Deep Thoughts, WVU Style

WV Illustrated reported yesterday that according to the WVU Ticket Office, the school has only sold about 5,700 tickets to the bowl game. This is the worst number of any team going to a BCS game, and probably means WVU will take a major hit having to pay a considerable fee for unsold seats. You can blame the economy, or the fact the game is on a Wednesday right after the holiday. You can even blame WVU's marketing of those tickets. However, when gameday rolls around, there will still be close to 25,000 WVU fans in South Beach for the game. The secondary market has been the biggest culprit for the school. Stubhub has tickets for about 40 dollars. Ebay has a plethora of different prices, and there are more sites that people use as well. Why would fans go through the school, where the tickets are more expensive and have less control of where the seats will be, when they can pick and choose from these sites? I do feel for the school, because they will take a bath of unsold seats, but it's just not practical to buy from the school.

There are about 100 different reports and/or rumors about the future of Defensive Coordinator, Jeff Casteel. Many believe he will be Arizona-bound to join Rich Rod, while others think he isn't going anywhere. Whatever the case is, I wonder what the future of the 3-3-5 stack defense will be. Will the Mountaineers truly want to move into the Big 12 having to rely on speed over size? Many teams do run the spread in the conference, but there is generally more size, and stronger running backs. With six safety commits on the recruiting list you would imagine the team sticks with the 3-3-5, but I guess you never know. Personally I would like to see this team go to a more conventional look, but you can't argue that Casteel has had good success over the years with the stack.

So, whats your prediction on when WVU gets out of the Big East? Call me pessimistic, but I don't see the school getting out until after the waiting period. I have no inside information, and don't know law at all...it's just a guess. It seems to me that WVU was hoping the Big East would just back down and possibly settle from the beginning. However, the conference has fought back and seems to be ready to take the court battle all the way to the end. We'll see what happens, but don't be surprised if we are stuck for at least another year.

WVU netted more than $700,000 from beer sales in the first year it was authorized at Mountaineer Field. More importantly is the fact that excessive drinking incidents dropped by about 30%. This isn't surprising at all. By allowing the sale of beer inside it reduces the amount of morons pounding brews before the kickoff. It also helped that WVU eliminated the "pass outs" rule, where one could leave at halftime, get wasted, and come back in the second half. Oliver Luck hit a homerun with these changes, and expect things to even get better next year.