I’m a sucker for Christmas. Always have been. Perhaps it was my upbringing. Back when I was a child, my family would visit my great-grandmother, my great-grandparents, my Polish grandparents and my Italian grandparents. Each house was filled with laughter and love. There were toasts galore. There were songs. “Ave Maria” was a favorite late […]

I had to smile the other night while watching both the Kent State-WVU men’s basketball game and Twitter. In the hoops game, won, by the way, by the Mountaineers 63-50, Golden Flashes coach Rob Senderoff was assessed two technical fouls for arguing a call and was ejected with 7:54 left. Sean McNeil then sank four […]

It took five minutes. Just five. To uncover the best Heisman Trophy candidate. I’d gone to dinner with Joni and had expressed on Twitter that I missed “sitting down and really grinding the numbers, etc., for my Heisman vote. I didn’t do the lemming thing and follow the talking heads on ESPN. I voted for […]

I still remember the feeling when I first heard Rich Rodriguez was leaving WVU football for Michigan. I was the sports editor and columnist at the Charleston Gazette and was at once stunned, exhilarated and filled with anxiety. That was my deal, man. Well, mine and that of beat writer Dave Hickman. We had to […]

I remember four years back when I moved to the Wheeling area. It completed my working tour of the state in which I went from Fairmont and Morgantown to Beckley and Martinsburg with a detour to Pittsburgh and then back to Morgantown before a 24-year stay in Charleston. I remember being struck in the Wheeling […]

Some have complained about WVU’s current football season. Some squawked after the Mountaineer men’s basketball team struggled in its opener. But one thing WVU fans can never complain about is the Mountaineer athletic department’s effectiveness in marketing. Since moving to that profession, I see the department’s skill much more clearly than when I worked for […]