If it were up to Dana Holgorsen, the WVU football team would be taking on Virginia Tech this weekend. Many fans probably feel the same way. The coming of football season is definitely in the air.
At a press conference this week, Holgorsen announced his desire to start playing right away. Fall camp has been in session for a month now and there is only so much a team and its coaching staff can do before the actual games begin.
There is now less than two weeks until the Mountaineers and the Hokies arrive at FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland. Still, it may seem like an eternity for the guys who will get to hit the field, and hit the opposition.
It’s one thing to get ready for any season. It’s another when you’re taking on one of your most historically hated rivals. West Virginia and Virginia Tech haven’t met on the field for over a decade. It has been long overdue for this match up to get restarted and Dana Holgorsen realizes that fact.
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Holgorsen is not a native of West Virginia. He really wasn’t that familiar with East Coast football before he was hired by former athletic director Oliver Luck. But in just a few seasons, Dana Holgorsen truly has adopted his way of thinking to remain in line with most of the Mountain State.
It shows in his renewed coaching mentality and the way he embraces certain Mountaineer traditions. He is happy to be here, and he sure is ready to play.
"“I really wish this was game week,” Dana Holgorsen said in a recent press conference. “It seems like we’ve been practicing for a month, and we almost have been. It just makes sense to me and there’s actually some talk out there and I think the schools and the NCAA and all the rest of them will revisit here in the offseason, I don’t know why the first game couldn’t be this weekend. By the time we play our first game, all the NFL preseason games are going to be over. Why do they practice for about 10 days and then have a preseason game?They’ll go practice with some people, then go play another preseason game. There are whole lot of FCS games this weekend and there’s even three or four FBS games this weekend. There’s only so much you can do practicing against each other. It’s going to be five full weeks before the first game and that, to me, is insane.”"
That quote right there shows that Dana Holgorsen is hungry for this season. It’s not necessarily a make-or-break season for him. Last year, he was said to be on the hot seat. Up until last season, the Mountaineers pretty much met their low expectations. Holgorsen was not exactly trending upward with the team and for that reason, he could have lost his job.
But, a strong regular season which saw the Mountaineers reach the 10-win mark ensured that Dana Holgorsen would remain at head coach for the foreseeable future.
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The world of college football is ever-evolving and it still wouldn’t be a real radical change if the slate of games was moved up a week. High school football games in many parts of the country are already one or two weeks in, with other states starting this weekend. They, too, have been practicing against each other for almost a month.
The one difference between high school and college ranks, though, is that the prep level has scrimmages against other programs. That’s not the case in college and, according to Holgorsen, it probably never will happen because of NCAA rules.
Anything to get a chance to play in a real football game would get Dana Holgorsen’s juices flowing. Let’s hope his team follows suit with that fiery desire.