WVU deserves better than a No. 6 ranking
JIM BUTTA, Sports Writer
POSTED: January 9, 2008
PARKERSBURG — I don’t know if you are like me, but I was somewhat disappointed when the final Associated Press football poll was released early Tuesday morning.
Yes the gold and blue from WVU moved up — as expected — in the final sports writers’ poll. But, the surprise came when the nation’s writers picked the Big East champion behind two teams — Georgia and Missouri — that couldn’t even win their league titles.
What could my fellow scribes be thinking?
Can there be any justification for picking a two-loss Bulldog or a two-loss Tiger squad ahead of a Mountaineer team, which also had a pair of setbacks on the season, but captured their league championship and then defeated a heavily-favored Oklahoma team in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl?
WVU’s regular season loss to 5-7 Pittsburgh does leave a stain on the Mountaineers’ campaign, but one that had to be erased by its domination of the Big 12 champion Sooners.
Even the coaches, who also selected West Virginia in the No. 6 slot, at least kept Big 10 champion Ohio State rated ahead of Big 12 runner-up Missouri.
What makes these selections even more disturbing is the fact that the media is the biggest advocate for a playoff system and they can’t even get it right when they vote.
At least the coaches understood that the team that came out on top of in last night’s national title contest deserved to be No. 1. Five misguided writers gave their first place votes to Georgia (3), USC (1) and Kansas (1).
It is very difficult for me to understand, or even support, a system in which the writers allow their personal vendettas to cloud their judgments. Of course this is all I can do since the newspaper I work for has not been given a vote in the AP poll for more than a decade.
On a positive note, however, news coming out of Morgantown these days isn’t all doom and gloom.
It would appear that the Mountaineers’ trip to the Arizona desert has paid some dividends.
Junior college cornerback Branton Bowser signed his letter of intent to become part of the Mountaineers’ Class of 2008.
The 6-foot-1, 190-pounder, who runs a 4.5, obviously got an opportunity to watch new WVU head coach Bill Stewart and the Mountaineers work out during their stay in Scottsdale and liked what he saw.
The former-Maryville High School (Phoenix) standout got introduced to the gold and blue by a pair of his Phoenix Junior College teammates — Tevita Finau and Aki Vakalahi, who had made Morgantown one of their official visits.
Finau, a 275-pound defensive end, and 240-pound linebacker Vakalahi, have yet to make their intentions completely known, but Phoenix head coach Dale Wolfley believes both still have the Mountaineers among their possible destinations.
Adding to the excitement is the news that Stewart has made signing Parkersburg High School standout Josh Jenkins a No. 1 priority on his to-do list.
Should Jenkins re-commit to the gold and blue and the coaching staff manage to hang on to the commitments that they already have, the news coming out of Morgantown on National Letter of Intent Signing Day (Feb. 6) should be the kind of news that will make every Mountaineer fan happy.
Let’s just hope that the voters in the AP poll keep their opinions out of these decisions.
Contact Jim Butta at
jbutta@newsandsentinel.com
