MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WV News) ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥” I'm going to ask you, for a moment, to move out of the here and now and drift back into your almost a half year ago or so, to the days when 2021 was thankfully morphing into 2022.
You, as a West Virginia football fan, remember that time for the gloom that lay over our school, our area, our state.
Minnesota had just administered an embarrassing beating to the Mountaineers, leaving them limping into the new year with a losing record. What's more, the transfer portal was leaking such a gusher of talent out of town that even Josephine the Plumber of the famous Comet cleanser ads of the 1970s couldn't stop it.
It was clear that Neal Brown's job was in jeopardy, as much for the attitude that was surrounding the program than for the results, which one could explain away as caused more by the circumstances Brown encountered than by anything he had done to create the situation.
We ask you to think back to it today because Brown and his staff ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥” either his coaching staff or his public relations staff ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥” had performed a miracle and pumped enthusiasm, expectations and euphoria into the mix.
West Virginia was no longer looked down upon itself but instead beginning to build the belief that things were on the upswing they had expected within two or three years after Brown had taken the job from Dana Holgorsen.
We have just passed 100 days before West Virginia has a rare Thursday night opening game while renewing the Backyard Brawl at Heinz Field.
All of a sudden, that is not a beating waiting to happen but a matchup against a team that sent the first quarterback of the draft into the NFL and that is the defending Atlantic Coast Conference champion.
It is a game that has Mountaineer faithful wondering how in the world their team is a 6.5-point underdog rather complaining about being an underdog to Pitt and that is making plans to drive the 80 miles up the interstate with enthusiasm and, as important, confidence.
Rather than bleeding to death out the portal, WVU suddenly is being viewed as a place where talent is being infused into the system ... and not just for this coming season but for the future.
Think about it for a moment, how precise Brown and his staff were in pinpointing the areas of need and addressing them.
How did it happen?
It may have begun with Dante Stills decision to stay for a final year no one expected to see him play, clinging to that decision despite the fact that his D-line terror twin Akheem Mesidor and the hard and mean tackling machine at middle linebacker Josh Chandler-Semedo had departed.
That screamed out that things may not be as bad as they looked in Morgantown and when Brown decided that he not only wasn't the one who had the answers to running the offense himself, he made what had to be a popular choice.
Graham Harrell had proven himself as a big-time, big time quarterback in his days at Texas Tech, then had gone into the coaching business and showed himself to be adaptive and innovative in his approach, winding up at Southern California, where he gave a bad team a good offense.
He was engaging, energetic, enthusiastic, but most of all, he believed he could produce an offense that would score points the way they had under Dana Holgorsen on his best day and Rich Rodriguez on his worst day. He got tired Mountaineer hearts beating again when he was talking of trying to score every time the team had the ball.
To do that, though, he needed more than just a scheme. What Brown knew and had to be counting on was that Harrell was coming with strings attached, one of those strings to a one-time 5-star recruit at quarterback named JT Daniels.
He had coached him as a freshman at Southern Cal, had him win the starting job and go unbeaten as a starter until injured.
He never got the job back, so he transferred. But he didn't go to Georgia Southern ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥” no disrespect meant. He went to the only Georgia school that really counts, the one state university in Athens, the one wearing national championship rings.
He was much a part of that.
However, the injury bug bit him again, so he moved on. And, funny thing, he had Harrell's number and Harrell had his.
Visions of Will Grier or Geno Smith in an Air Raid offense returned to WVU fans, knowing what those two did under Holgorsen.
If Daniels stays injury free and has what everyone saw in him though high school and two major college programs, Brown has himself a man who can deal ... someone to go with maturing, dangerous receivers.
Recent days have seen Brown address defensive deficiencies, especially in the secondary. Defensive backs are making pilgrimages to Morgantown as if were a defensive Mecca.
The latest, Rashad Ajayi, a senior corner transfer from Colorado State, signed on Friday, three days after they beat out TCU for cornerback Jaylon Shelton of Tyler (Texas) Community College and landed a third cornerback transfer in Wesley McCormick of James Madison.
And all that was just the appetizer before the main course as they collared their No. 1 recruiting target of the year and one ranked sixth among all recruits WVU has had since people were ranking recruits as Rodney Gallagher ... not for this class, but for 2023.
Gallagher is ranked the 97th top prospect in the nation, a wildly athletic and wiry 5-11 and 160-pound receiver who also has starred at defensive back, quarterback and on the basketball court.
One does not like to put pressure on kids still in high school, but if you happen to be thinking Tavon Austin when this receiver/kick returner's name is mentioned, no one connected with WVU will try to talk you out of it.
If Brown has performed the transformation he set out to this year and moves his team into Big 12 contention, Gallagher's presence for next year well may lift them into a recruiting area they had not seen since Rodriguez was building his great teams of the 2000s.
