Posted on 01/02/2008 9:28:45 PM PST by Paleo Conservative
GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) -- Rich who?
The West Virginia Mountaineers didn't need coach Rich Rodriguez. They had Pat White, and their elusive quarterback led them to a surprising 48-28 romp over Oklahoma (No. 4 BCS, No. 3 AP) in the Fiesta Bowl on Wednesday night.
White ran for 150 yards and threw for 176 and two touchdowns for the Mountaineers (No. 9 BCS, No. 11 AP), who rushed for 349 yards, most allowed by Oklahoma in a bowl game.
Since arriving in the desert last week, the Mountaineers (11-2) said they had bonded behind interim coach Bill Stewart, who took over when Rodriguez bolted for Michigan in mid-December. And they vowed to rebound from a 13-9 loss to Pitt that knocked them out of the Bowl Championship Series title game.
The Mountaineers were right on both counts, turning in an emotional effort and overcoming the loss of star tailback Steve Slaton to a first-quarter leg injury. Noel Devine replaced Slaton and ran for 108 yards and two touchdowns -- a 17-yarder and a 65-yarder that clinched the game in the fourth quarter.
The Mountaineers became the first of six teams to win under an interim coach in this bowl season. They improved to 2-0 in the Bowl Championship Series.
Oklahoma (11-3) endured another disappointment on the same field where the Sooners lost a classic Fiesta Bowl to Boise State one year ago. The Sooners have dropped four straight BCS games.
The Sooners had no answer for White, whose 79-yard touchdown pass to Tito Gonzales in the fourth quarter was the longest in Mountaineers bowl history.
The Mountaineers' fourth-rated defense limited the potent Sooners to well below their scoring average of 43.4 points per game, third in the nation.
The Mountaineers harassed Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford, sacking the nation's top-rated passer four times and intercepting him in the end zone. Bradford completed 21 of 33 passes for 242 yards and two touchdowns.
Now that’s funny.
Good job, Mountaineers!
Funny photo.....
Congrats to WVU on a big win. Need to make Stewart the head coach....great job in getting this team ready after RichRod bolted to Michigan and after the loss to Pitt
“Country road...take me home...”
OU played poorly on the road all year, they continued their suckiness tonight.
WV needs to do something about their offense. They took too little time off the clock on their touchdown drives.
oklahoma’s defense looked like they were standing still all night.
Congrats to the Mountaineers!!! Those kids showed alot of heart tonite. Anybody else offended (and I’m not even in WV) by the comment at the end ‘if you stick your nose in the air just right, you can smell the cushions burning in Morgantown...’ Tacky statement...hope he gets heck for it.
WV needs to do something about their offense. They took too little time off the clock on their touchdown drives.
LOL....if the defense doesnt tackle you...whaddya do? I bet Owen Schmitt never felt so alone (with few people to run over) on his long TD run
Stewart for Coach. Pat White wants him, that good enough for me!
Congrats to the Mountaineers!
PS: Don’t burn any leather couches—they stink.
I absolutely love seeing Oklahoma get their butts kicked...up yours Stoops.....this was almost as good as watching little Boise State kick their ass last year....
how do you turn over a car that is on cinder blocks in the front yard of a double-wide?
Give’em hell, give’em hell, OU (still) sucks!
HOOK”EM HORNS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Any chance Bill Stewart will be given the head coaching position? Coach Stewart was there when his team needed him.
Watch Noel Devine’s incredible clips from high school. http://youtube.com/watch?v=L6CqA7hEzw8
I understand that he lost both of his parents to AIDS.
Dynamite? Right?
Stewart for Coach.
I’m hoping just that will happen, but I have my doubts. I played for Coach Stew at VMI, and I love the man! He has a gift for motivating and getting the most out of young people, and what’s more rare in sports today he’s a man of integrity! He came into my home when I was 18, sat down with myself and my parents. He made no promises of playing time or winning championships as many do. He promised my father that he and VMI would make a man of his (very immature at the time) son, and that’s just what they did LOL If not for Coach Stew, I probably would have ended up like many college athletes, without a degree and who knows what future. As is, I’m a successful engineer, and a responsible contributor to society. To me, that is what the man does best, he produces winners in LIFE!
Yes, they did. Anything longer than a three-hour bus ride typically meant a loss. At Boulder. At Lubbock. At Glendale. And they almost coughed up a hairball at Ames, Iowa too.
Let's hope they don't visit any more outlet malls either until they get home.
