The beloved Yogi Berra, in his well-lived 90 years on Earth, left us with many rich quotes, one of them being, “It gets late early out there.”
The reference was to the experience of playing in the outfield at Yankee Stadium in October, during the World Series. The shadows would engulf the outfield a lot earlier in the day than they did in early July.
What Yogi said about October baseball also applies to a few college football teams at this point in the season. It might be early, but the hour already grows late.
Some teams have a pretty reasonable chance of salvaging their seasons. They might be able to buy some time against the softer part of the schedule and skate through over the course of three weeks. They can stay afloat and hope that by the end of October, they’re tougher and better and generally ready for a November stretch run against quality opposition. This applies to a lot of teams in the FBS.
For some, though, there’s no chance to gain a breather in early October and scrape by until crunch time comes in November.
The West Virginia Mountaineers are very much that team in the Big 12 right now.
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We mentioned this before the season: The schedule rotation in a conference can mean a disproportionate amount if it is stacked in just such a manner, and the balance of power swings in unexpected ways.
Naturally, one expects that Oklahoma will be a factor in the Big 12 every year, but back in 2009, one also expected Texas to be a regular factor in the league’s title chase. Therefore, in 2009, a Big 12 schedule rotation with OU and Texas at home, and other games — say, Baylor and (come 2012) TCU — on the road, felt like the perfect setup.
In 2015, though, it’s a very different story.
This year (like last year), a schedule with Texas at home and Baylor and TCU on the road (OU remains a team you want to play at home, not on the road) is anything but the advantage it seemed to be six or even three years ago. Now, that’s exactly the schedule a Big 12 team doesn’t want.
Last year, West Virginia had the right mix, going to Texas (even though it lost to the Longhorns) and hosting Baylor, TCU, Oklahoma, and Kansas State. The Mountaineers are clearly in a position where even-year Big 12 schedule rotations will help them, and odd-year rotations will threaten them… at least as long as Baylor and TCU are the league’s heavyweights.
Given the makeup of the 2015 slate — having to visit Baylor, TCU, and K-State in subsequent weeks — West Virginia had to pounce on Oklahoma in its Big 12 opener on Saturday. Very sharp performances against Georgia Southern and Maryland fed into the idea that the Mountaineers were ready to beat the Sooners, whose defense struggled against Tulsa a few weeks earlier. (Houston, as a point of comparison, did a better job of holding down the Golden Hurricane’s offense on Saturday, 38-24.)
Yet, when the game began, it became clear — and remained that way, except for 10 really strong third-quarter minutes — that West Virginia was not ready for prime time. The Mountaineers were imposing earlier in the season, but against Oklahoma, they were punched in the mouth. Quarterback Skyler Howard was, in a word, jittery. Save for the start of the third quarter, he didn’t play a very composed game; he couldn’t settle into the flow of action. Nervous and uncertain, West Virginia tip-toed through this game.
Oklahoma played football.
So, to return to the beginning of this piece, some teams can learn from this game and take a few weeks to adjust as they regroup for a big November.
West Virginia is not such a team.
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The Mountaineers host Oklahoma State next week. Then they visit Baylor and TCU before October is done.
Unless something drastically changes for Dana Holgorsen’s bunch, the Mountaineers will be done in the Big 12 title chase before the calendar moves to November.
The time for improvement is now in Morgantown — West Virginia has no time to buy, no cushion to fall back on.
It’s gotten late quite early in the 2015 season for the Mountaineers, who are perilously close to turning the page and waiting for a much more favorable Big 12 schedule rotation in 2016.
