MORGANTOWN - Last winter, not long after he arrived to coach West Virginia's safeties and not long before he began his first spring with the Mountaineers, Matt Caponi found himself standing before the team and presenting himself as a coach and as a competitor.
"I hate losing," he said, "more than I enjoy winning."
There were many reasons the Mountaineers decided to hire Caponi in January, including his history with defensive coordinator Tony Gibson at Pitt and Arizona, but that one sentence, those eight words, said it all.
Caponi doesn't like losing. He's not used to it. He has no plans to get to know it.
"The most important thing about Matt is that as a player he lost one college game in four years and won three national championships," said Gibson, who hired Caponi as his graduate assistant at Pitt in 2011 and then brought him to Arizona a year later. "The guy knows how to win and what it takes to win. I want that kind of energy and enthusiasm around the team."
There's a lot to be said about the work awaiting Caponi in what will be just his fourth season as a full-time Football Bowl Subdivision coach. The Mountaineers no longer have Karl Joseph, one of the greatest defensive backs in school history, and K.J. Dillon, who played the integral Spur position as well as Gibson ever envisioned.
But the 2016 team, which goes on without Joseph and Dillon, 18 other seniors and two juniors who were talented enough to leave the team a year early so they might play in the NFL, is not yet accustomed to winning. The 2015 team won eight games and a bowl and made a big deal out of doing two things no WVU team in the Big 12 had done.
The Mountaineers can't wait four years to make history again. What happened last season must be remembered as the beginning. There should be eight regular-season wins and then nine and then more. There have to be more bowl wins and they need to be on bigger stages. Winning ought to be a constant and not an occasional cause for celebration.
For four years, winning was all Caponi knew about college football.
He played at Baldwin High in Pittsburgh, an average player by his own estimation who wasn't sure what level he belonged on in college. He wasn't alone with that suspicion, and Caponi wound up at Mount Union, the powerhouse Division III program in Alliance, Ohio.
"Dominant," Gibson said.
The Purple Raiders won four national titles before Caponi arrived and have won five since his playing days came to an end in 2003, but they won three in his four seasons on the roster. Caponi was only a player for three of those years, sitting out as a freshman in 2000 before playing just a bit of safety and special teams as a sophomore. But in those two seasons and then in his first as a starting safety, Mount Union won it all.
"Most kids know they're not going to come in right away and play, but Mount Union does a great job of developing players from their freshman and sophomore years so when they are juniors and seniors, they've had two years under their belts getting bigger and faster and stronger," Caponi said. "They can step in and do what they're expected to do."
Mount Union was 55-1 in Caponi's four seasons. He recalls parts of the 55. He'll never forget the one.
"It's the only game I remember, to be honest," he said.
After three straight 14-0 seasons, Mount Union stood 13-0 entering the championship game in 2003. The Purple Raiders threw four interceptions, one that was returned 100 yards for a touchdown, and couldn't recover any of the opponent's three fumbles. They lost to Minnesota's St. John's 24-6.
"We ran into a better team that day," said Caponi, a team captain who had six tackles in the game. "They played better than us and deserved to win the game. I really don't remember too much about college, just a couple plays here and there, but that game I remember from kickoff to finish."
Caponi began coaching the following season as a student assistant, and Mount Union lost in the national semifinals. A year later, with Caponi working as the linebackers coach, the Purple Raiders won another championship.
He moved on to Pennsylvania's Washington & Jefferson, and the Division III Presidents won 10, 10, 11, nine and nine games, never lost more than two games and made the NCAA playoffs four times in five seasons, the last three with Caponi serving as defensive coordinator.
Things changed when Caponi changed levels. Pitt was 6-7 when he first worked with Gibson in 2011, and Arizona was 8-5 a year later. In Caponi's first three full-time seasons, the Wildcats were 8-5, 10-4 and 7-6 with wins in the AdvoCare V100 and New Mexico bowls and a loss in the middle in the Fiesta Bowl.
"I've gotten used to trying to get over a loss as quickly as possible and not letting it bother you as much as it can when it stays on your mind," he said. "As soon as you lose, you can't wait to get back on the field the next Saturday to get the taste out of your mouth.
"It's about concentrating on getting the loss out of your system as fast as you can, not only as a coach, but getting your players to look forward to the next week and putting it behind them. That's kind of what I've been able to develop over the course of the last six or seven years, just trying to overlook these losses quicker and move on to the next game."