The holidays have always been a great time to reflect and as Mountaineer fans there has been a lot of that going on over the past 12 months.
Most of that reflection revolves around the old gold and blue's move from the Big East, where it had captured or shared six of the last 10 football championships, for a new home in the Big 12.
Internet message boards are still filled on a near-daily basis with dreams of 'what-could-have-been' if WVU would have elected to stay with a league that had lost Boston College, Miami (Fla.) and Virginia Tech in the first raid by the Atlantic Coast Conference and was about to lose Syracuse and Pittsburgh to the ACC's second incursion into the tradition-rich basketball league.
Add Rutgers' departure to the Big 10 and Louisville's move to the ACC as well as the seven non-FBS football schools electing to escape from the Big East in order to 'preserve the basketball tradition of the Big East' and Mountaineer fans would have found their beloved team dealing with a league that featured Cincinnati, Connecticut, South Florida and Temple.
Help appears to be on the way with the addition of Central Florida, Boise State, Houston, Memphis, San Diego State and SMU - oh, and East Carolina, which will take the place of either the Scarlet Knights or Cardinals in 2014.
But, other than Boise State, which is considering staying in the Mountain West, none of those names equals the excitement that a Texas, Oklahoma or Kansas State brings when it comes to bringing fans to Mountaineer Field.
Plus, there is still little guarantee that the Mountaineers' former home won't go through another series of departures.
Was Director of Athletics Oliver Luck right in aligning WVU with the Big 12? Only time will tell.
Sure, it would have been interesting to see how this year's star-studded (at least on offense) bunch fared against the challenges of a 2012 slate of games that included a trip to Florida State.
Could the Mountaineers have run the table? Possibly, but, then again, probably not. Especially after witnessing the week-to-week failures of a defense that placed its mark in the school's record book for all of the wrong reasons.
Fans will get a chance to see just how West Virginia would have fared in the Big East on Saturday when it takes on old nemesis Syracuse in the Pinstripe Bowl. The Orange not only own the series mark against their former league rivals, but also soundly beat the Mountaineers in their last two meetings.
That should be more than enough emphasis for this year's crop of seniors to want to get a little 'revenge' for their previous two setbacks against SU. But, just how motivated will Geno Smith, Tavon Austin and Stedman Bailey, as well as the rest of the senior class, be for a bowl game played in a baseball stadium with the temperature slated to be in the high 30s?
