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MORGANTOWN -- Even though his name sounds as if he were a fullback or a middle linebacker, Bill Bullard seldom, if ever, made his way onto the sports pages across America through his profession, which was Dean of Faculty at San Francisco University High School.
He was an academic and one who had a way with words, which is why we brought him up a week before the opening of the most important football season West Virginia University has played in many years.
Before I get to him and what he had to say 15 years ago, I offer up an apology for a social media poll I put forth this week to see what followers on both X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook believed WVU's record would be at the end of the season that opens next Saturday at Top 10 opponent Penn State.
I apologize because I was asking for an opinion, which brings me back to Bill Bullard, for in a commencement address at San Francisco University High he offered up this opinion of, what else, opinions.
"Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge," he said, getting right to the point. "It requires no accountability, no understanding,"
He went on to note that George Eliot, the noted English author from the mid-to-late 1880s, had opined that "the highest form of human knowledge was empathy", noting that "it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world. It requires a profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding."
Now if nothing else, WVU fans have empathy and it is unfair to ask them to suspend that to offer up an opinion on how this football season will turn out.
As you may imagine as we fully enter the era of free agency in collegiate sports, the results of our poll were decidedly inconclusive.
See, with so many new faces, with so many new opponents, with so much pressure on the coaching staff, people have far more opinions than they have facts to work with. They barely know who is playing for WVU, let alone Penn State or Kansas State or Oklahoma State or Iowa State.
Their approach, while strong in numbers -- there being nearly 700 responses on the two sites -- indicated that anything could happen this season.
The question that was put forth on Twitter was basic and unbiased.
WVU wins this season (Twitter account): 3 or less (9.2%); 4 to 6 (47%); 7 to 9 (40.5%); 10 or more (3.3%).
On Twitter (can't bring myself to write X) most fans saw WVU as a .500 club at best, 47% selected 4 to 6 and 9.2% picking 3 or less.
There was a sizable group that felt the team was capable of winning 7 to 9 games at 40.5% of the 368 votes.
On Facebook -- both my account and the WVU Football fans account -- there were more than 350 votes when I cut the voting off midmorning
WVU wins this season (Facebook account): 3 or less (7.3%); 4 to 6 (36.6%); 7 to 9 (50%); 10 or more (6.1%)
The results were certainly similar, with the Facebook crowd a bit more optimistic than the Twitter group, but that possibly could be swayed by each vote having an identity publicly listed of who posted it and a large proportion of the votes coming in from a WVU fan site.
But here's the deal, what this indicated is that those opinions were that WVU will be a rather average team this year with 86.2% of the Facebook group and 87.5% of the Twitter group expecting the rather wide range of between 4 and 9 wins.
In other words, a 4-8 record and a 9-4 record (which would include a bowl game) are the parameters being set by these opinions.
The history over the past four years under Neal Brown would indicate around .500 is reasonable, even with the preseason Big 12 poll ranking WVU 14th and last. That poll, too, was made up of opinions and as Brown noted at Big 12 Media Day the voters track record from the last few years has given weight to Bullard's declaration that "Opinion is the lowest form of human intelligence."
Is it possible that, as a few of the poll participants suggested, that WVU could be this year's TCU, which became a national playoff team despite an unenthusiastic opinion from the Big 12 preseason pollsters?
Let's take a look at why they may be right.
Go back to last year's season-opening Backyard Brawl when spirits were running high with new quarterback JT Daniels in charge, with WVU leading Pitt, 31-24 with four minutes to play, only to give up two touchdowns in the final four minutes, including one on an interception return after the normally sure handed Bryce Ford-Wheaton let a sure completion slither through his hands to a waiting D-back who ran it in for the winning score with 2:58 left.
The psychic dynamics of a team and a season are fragile at best, and to lose such a big game in such a bad way had to have a lasting effect on the Mountaineers.
The game also offered another disaster as the best secondary defender of a bad secondary, Charles Woods, was injured just 12 plays in, and any chance WVU had at possibly being an average pass defense team went down with him.
Then, in mid-season, running back freshman sensation JC Donaldson suffered a mid-year broken ankle that changed the offensive dynamics of the team.
So, you wonder, how close was WVU from turning a 5-7 record into maybe a 7-5 record last year?
This is especially important to figure into the equation since the Mountaineers won two of their last three games of the year, beating Oklahoma for the first time since joining the Big 12 and closing with a win over Oklahoma State.
While it is difficult to second-guess Brown for having gone with Daniels as his starting quarterback early in the season over Garrett Greene, one wonders how much more Greene would have developed last year toward this year if he had been given a shot at the job earlier?
Say WVU wound up last year at 7-6 with Greene a proven QB coming into this season. Would not the opinions be different?
So, for those who see 7 or more wins on the horizon for this team, it is unfair to just brush it aside considering that your belief in a sub-.500 2023 season is an opinion worth no more, no less than anyone else's.