincentian Academy, turned in a gem for a worn-down WVU pitching staff that helped it run its Big 12 winning streak to 14 consecutive games and that offered a reminder of how WVU has taken advantage over the years of its neighbor to the north.
The past two years, when Kartsonas was at Kent State, WVU leaned upon a fellow named JJ Wetherholt, who had come out of the Pittsburgh area to be the best player ever at WVU, someone who has helped and will help over the years keeping that railroad chugging into Morgantown from the north.
“We’ve had great players from western Pennsylvania and JJ Wetherholt was a really, really big piece of that, because everybody from the state knows who he is. He was a first-round pick in the draft and one of the greatest players in West Virginia baseball history,†Mountaineers coach Steve Sabins said.
“College baseball here really started growing when he led the nation in hitting, became a first-rounder and social media was kind of blowing up. He was a name and was pretty powerful in that region.â€
There was, of course, basically no border when it came to the football program. While in recent years West Virginia has grown dramatically in the number of prized football players it has produced, sending such gifts north as Zach Frazier and Beanie Bishop to appease the Pittsburgh fans who were hooked on the Steelers, historically, the Mountaineer football program has gobbled up players from the Pittsburgh area.
The biggest, of course, was Major Harris, the quarterback who took Don Nehlen to the doorstep of a national championship and who, until Pat White came along out of Alabama, was recognized almost unanimously as the greatest quarterback in the school’s history.
But you couldn’t write the history of quarterback play at WVU without the contributions of Marc Bulger and Rasheed Marshall, Bulger leading the Mountaineers at the end of Nehlen’s career and Marshall establishing the quarterback position during the early days of Rich Rodriguez’s first stint as Mountaineer coach.
It is difficult to remain mad at Pitt when you start to think of how many players they let slip away to play in Morgantown, from cornerbacks Mike Logan and Charles Fisher to offensive lineman Solomon Page.
These were not just players at WVU, these were stars who set the table who were responsible for quite a few renditions of “Country Roads.â€
And no one has given the Mountaineers more positive publicity and spread the word that they still play football here more than the placekicker Pat McAfee from Pittsburgh suburb Plum, who has become a marketing marvel with his television show.
And while WVU hasn’t quite hit the Pittsburgh gold as heavily in the sport of basketball, they have never been forgotten for snaking guard Joe Fryz away from the Panthers and bringing him to Morgantown.
According to John Antonik, the WVU historian, Fryz once told him that after he opted to come to West Virginia, former Pitt players and their coach then, Tim Grgurich, wouldn’t talk to him after that.
But that’s the way it’s supposed to be with rivalries, and let’s only hope in the new age of college sports the rivalries don’t lose their grip on their fans.