Wow, that's really crass. Who offered up that gem? Lemme guess. Barry Switzer?
That would be like saying, "they'll be sounds of celebratory gunfire in Blacksburg if Virgina Tech wins the Orange Bowl.."
The kids in Morgantown tend to burn couches after big WVU wins...
I thought it was ok..and it brightened up my day...It showed rich rod wasnt as important as he thought he was.
not sure. i think it depends if it’s an old camaro or rambler. but i’ll bet they’ll try!
It’s a great time to be a Mountaineer.
This win by WVU validates the Big East being a BCS conference.
I was surprised at their speed advantage over Oklahoma.
If the Buckeyes get blown out by LSU, then the best conferences this year were probably SEC, Pac10, Big East.
Ouch it must suck to be a Sooner fan for two years in a row, first in an upset for the ages and this time around a big time beat down!!!!
Go to a different bowl next year.
Sounds like this is a man who will field a team to make West Virginians proud. I like winners as much as the next fan but I have trouble cheering for the Pacman Jones of this world. That’s whats so special about this Mountaineer team. Not only do they win, they have character. If Coach Stew can maintain that very special quality, I’d be thrilled.
Everytime I pull for the g*dd*m gagging Sooners (zero-for-four in BCS bowls last 4 years) just for Big-12 loyalty, I regret it!!!
First time I ever pulled for Oklahoma (again for Big-8 loyalty only!) was in 1981 against USC in the LA Coliseum. They were rated #2 and #3 as I recall, and I was at the game. These perennial choking Sooners gagged in the last minute and USC beat them at the wire! (Side-note: Traveler II fell down running the track during the game, and had to be euthanized later, as I heard.)
SCREW the gagging, choking Sooners, I’ll not pull for those wonder-poofs again.
And before I get flamed, I do recognize that my own team has been shit for the last 5 years! I also recognize that Switzer had our number back in the stone ages!
While actual couch burning is a public safety issue for the police and fire officials, the reputation for couch burning at WVU after a big win has become a common reference among college sports fans.
Most people I know here in western PA and south into WV think the reference is funny and even on the level of those “classic” fraternity pranks of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Kinda like redneck jokes. You can even purchase blue and gold burning couch candles on campus!
Yeah I caught that and have no earthly idea what that even means.
I didn’t see this one coming at all.
SEC is like 6-2 in bowl games. I was a little surprised Michigan beat Florida. Also the razorbacks gettin’ routed by Mizzou.
But Auburn, Tenn. Bama etc. all won and Georgia just pounded the previously unbeaten big bushy-haired Hawaiian dancers.
I wish they’d have matched up Georgia with USC (and perhaps Illinois vs. Hawaii might have been more competitive also)
The BCS is just such a failed steaming pile. 10 years of endless excuses. Auburn got jobbed a few years back and now this disasterous year!
kickass!
me LOVING schmitt.
also honor to stew, white, gonzales, devine, williams, dykes, et al.
will hella hard miss the dingleberry :(
and, btw.....
RUCK FRAUDRIGUEZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:)
If LSU kills tOSU then I say they should have a quad champion of USC, WVU, LSU, and UGA.
Agreed (or have no champion at all). Come to think of it, I'd pay good money to see a championship playoff with those four.
A 4 week playoff among the top 16 teams with one game per week would look like:
16 teams, 8 games: 2d last week Dec
8 teams, 4 games - last week Dec
4 teams, 2 games - 1st week Jan
2 teams, 1 game - 2d week Jan
Nat’l Champ.
Easy enough and time enough to expand it to 32 teams and include the 3rd last week of Dec.
It’s amazing how many of the games I passed up due to lack of interest on my part.
This would make those games interesting. You’d have no reason to maintain the BCS designation. You’d just go with the average of polls for the top 16 or 32 teams.
We have enough experience with programs to know that the National Champ is almost never going to be a team that is not already in the top 10.
If you promise to root for Oklahoma, I'll buy you a ticket to next year's Texas-OU game! j/k
I have the feeling that after tonight, Stew will get the job. He helped bring a team together that was down lower than a snakes back for the past three weeks and won a game no one figured we would win.
I say give the man a chance...he’s won me over.
Makes plenty of sense to me this year! Which means it makes absolutely no sense at all, as usual.
Here outside of Atlanta the news covered the Hawaii/Georgia game and predicted the bulldogs could finish as high as #2 when the dust settles. But they’ll have to choose between USC and Georgia, and THAT should have been the matchup in the Rose in the FIRST place!
