WVU-UC should be a rivalry in football

“Obviously they are a former Big East foe,” Coach Neal Brown said. “I think this is a game that after a while, it should grow into a rivalry. It’s obviously the closest proximity school in the Big 12 to us, and I think this is a game that both fanbases, as time goes on, this has an opportunity to (turn) into a rivalry game.”

Already the day carries much extra significance, seeing as it is the day Hall of Fame Coach Don Nehlen will be immortalized with his name joining those who have had their retired uniform numbers emblazoned within the stadium.

It is, too, Senior Day, the final day for seniors to walk to midfield with their parents or others of their choosing and to be greeted by teammates and their coach with an emotional hug and presented with their framed WVU jersey.

That is a lot to make this a special day, but there has been a warning sign this week as the Mountaineers were approaching the game. On the WVUSports website, viewers were greeted with a ticket special, a welcome sight in these days but also a sign that tickets weren’t moving as well as they may have liked following the Oklahoma blow out in Norman and the game being played just before Thanksgiving.

As special as this week has become, perhaps they could have done more with it along the lines of the budding rivalry, for this would have been the perfect opportunity to promote WVU vs. Cincinnati as such.

There long has been a tie between the two schools ... both Gale Catlett and Bob Huggins having graduated from WVU, becoming long-time coaches at Cincinnati and then moved on to finish their careers as the two winningest coaches in WVU history.

Would it not have been fun to have brought in both of the most legendary basketball players from the two schools to ignite the rivalry — the Mountaineers’ Jerry West and the Bearcats’ Oscar Robertson?

As the 1950s turned into the 1960s, these along with Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain where the greatest players in the world and, in 1959, the world eagerly anticipated an NCAA Final between the two; a game that would have matched the final meeting that lined up UCLA’s Kareem Abdul-Jabbar against Houston’s Elvin Hayes or the showdown between Michigan State’s Magic Johnson and Indiana State’s Larry Bird.

That West-Robertson NCAA Final never came to be, something I columned about in depth five years ago at NCAA Tournament time.

West and Robertson became teammates on the USA Gold Medal winning 1960 Olympic team, considered one of the greatest teams ever put together, and were long-time opponents in the NBA ... each scratching and clawing for a championship but winning only one, both late in their careers after West was teamed with Wilt Chamberlain in Los Angeles and Robertson with Abdul-Jabbar in Milwaukee.

Their NBA years created an intense rivalry filled with awe and respect on both sides.

“I did not fear him. I know he didn’t fear me,” West once said. “You get to the point where you can’t sit around and admire how someone else plays. You have to go make them play against you.”

And Robertson, in his autobiography, wrote:

“Jerry West was the best clutch player I ever saw, the best shooter and the best competitor. His biggest talent, perhaps, was emerging at the right moment to take advantage of a well-time pick or pass. Jerry hated to lose so much that you see it transform him. Jerry and I were friends but our rivalry was intense.”

Perhaps they can pull off this reunion when the basketball rivalry begins anew this season.

Make no doubt, the seeds are there for a WVU-UC rivalry in football.

Their history goes back 102 years, although it has been tilted quite heavily in the Mountaineers favor, 16-3-1. The Mountaineers won the first game in 1921, 50-0, and the second game in 1922, 34-0, and it wasn’t until 81 years after that UC finally won a game.

But when they came together as members of the Big East, it was a bitter rivalry, WVU winning three of the last five games with four of those games decided by five or fewer points.

The last meeting, in 2011, was typical of the way it went as an unranked WVU team traveled to Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati to score a 24-21 victory over the No. 23 Bearcats.

With a lucky 13:13 left in the game WVU unleashed a 12-play, 74-yard drive that culminated with a 1-yard touchdown run by Shawne Alston, proving that his contribution to college football wasn’t only having his name on the suit against the NCAA that brought NIL to college sports.

WVU had to hold on to squeeze out the victory, the game decided with Eain Smith blocking a UC 31-yard field goal try for the tie with two seconds left.