Marshall will NEVER beat WVU

So, I had the recent misfortune of reading an article posted on the crap-fest known as Bleacher Report. This article talks about how Marshall will beat WVU in the “Friends of Joe Bowl.” [Bleacher Report]

I came away from that article with ONE conclusion: That’s the dumbest article I’ve ever read, and it definitely needs the FJM treatment. For those of you unfamiliar with the FJM treatment, go to my Mike Garrison entry. [Mike Garrison speaks!] I go into great detail about the history of the FJM treatment, as well as give a live demo there. We’ve also had run-ins with Marshall fans before on this blog as well. [Moo-U Students Should Demand a Refund.] So, without further ado…

I’m a novelist. Novelists are schizo folks. We create and destroy, sometimes in the same stroke of the keys. So, in this piece I’m going to create the premise about West Virginia’s road trip to play Marshall in Huntington on Friday September 10, then destroy it by giving you the ending first.
Oooh… so if this were a movie, we’d see the Titanic sink first?!

That’s means you can get to the following paragraph and move on to, perhaps, Guilty Pleasures. I don’t recommend going there. They’re like cotton candy.
Marshall’s fan base consumes plenty of cotton candy.

Besides, I think you’ll want to know how Marshall is going to get the Friends of Coal Bowl Trophy this year. This is the season The Herd makes that four-hour bus ride back to Morgantown, a very long one for West Virginia.
Yeah, any trip to and from Morgantown to Huntington is going to be a long one!

Now, I’m not much on the Xs and the Os. Match-ups are important, but I’m going to give you everything but.
That’s because you have no idea what you are talking about, pal!

Marshall : West Virginia is not won on the chalkboard. You have to realize that the game is purely a psych job. In the previous four games, the team with the lesser head case in the fourth quarter got that trophy.
You MIGHT beat ’em on the chalkboard if it was TIC-TAC-TOE!

The Mountaineers won with their legs, sure, and a lot of help upstairs. I’m not talking Upstairs, as if The Man Upstairs favored West Virginia. In fact, a short perusal through The Bible proves that The Big Guy would pick Marshall if He picked any team at all.

More about that later.
So he’s bringing religion into this… joy!

I’m talking upstairs, the brains as well as the confidence, knowing that, as Joe Paterno preached every year when his Nittany Lions played West Virginia, the latter would find a way to lose, every time, as they did for 28 consecutive years.
Ugh… I wasn’t even alive for at least 20 of those games…

Well, insert The Thundering Herd in WVU’s slot in that game of futility that is now The Friends of Coal Bowl. Marshall has dropped the last four in four different ways:

2006: In Morgantown, where Marshall just got manhandled 42-10, despite Herd running back Amhad Bradshaw showing that he was NFL quality, even while running behind a I-AA quality offensive line.
That was a quality “first game as a WVU student” for me. Good times, lofty times.

2007: In Huntington, where The Herd rendered Pat White and Steve Slaton ineffective in the first half. In my humble opinion, Herd coach Mark Snyder was rather ineffective himself at the end of that half by landing a body blow of a 19-13 red zone field goal instead of stepping on the Mountaineers’ neck by going for a very doable seven.  Snyder could have sent his team into the locker room with a 10-point belief statement at home in the Joan C. Edwards viper pit.
The More You Know: That’s the ONLY time that stadium has been sold out… it took WVU fans! HAHAHA!

More on that viper pit later.
Oh, so the place is infested with snakes? Call the Orkin man.

2008: Mark Snyder’s career in Huntington was a roller coaster dip waiting to happen. Bill Stewart’s gazing in the skies against East Carolina and Colorado were cracks in the dike. Both coached uneventful games in Morgantown that the Mountaineer fans were praying for an ending, any ending, and Marshall was about as anemic as the couple hundred Herd faithful who made the trip.  In my history of player/fan/writer, that was one of the worst football games I have seen.
Just like every other Marshall game, right?

2009: This was Mark Snyder’s last gasp while Bill Stewart was using spackle on the dike. When you have two desperate men smacking it around, something is bound to happen.  Uhhhhh…yeah. WVU got started late as Marshall gave up any early momentum. The fans were treated to a) a viscous, unethical tackle on Mountaineer quarterback Jarrett Brown as his head was placed between the dynamic vise created by two Herd hats, and b) Brian Anderson. The Thundering Herd quarterback delivered the worst quarterback in Morgantown performance since a guy named Dutch pulled the trigger for the Mountaineers in 1978.
Why is this guy talking about a dike so much? Is he anti-ga… oh wait, DIKE!! And that tackle on Jarrett Brown was pretty stupid, too!

