Instant Analysis: Fiesta Bowl

Their 2006 Sugar Bowl victory against Georgia was for the Big East Conference. On Wednesday night, however, the West Virginia Mountaineers won a BCS bowl game for themselves, their loyal coaches, and a state that needed—and received—a massive dose of healing.

They’re saying “Rich Who?” in Morgantown tonight, because the boys from Appalachia didn’t need their cut-and-run coach who bolted for dollars and a new gig in Michigan. They didn’t need to win pregame public opinion polls. They didn’t need to do their talking off the field.

No, the kids in the Old Gold and Blue understood the heartbreak, anger and disillusionment that flowed through the state of West Virginia over the past month. They understood why their school had to return several thousand tickets to the Fiesta Bowl: reservations had been made by Mountaineer fans for New Orleans and a date with Ohio State on January 7. Everyone in West Virginia colors absorbed the stomach-punch Pittsburgh loss, followed by the equally painful departure of Rich Rodriguez, a nasty one-two combination that dragged a state, a school, and an athletic department into a bitter pool of lawsuits, recriminations, and bewildered disbelief. December of 2007 created one unending nightmare for the West Virginia community, a hellish black hole that enveloped a state in grief and emotional paralysis. With an interim coach and a mountain of distractions, the percentages said that the Mountaineers wouldn’t have much of a chance against an Oklahoma team that didn’t want to lose two straight Fiesta Bowls in the West Phoenix suburb of Glendale. Against Bob Stoops and the fourth-ranked Sooners, the big black hole only figured to get even darker for West Virginia and its delightfully down-home coach, Bill Stewart.

But as the saying goes, “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” Whereas the 2006 Sugar Bowl gave new life to the Big East Conference, the 2008 Fiesta Bowl revived the West Virginia football family, precisely when a state and a program needed something terrifically cathartic to turn their frowns upside down. In the span of three hours and forty-five minutes, life made a 180-degree turn for the Mountaineers, who undressed a big-name opponent with superabundant speed, much as they embarrassed Georgia in Atlanta two years ago to the day. Stewart became the first interim coach to win a bowl game this season, giving the WVU athletic department good reason to make the father figure a permanent fixture on the Mountaineer sideline.

The final margin of victory was 20 points, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out when this game turned on a dime. Quite literally, Oklahoma stubbed its toe, and West Virginia just as literally ran away with the proceedings afterwards.

After getting smacked around and smothered in the first half, a reawakened Sooner club started fast in the third quarter to slice a 14-point Mountaineer lead to five (20-15). Stoops and his staff noticed on film that West Virginia’s kickoff return team left its “up men” at the 45-yard line, and so the Sooners tried an onside kick after their first touchdown. Unfortunately for Oklahoma, kicker Garrett Hartley flubbed his stealthy “dribble kick,” which never traveled the required 10 yards. Had the kick reached the 10-yard mark (at the OU 40), the Sooners likely would have recovered, but the poorly-executed toe-tapper of a try turned into a West Virginia drive start at the Oklahoma 39. This play marked the turning point, but with that having been said, the Mountaineers needed to make the play a turning point by sticking the ball into the end zone. Three snaps later, the game’s pivotal occurrence would be followed by the game’s most decisive and defining snap.

Sure, the Mountaineers spent the game’s final 20 minutes busting off one home-run touchdown after another, but before the late-game track meet that left the Sooners shaking their heads in humiliation, WVU signal caller Pat White made a simple yet supremely significant play that prevented Oklahoma from threatening the Mountaineers for the rest of the night.

This contest might have turned on the onside kick, and it might have ended with West Virginia making the Sooners look silly, but the peak moment of this Fiesta fistfight—when victory truly hung in the balance for both teams—was a 3rd and 5 faced by the Mountaineers at the Oklahoma 34, following the onside kick failure. A Sooner stop, and momentum would have been consolidated for the Big 12 champions. A Mountaineer first down, and renewed self-belief would have flowed back to the Big East champions. The stakes were high, and everyone in University of Phoenix Stadium knew it. What unfolded was a sight that became familiar for both fan bases—delightfully so for the Mountaineer backers, and dreadfully so for the Sooner supporters who had yet another miserable January experience in Arizona.

