Schenectady Synecdoche

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January 03, 2006

WVU 38, Georgia 35

WVU usually goes to a bowl game, and it usually loses. This year the team won. WVU's bowl is usually a minor one. This year it was BCS. It was a peculiar experience to watch that game last night while checking online media for updates on the men trapped in the mine. (The news this morning is not encouraging.) Coach Rodriguez is from Grantsville, not far from where the mine disaster occurred, and he, too, expressed mixed feelings last night. As he pointed out to the media after the game, West Virginia is not a populous state; its inhabitants number less than half the population of the city (Atlanta) in which last night's bowl game was played. There's a sense of close kinship amongst most West Virginians, whether expatriate or current resident; we're a small group that has not historically been part of the national mainstream.

So it's hard to get too crazy about the football match, even though the ABC announcers were predicting some heavy post-game couch-burning in Morgantown (a local practice that perennially prompts draconian but futile countermeasures from the local constabulary and that has meanwhile caught the fancy of the national sportsmedia). Still, it was a great pleasure to watch the home team win. And a great pleasure to anticipate the team's entering next season ranked in the top ten. Good, too, to see the sportswriters who'd been writing this match off acknowledge that the game itself was outstanding:

But the Fiesta -- a 34-20 romp for Ohio State -- didn't come close on the excitement meter. And both the Orange and Rose will be hard-pressed to produce a game this thrilling.

11:05 a.m. media update: "A fan’s sign in the stands at the Georgia Dome: 'WVU Fighting Pittsnogles.'"

Posted by senioritis at January 3, 2006 08:44 AM

Comments

Posted by: Billie at January 3, 2006 11:20 AM