MORGANTOWN — As far as West Virginia football goes right now, there’s a lot more important things than thinking about renewing the non-rivalry rivalry of facing Marshall.
There’s a matter of Rich Rodriguez making all of the king’s horses and all the king’s men and trying to put the pieces together of a still-proud but not very productive football program that fell off the wall under the watch of Dana Holgorsen and Neal Brown.
Then there’s the reinvention of the college game itself with players now business partners and NIL driving the price of those business partners skyrocketing into areas that would leave even Knute Rockne speechless.
But maybe — and right now that’s a non-committal maybe — this might just be the right time to talk about it.
In truth, the conversation has already begun, as former WVU defensive coordinator Tony Gibson, a 30-year assistant coach at all levels of the game, has taken over as head coach at Marshall, and in a conversation with Taylor Kennedy of the Charleston Gazette-Mail, a WVU graduate, he has expressed a strong desire to restart the 12-game rivalry that has been dormant since 2012.
Over the years, WVU has shown less than little interest in playing Marshall, but times change and situations change and, as noted, the situation now may be right to begin negotiations.
Let’s first listen to what Gibson told the Gazette-Mail.
“I want to play them,” Gibson said. “I think that would be great for our two universities and keep the money in the state, so I’m trying to make a big push toward making that happen.”
That said, there comes the inevitable “but … ”
“But I’m only one voice, but I’m never going to stop,” Gibson said.
Chances are he never will be heard, but his reasoning for the game is sound. With the Big 12 now spread across America, WVU is looking for regional non-conference games and they want to lighten up their schedule that has seen them lose their last four opening games, two to Top 10 regional rival Penn State, one to Pitt when it was ranked No. 17 and one at an unranked Maryland team.
This fits well with a reason Gibson gives for wanting to face WVU.
“It would benefit us in that my first game at Marshall we have to go to Athens and play Georgia,” Gibson said, with a knowing giggle. “I’m not saying that to take anything away from WVU, but if we are going to play a Power 4 school, let’s play our in-state Power 4 school, where it means something to everybody.”
WVU is looking for money games, though, in this era where $100 million doesn’t give Power 5 schools near the top athletic budget.
However, Gibson counters that with this argument.
“They say you only hold 30-some thousand at your stadium,” Gibson said. “Well, Ohio University only holds 25,000 and WVU is going there, so it doesn’t make sense to me that it can happen but we can’t play a game.”
The truth is that there is only one reason that keeps the two schools apart and that is that WVU has nothing to gain by playing Marshall and Gibson knows that personally from his involvement as a coach at WVU.
“I was on the other side of this rivalry and we don’t play for a lot of different reasons, but the biggest one was you didn’t want to be the one who lost to Marshall,” Gibson admitted.
That is a strong reason, to be honest.
Now it’s true that Marshall could not beat WVU when it had Randy Moss at wide receiver, arguably the greatest football player ever from West Virginia, in 1997, but when they did play that game Moss caught two TDs and Marshall led 31-28 going into the fourth quarter.
But the true scare came in 2010, when a WVU team quarterbacked by Geno Smith and with Noel Devine, Tavon Austin and Stedman Bailey found themselves trailing 21-6 with 14:55 left in the game, only to come back and force overtime on Smith’s two-point conversion pass to Jock Sanders after throwing a TD pass to tight end Will Johnson with 12 seconds left.
Tyler Bitancurt’s 20-yard field goal in overtime stood up as the winner when Marshall missed a 36-yard try to tie the score.
However, with Rich Rodriguez now at WVU and Gibson at Marshall, you have two state natives coaching and that adds to the draw of the game but also adds to a reason why WVU would not want to risk playing it.
Still, Gibson sees it as a reason to get the rivalry going again.
“It’s awesome for the state,” Gibson said. “This works out. Rich is from northern West Virginia; I’m from southern West Virginia. He’s from WVU, I’m from Marshall. You got guys who want to be here; want to be where they’re at. They’re not looking for the next job.”
Perhaps not, but the loser of that game may well be asked to go find a next job.