Published: September 08, 2008 01:02 am            

Life goes on in aftermath of upset loss

GREENVILLE, N.C, — Outside there was mayhem. When the final second ticked off the clock of East Carolina’s stunningly easy 24-3 victory over No. 8 West Virginia, a student section that had to number nearly 12,000 of the 43,610 spectators who made up the fourth largest crowd in Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium history burst onto the field.

They had come from everywhere, in the end zone when a squadron of city, county and state police offered a defense far more porous than even West Virginia’s was on this day. After making a few arrests, they eventually threw open the gates and let the celebration begin.

A woman in a wheelchair needed six or seven guards surrounding her to make it to safety. The hedges growing around the field were soon shred by students running through and over them, leaving them in far worse shape than had Tropical Storm Hannah when she came by during the morning hours.

On a normal day, which is also a victorious day, West Virginia’s coaches and players hold their postgame press conference on the field at the eastern end of the stadium, outside the tunnel that leads to their locker room. On this day, one that had turned into a sauna in the aftermath of Hannah, oppressive in both heat and humidity, Mike Fragale of the WVU sports information staff thought it best not to venture out into the crowd, that was dancing and jumping in a victorious, if somewhat alcohol enhanced, state.

The interviews were moved into a dark, dank hallway outside the WVU locker room, one that was far closer to “high” on the microwave scale than it was to defrost. The setting was safer, if far less accommodating, than had it taken place in the post-Hannah sunshine.

But then again, West Virginia had earned no sunshine in losing its first game of this season and seeing just how far it had fallen from the team that would have been national champions a year ago. The performance, from a coaching staff that is still trying to figure out what they want the team to be, to a team that is still trying to figure out what it is, was as dreadful as East Carolina was good.

It was in this setting, a rare one for the media crew was sweating far more severely than the freshly showered players, where it was dark and hot and humid, West Virginia had to come face to face with itself.

Thousands or words were spoken, all of them duly taken down on videotape and digital recorders and all carried both merit and hints into what the problem really is, but none were more meaningful than those uttered by senior wide receiver Tito Gonzalez.

Gonzalez is a man of faith, a good kid who speaks at area functions to spread the word as he sees it, liked by all. His mission seems to be to make people understand that they can succeed, no matter what odds they face.

To him, losing this football game wasn’t really what this gathering was all about.

“I think it was needed,” Gonzales said, words with which Mountaineer fans may now fully agree. “It was all about life. Sometimes you get knocked down. You can stay down, or you can get up and dust yourself off. It’ll be very difficult to get back up. But it’s a very long journey. Nobody said the journey is going to be easy.”

Ah, but they did, at least those diehard fans who are blue-gold color blind. They were the ones who fell the furthest, for they did not see the imperfection that existed with this WVU group.

So much success had befallen WVU in the past that it came to believe its birthright was in the Top 10, blinded by the losses it had suffered all too recently.

If you want to put doubt into the mind of a football team, lay something on them like the upset at home against Pitt at the end of last season, a confidence sapping performance that even a spectacular performance built on emotion to beat Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl couldn’t fully reinforce.

Then add the change in coaching staffs, from one that had a Charlie Manson control on the players to one that had to win the players’ confidence and that only comes by stringing victories together.

Toss in playing without Owen Schmitt, without Steve Slaton, without Marc Magro, without Keilen Dykes and without Johnny Dingle and you can see that this team was much different than the last one in major areas.

The loss was not totally unexpected, for ECU had just dumped No. 17 Virginia Tech and had beaten No. 10 Boise State in its bowl appearance to end last season, but the way the team was dominated physically and was without answers strategically was shocking.

New coach Bill Stewart was generous in his praise of the Pirates but would not bite on the doom and gloom that seemed to be hanging over the over-crowded, under-ventilated interview area.

“(To) the naysayers out there that want to ruin a guy’s season after the first or second game, I’m not going to get all down in the dumps,” he said.

But he would also infer that the effort was lacking on the part of his players.

“You can’t just put the old gold and blue on. You’ve got to play in the old gold and blue," he said, a rather strong statement for him.

Now Stewart has to put the pieces back together again, repair shattered egos, lift fallen dreams, build on what’s good — if he can find anything in his film session — and eliminate what is bad. It won’t be easy, but then as Gonzales noted, it never is.

“We have an open week this week and I’m not too awful worried about where we got from here,” he said. “This is nothing that can’t be fixed.”

It may be able to be fixed, but he can never be changed.

Football’s like that.

Life’s like that, too.

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.

        

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