Zac Cooper News

AP Photo West Virginia linebacker Zac Cooper celebrates his sack of Rutgers quarterback Tom Savage with teammate J.T. Thomas during the second quarter Saturday.

The 102nd Backyard Brawl Friday night is not only a rivalry and a big game as far as the Big East Conference goes, but the annual West Virginia-Pitt tussle also marks the final game at Milan Puskar Stadium for 23 WVU seniors.

So what if the West Virginia-Pitt game doesn't pull folks in the west coast from their dinner tables? Around here, rivalries simply don't get much bigger - and they certainly don't much older or meaner.

MORGANTOWN Zac Cooper grew up closer to the campus of the University of Pittsburgh than that of West Virginia University,being from the steel town of Weirton.

If attitude were a statistic, former Weir High standout Jack Crow might be the Most Valuable Player at West Virginia University.

Naturally when you think 2-minute offense in football, you think line up, get set, and throw it.

Regardless of loyalties to the participants or even one's opinion on whether the game should be played at all, two wholly conflicting facts about West Virginia versus Marshall - the football version - are unavoidable and undeniable.

A few minutes before noon today, West Virginia's Mountaineers will run onto the field to start the school's 117th football season.

Back when Don Nehlen was at the height of his Hall of Fame career as West Virginia University's football coach, he would lament the difficulty presented by having to recruit such a small, rural state as compared to his neighbors with this observation: "You fly over West Virginia and all you see is trees.

I got my "Media" guide in the mail the other day and finally decided to flip through it yesterday.

Any day now, if there really is such a person as Tevita Finau, he will approach the doorway to the Puskar Center.

Ask any athlete and they will tell you that they spend time watching film-especially if it shows them doing something special.