You can try to keep us out.
But West Virginians are like Taylor Swift songs. Everywhere.
And so it goes within the circle of bowls.
Marshall is going to the St. Petersburg Bowl (formerly the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl, formerly the Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl, formerly the magicJack St. Petersburg Bowl and formerly - drum roll please - the Cigar Bowl). And in charge of the bowl is executive director Brett Dulaney.
A graduate of Parkersburg High.
Dulaney has an interesting story. He attended PHS before taking off to Mississippi State.
"It was the only university," he said, "that offered a management program in what I wanted."
The program was marketing with a specialization in professional golf management. See, he was a Class A PGA professional in 1997.
"I wanted to run, like Berry Hills, something like that," Dulaney said.
Eventually, though, he got into sales and started a signage company. One of his clients was ESPN. A spark flew.
Dulaney took a job at the Worldwide Leader, working on university projects. From there, he moved to the University of South Florida, where he worked as the general manager for USF's ISP Sports Network.
Finally, the position as St. Petersburg Bowl executive director opened. The game, you may or may not know, is an ESPN event. And so Dulaney was in.
"Dumb luck," he cracked.
So on Monday in Phoenix, Dulaney had lunch with Marshall representatives sent to scout the bowl and work on logistics. Thundering Herd football operations man Mark Gale was among them.
"Ticket sales are going pretty well," Dulaney said. "Typically teams out of town do well. I don't know if we'll sell out, but we should have a nice crowd."
The 11 a.m. Dec. 26 kickoff time is awful, but Dulaney said he's expecting a crowd of around 21,000. A sellout, he said, is around 27,800 for Tropicana Field.
MU athletic director Mike Hamrick said Monday his office is close to selling 2,000 tickets. A final tally will be interesting to check. Tickets on StubHub, an online broker, were selling for $59.99 to $134.21 Monday afternoon.
What might be more interesting, however, is the final count for West Virginia's Cactus Bowl on Jan. 2 at Chase Field in Phoenix.
On Monday, one could find tickets, again on StubHub, for as low as $19.95 and as high as $250 for the game. According to WVU associate athletic director Matt Wells, there have been "slightly more than 2,000 tickets sold/accounted for" through the school "including internal usage."
Chase Field, which is home to baseball's Arizona Diamondbacks, holds around 45,500 for football.
West Virginia's program is responsible for selling 6,000 tickets. Arizona State, the Mountaineers' opponent, is responsible for 8,000.
"I'd expect the difference is because of relative proximity," Wells said.
Anyway, WVU is working with the Veteran Tickets Foundation, which gives purchased tickets not being used to active duty and armed forces veterans in the Phoenix area.
Overall, though, ticket sales have been sluggish on the Mountaineer side.
"Sales have been slow by comparison, certainly," Wells said.
nnn
While I might be faring relatively well in our first Gazette-Mail Gridiron Gurus race, I fared poorly in my preseason predictions for WVU and Marshall. At least by comparison, that is. At least in my eyes.
I was off a total of four games between the two Mountain State teams. Not exactly my gold standard.
I predicted the Mountaineers would finish 9-3. And, really, I should have been correct. West Virginia lost at home to Oklahoma State 33-26 in overtime when the Mountaineers couldn't score at the end. Then there was the Kansas State pratfall.
In regard to Marshall, I called for an 11-1 record and the Thundering Herd to finish 9-3. I nailed MU's loss to Middle Tennessee and should've nailed its loss to Western Kentucky. Where I completely missed the nail with the hammer, though, was the Herd's face plant to Ohio.
Oh, and while cleaning off the desk, my Heisman vote: 1. Alabama's Derrick Henry, 2. Clemson's Deshaun Watson and 3. Oklahoma's Baker Mayfield. (Now it can be revealed.)
Also, my vote for the Associated Press player of the year went to Henry and that for coach of the year went to OU's Bob Stoops.
nnn
And finally...
Newsflash. I shall not be watching all 40 bowls over the holidays, although that AutoNation CureBowl between 5-7 San Jose State and 6-6 Georgia State is so tempting.
I will, however, check out the College Football Playoff. I will check out the games involving WVU and MU. And I've compiled a Top 4 list of the bowl games aside from those that should be killers.
1. Fiesta (Notre Dame and Ohio State) - If these two teams don't have the most combined future NFL players I'll be surprised.
2. Alamo (TCU and Oregon) - Both teams began the season in the national championship discussion. And, in the end, both could have 10 wins.
3. Russell Athletic (North Carolina and Baylor) - Love this game. North Carolina is No. 1 in yards per play and Baylor is No. 2. BU has stud receiver Corey Coleman. UNC has one itself in Charleston native Ryan Switzer.
4. Rose (Stanford and Iowa) - The consolation bowl - between two very good teams.
Discuss amongst yourselves.