Gold Rush

Well, despite their best efforts at a South Florida repeat, West Virginia managed to win last night against Louisville. Pat White showed, at times, why he should be a Heisman candidate. At other times, he was fumbling the ball. But, at the end of the day, White, once again, put the Mountaineer team on his back and led them to victory. Overall, a pretty darn good game. Just a few notes:

• Gold Rush? Eh. People tried really hard...you could tell. I think they had maybe 75% participation from what I could see. The problem is that yellow is not a color that most people buy their jackets in...white, black, blue...all acceptable. Yellow is tough. But people did make an effort.
• Goodyear Blimp. Hey...it was a blimp. I honestly can't remember seeing the blimp at a Mountaineer game before. It's possible it's been there...but I don't remember it.
• A few hundred Cardinals fans came to the game. They were pretty quiet until Louisville tied the game. And the crowd died and they came to life suddenly. But, they got pretty quiet again after the Pat White run.
• I hate to blame a bad game on officiating. But 11 penalties for 116 yards is odd. Many were no-brainers (like the pass interference in the endzone) but some were questionable (like the hold 20-yards away from the play). And the amount of reviews in the game was ridiculous. I'm not sure we got the best Big East officiating crew available.
• The uniforms were as ugly as I could have imagined them being.
• Steve Slaton is in a slump. He seems a little slow and is having trouble finding holes to run through. You can blame the opposing teams and say they are keying on him...but I'm not sure that's the only thing wrong.
• Night games in Morgantown are truly awesome.
• Even is the defense did give up over 300-yards in the air, they still won that game. Brohm has picked apart defenses all year and I thought WVU's held in there pretty darn well...especially when the offense kept giving it back to them.
• Pat McAfee is a heck of a kick. Owen Schmitt should stick to blocking and running.

Cincinnati's next. It doesn't get any easier really. UConn and then the famous Wannstaches from up north to finish the season. If they win out, another Big East title and an automatic BCS-berth is their reward. We'll see...