Changing the mindset.
That's what West Virginia University football fans must do now that the Mountaineers are members of the Big 12 Conference.
Yet, I have to admit on Saturday I kept looking to see how Syracuse and Pitt were doing (not well) rather than getting concerned that virtually every other Big 12 member was doing their best impression of West Virginia by running up huge winning margins.
Perhaps it's being in the Eastern time zone, which means WVU often plays at the same time as its old rivals from the Big East Conference.
Still, it's going to take a while to get used to following Iowa State -which had a solid win over Tulsa -and Baylor, which showed on Sunday it doesn't need Robert Griffin III to continue its winning ways.
The Bears ran all over a decent SMU squad. So any thoughts of WVU's Big 12 Conference opener being an easy blowout already are gone. The Mountaineers are in a great league, one that is strong from top to bottom. No more getting fired-up three or four times per year. Every game is a potential pitfall.
Heck, West Virginia's 69-point outburst against Marshall wasn't even close to being the top offensive performance in the Big 12 during opening week.
That honor went to Oklahoma State, which put up 84 points on totally outclassed Savannah State. By the way, Savannah State plays at Florida State this Saturday. That's just wrong. There's no paycheck big enough to justify that.
Sports fans on one Internet site were debating whether the over-under on the WVU-Oklahoma State game in November would be triple digits. As a sports editor whose first priority is to make deadline, I just hope that game draws an early starting time for it may well last five hours.
By the way, Oklahoma State meets Rich Rodriguez's Arizona team this Saturday night at 10:30 EDT. That could be a track meet and/or a marathon.
Scanning this week's schedule, there's not a single game where the Big 12 team appears to be in much danger of losing.
So we may see another Associated Press story next week on how all the Big 12 teams are still undefeated.
Classy Tribute: It was great to see West Virginia University not only recognize former coaches Bill Stewart and Jim Carlen prior to Saturday's game, but also to do it in such a classy way with a video tribute to the two men who passed away during the offseason.
Mountaineer fans responded with a touching standing ovation.
Speaking of classy tributes, Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin -who served under coach Stewart at VMI -had told Stewart's son Blaine during his father's funeral he would attempt to attend Blaine's home opener at Morgantown High School.
Sure enough, Tomlin did just that last Friday when the Mohigans -who host Parkersburg South this Friday -opened with a victory over Taylor Allerdice from Pittsburgh.