2010?
IN THE YEAR 2010…………. take it away, Conan and Andy!

I promised to revisit The Man Upstairs. Here goes. This season is the 40th anniversary of the worst sports disaster in the history of the United States. On November 14, 1970, a Southern Airways charter jet with 75 players, coaches, boosters, and crew crashed on landing at Tri-State Airport in Huntington. There were no survivors.
Oh boy, here we go again….

Except for the Marshall spirit.
Which you can find down at your local Huntington eatery (and there are a lot of ’em!)

“The Crash,” as it is called, has been the subject of books, documentaries, and a feature film starring Matthew McConoughey and Matthew Fox. More importantly, “The Crash,” and still more importantly, the Marshall spirit, live in anyone who has been associated with the University. I spent four years there. Believe me, it’s real and it’s powerful.
No comment here… after all, the ENTIRE STATE was affected by it, not just Huntington and Marshall U.

However, Marshall has carried its spirit to the line of scrimmage for four years against West Virginia and has gone down to defeat in each of the four years.  What’s different in 2010, you may ask.
The ophers! Nothing’s different in 2010, Herdie-terdies!

a) Marshall went 6-6 last season and won their bowl game, the Little Caesar’s Pizza-Pizza Deep Dish. Nevertheless, for a team that has been on the rocks for a few years, the Pizza-Pizza Bowl victory is a big deal.
Yeah, the “$5 pizza that gives everyone the sh*ts bowl.” That bowl used to be dominated by Marshall when they were in the MAC, not C-USA!

b) So, Marshall finished 7-6, the first winning season since 2004, and fired its coach.  Whoa!
That was funny when Snyder got fired.

c) Marshall knew they could get as head coach John ‘Doc’ Holliday, West Virginia assistant coach extraordinaire, the recruiter of Tim Tebow when at Florida; Tim Tebow, the player about whom all Doc says is “Tim just wins football games.”
TEBOW BETTER WIN FOOTBALL GAMES FOR ME IN DENVER, DOC! Doc Holliday is a traitor that needs to be horse-whipped for going to Marshall.

d) Now, there’s novel idea!
So is dredging up that horrific plane crash!

/sarcasm

e) Except, do it Doc’s way: hard work, smart work, pride, desire, focus, and set your standards high and keep them.
And the shadiest recruiting tactics possible!

f) As in: Mark Snyder left Marshall football’s academic records in shambles. The team averaged a GPA of 2.1. That’s a lot of Cs and, unfortunately, a lot of Ds. A below average performance. Doc stepped in and “sold” the team on the idea of getting serious about school. At the end of the spring semester, Doc’s first, the average GPA went up to a 2.8! That’s some Cs and a lot of Bs.
This is also a lot of BS.

g) Not bad at all! Add that to the fact that Marshall’s president Stephen J. Kopp, Ph.D. now meets with recruits in his office to discuss, perhaps, “The Complete Marshall Experience.” Doc, in a recent speech to the Charleston W. Va. Rotary club, said that he likes to wander in during Dr. Kopp’s meetings. It helps him decide to whom to offer athletic scholarships, says Doc. The guys on the edges of their seats get the full rides. The guys slouched in their chairs who cannot wait to get out are shown the way out.
The Complete Marshall Experience: Drug deals on the streets of Huntington, getting held up at Pullman Square, having your apartment robbed, and nothing else to do in the town besides eat.

h) And, now to the Joan C. Edwards Stadium, commonly known as a viper pit. Take Doc’s new outlook every coach has in his first year, add in his legendary game time focus, consider the student-athletes who have bought what Doc brings. Factor in the typical outstanding Marshall athlete of runners, jumpers, and hitters, throw in the fact that team learned a lot about themselves against Ohio State at The Horseshoe eight days earlier, and mix this up into a frothing fervor with over 30,000 crazed fans smelling blood, and…you tell me.
Ohio State is going to KILLLLLLLLLLLL Marshall by at least 4 TDs. The only blood the Marshall students will smell is from the previous night’s murder scene.

i) Marshall by a field goal.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! If you actually read the article, HE PUT THAT IN SMALL LETTERS!!!