OK, I don't expect people to be beyond the stage of emotional unease quite yet, and I'm not either, personally. But I would like to run a few things by y'all to help frame how we approach the Fiesta Bowl and the '08 season.
Firstly, the loss this year to Pitt is an almost identical circumstance to USC's loss to UCLA last year. Same score, and the same ramifications for the team on the ugly side of the upset. USC choked in its final game of the season after dominating the Bruins the two previous years. But now, just a year later, you scarcely hear that loss mentioned as USC wins the Pac-10 yet again. There's a reason you don't hear about it--- Every team suffers horrific losses from time to time, and it's impossible for any one loss to stay a story forever. West Virginia and Pitt fans will always remember this one, but in the long run, to everyone else, it will just be an ugly footnote on a season where WVU won the Big East and faced Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl.
In retrospect, I now think it's unfortunate that LSU lost to Arkansas in 3OT. Had they won, the Pitt loss would have only been a vexatious blip after stomping UConn en route to a BCS bowl. After all, where things stand right now is the probable best-case-scenario everyone envisioned after losing to South Florida. Three weeks ago, I told Chris that the UConn game was all that mattered; we'd lock up the Big East and head to a BCS Bowl. And that's exactly where we stand. Except that no one feels happy about the situation right now that we were hoping for so recently.
We can fairly assess what was lost Saturday night: The opportunity to play for the National Championship. With so many teams in college football, this is not something that comes by all too often. And losing that opportunity was a setback. However, winning the Fiesta Bowl would quickly stop the bleeding, and leave the team poised to garner a good preseason ranking and make another run in '08.
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