Which oddly enough is about where they were when the whole crazy mess with the BCS selection sideshow began!
How does a #4 ranked team drop when 2 of the 3 teams above them were either off or lost?
I understand they didn’t play in the SEC championship, so why rank them that high (LSU was #7 at the time!) I think LSU deserves to be there, my problem is with Ohio State. They played exactly 3 teams in the top 25, none of which were EVER higher than 20, AND they had the Akron ZIPS, Youngstown State and my sons elementary school on their schedule.
I probably won’t even watch LSU vs. Ohio State. If I do, it’ll be over by the end of the 1st qrtr.
What a hopeles crock the BCS is!
Other than USC the PAC 10 is weak. Don't forgot ASU got destroyed by an average Texas team and Cal barely came back to beat Air Force after Air Force's QB went down with a torn ACL early in the 3rd quarter. SC is a great team and Oregon was great before Dixon was hurt, otherwise the PAC 10 is lame this year.
I admit that I was surprised when my alma mater destroyed Oregon State early this past season. They were supposed to be better by virtue of being in the Pac10.
Nonetheless, there are some really solid programs: USC, UCLA, Arizona, Cal.
That’s a good solution. In fact almost ANYTHING is less psychotic than what we have now!
All year long if a team was say #4 and 2 or even 3 teams above them lost, naturally they moved up. But not the very last weekend for Georgia.
No sir.
You see then the goalposts are moved and the reasoning is they didn’t play in the SEC championship.
Ok...neither did Ohio State. Oh wait, they don’t even HAVE one.
So why was Georgia ranked so high if that’s the criteria?
Oh wait, that’s NOT part of the criteria! At least not until the final week when they’re scrambling to make sense of the non-sensical.
Auburn got jobbed what....3 years back? And now this, where a 2 loss team plays a 1 loss team for the whole ball of wax. Conf. championships come into play, schedule strength...and why not if red is in the team’s colors next?
We also hear excuses about the kids not being able to handle an additional playoff after the bowl games...
Ummmm....so what about the FIFTY-THREE days the buckeyes have been sitting on their hands waiting around to play LSU?
Keep the bowls. I like the tradition etc. But it doesn’t take a genius to incorporate a playoff system or what you just described! These bcs morons could have their cake and eat it too...more football, more money, everyone wins!
It could be a hybrid playoffs/bowls or even like regional college basketball for all I care.
But this is robbing everyone and serves no one but the BS...errrr BCS!
If this were a company, it’d be bankrupt by now and consumers would demand change YEARS ago!
USC should have been paired with LSU or Georgia.
WVU and Va Tech would have been awesome.
Ohio State vs. Oklahoma would have been OK IMO.
Hell, move the major bowls up 2 weeks and have bowl winners pair off and that way at least bad pairings come out in the wash!
Ohio State was picked third in the Big Ten, behind Michigan and Wisconsin. Except for Penn St. and Purdue, did any Big Ten team get a bowl bid against a lower-ranked team? And according to Colley, it’s:
1. LSU vs. 5. Ohio State
7. Florida vs. 28. Michigan (35-41)
11. Boston Coll. vs. 39. Michigan St. (24-21)
12. USC vs. 19. Illinois (49-17)
17. Tennessee vs. 26. Wisconsin (21-17)
37. Texas A&M vs. 32. Penn St. (17-24)
48. Oklahoma St. vs. 56. Indiana (49-33)
63. Central Mich vs. 52. Purdue (51-48)
So far, the only upset has been Michigan. And LSU beating OSU would not be an upset. And Kansas, with only one loss, is playing VA Tech, which most computers had at #1. I pay marginal attention to the human voters, but do pay attention to point spreads.
So if Kansas finishes with only one loss, shouldn’t they be co-champions with Hawaii and (possibly) Ohio State?
I’d love the winner of VA Tech/Kansas play the winner of Ohio St./LSU. The winner would have no more than two losses, and everyone else (except Hawaii) would have at least two losses.
Hey! I’m a Mountaineer too! I spent part of my childhood in Philippi while my dad went to nursing school!
You meant Arizona St, right? Arizona is a sad, sad program led by one of the Stoops brothers.
Had a wonderful time.
You are not giving the Buckeyes enough respect.
Like in 2002. We have to prove the world wrong again.
Congratulations to all the West Virginia fans on their teams great game.
LOL!!!!
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