Oklahoma blitzed on the play, despite the fact that White is much more dangerous as a runner than a passer. Predictably, a huge running lane opened up on the wide side of the field. Predictably, White pulled the ball down as soon as he saw the green pastures in front of him. Easily, White scooted for the first down. Just moments later, WVU running back Noel Devine strolled into the end zone for a 27-15 lead. After a quick three-and-out from OU, White got the ball back and immediately popped off a 42-yard scamper. On the play after that, receiver Darius Reynaud took an end-around 30 yards for another score, and the rampage was on. The Sooners would score twice to stay within two possessions of the Mountaineers, but those Oklahoma touchdowns were immediately answered by more thunderbolts from the West Virginia arsenal. With more than nine minutes left in regulation, the outcome had been sealed, and the Sooners had been thoroughly vanquished.

While West Virginia basks in the glow of a redeeming and restorative triumph that came not a moment too soon for a state in the midst of an identity crisis, the Sooners are left to wonder why they couldn’t play with the same swagger that defined their regular season. Oklahoma and Stoops are now winless in their last four BCS bowls, and while this proud program has continued to excel over the past several years, these postseason flameouts are increasingly overshadowing the Sooners’ stack of conference crowns. Oklahoma seems to win the Big 12 every season, but with each new stinker in a prime-time bowl battle, the reputation of the Sooners—though not quite diminished—has certainly not been enhanced.

It would not be fair or accurate to say that Oklahoma is an underachieving program, because any school that regularly wins a power conference is putting together generally successful seasons and doing something right. (If you want an underachieving program in the Big 12, look to OU’s former rival, the Nebraska Cornhuskers. That’s underachieving.) However, when the discussion shifts and then surrounds the subject of national title worthiness, Oklahoma—once a regular player in the final game of the season (win or lose)—does deserve to be shouted off the stage. The Sooners are now immersed in a weird situation: the more they excel in the regular season, the more these bowl bombs boomerang back to embarrass them in the eyes of a nation fixated on national titles and nothing else.

When the regular season ended, Oklahoma—along with Georgia—was playing the best football of any team in the country, leading a lot of observers to think that the Sooners deserved to play for the national title. Had a plus-one system existed, Stoops and his players likely would have been in the mix. But after this humiliating loss, caused not just by West Virginia’s speed but also by a boatload of penalties and a shocking lack of emotion for 45 of this game’s 60 minutes (the third quarter being the exception, as was the case with Illinois against USC in the Rose Bowl), the Sooners just took themselves out of the great college football debate. What’s worse is that this talented team couldn’t even lose competitively and keep the proceedings close to the final gun.

It bears mentioning, in the wake of this loss, that OU flatly quit in the 2005 Orange Bowl against USC. After negative momentum began rolling downhill on that night in Miami, the Sooners allowed their shoulders to slump and sag against the Trojans. Wednesday, the scene looked stunningly similar in suburban Phoenix. Even when the Sooners scored to make this a 41-28 game with over 10 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, one could see no life on the Oklahoma sideline. The body language of every OU athlete was dead and dormant, bereft of any spark or swagger. Sure enough, West Virginia would need only two snaps to immediately score a touchdown (on a 65-yard run by Devine, who weaved his way through a number of Sooners who just didn’t seem to be trying all that hard). Oklahoma might not have been able to win this game, but the Sooners didn’t even fight for 60 full minutes, and that’s the real shame of this Fiesta fiasco for the boys from Norman.

Bob Stoops has been nothing less than a magician throughout this decade when it comes to coaxing maximum effort out of his teams during the regular season. In bowls, however, Stoops just can’t seem to find a way to prevent his ballclubs from playing listless, body-snatched football after long layoffs. Not since the 2003 Rose Bowl (a win over Washington State) has an OU team acted like it really wanted to compete in a BCS bowl game. That’s a shocking yet undeniable reality for a still-successful program whose one big task is to defeat its postseason demons in future years. Oklahoma remains a great program, but tonight’s loss to West Virginia—while removing the Sooners from this year’s national title conversation—will also make it that much more difficult for this program to grab the brass ring in future seasons as well.

In the end, USC and Georgia will now watch Virginia Tech, to see if any team will win the popular vote before Ohio State and LSU decide college football’s version of the Electoral College on Monday night in New Orleans. In the meantime, however, the folks in West Virginia won’t care about any of those gridiron dramas, real or perceived. The Mountaineers didn’t win a national title in the 2008 Fiesta Bowl. No, they merely claimed something much more significant—a heaping helping of healing for a team, a school and a state who escaped their living hell on one heavenly night in the Desert Southwest.