Today marks the 7th anniversary of the 'Canes last appearance in Morgantown, WV. Why is this significant, you ask?
It's not that the 'Canes amassed 524 total yards in the 40-23 victory over the Mountaineers.
Nor is it that it was Miami's 800th game, or that Miami tied a school record with its 29th straight win, or even that Ken Dorsey moved into the top spot on Miami's all-time list for passing yards, completions and total offense, surpassing Gino Torretta in all three categories.
The real reason for celebration is that we won't, in the foreseeable future, have to go back there!
Since this blog is a positive blog, we won't tell you about Danyell Ferguson's fan-fueled rocky ambulance ride (1996), Randy Shannon taking a garbage can to the head (hurled from the upper deck, also 1996), the student section's propensity for tossing liquor bottles at the opposition (pick a year!), or even my personal experiences with a drunken fan breaking my monopod in a post game celebration (1993), the thrown orange I took in the back (1998), my several run-ins with frat boys, fans or alumni spitting tobacco at me (1993, 1996, 1998, 2000) or any of the other welcoming behavior we experienced on the campus of West Virginia University.
I know that not all West Virginians, or even all Mountaineer fans, are represented by the examples I named above; those we did encounter were bad enough that I am happy not to have to go back there again, even though we are 7-1 all time on their tobacco-stained turf.
WVU fans' classlessness isn't limited to Miami. Jay Coulter writes: "Talk to an Auburn fan who made the trip to Morgantown last year and you'll almost certainly hear a bad story. Many that made the trip say the fans were the worst they'd encountered in all their years of traveling to games. They were described as rude, classless and mean spirited."
That's a lot of swagger from a team whose all-time greatest accomplishment includes spending one entire week of being ranked #1.
So today marks the celebration of seven Mountaineer Field-free years; here's to many, many more. I can't think of anything more positive!
