When Villanova and Oklahoma meet in Saturday night's basketball Final Four, I'd imagine most folks in the Mountain State will root for the Sooners.
OU, after all, is in the Big 12, alongside West Virginia University. The Sooners have helped the league rack up a total of $30.3 million from the NCAA tournament - so far. There are millions of good reasons for Mountaineer fans, anyway, to pull for OU.
Yet I'm torn. I don't know which team to cheer on. I suspect at least a few other old-timers are as well.
See, WVU and Villanova have history. They have Eastern 8 history. (Hoopster Rooster!) They have Atlantic 10 history. They have Big East history. And, as someone who covered much of that history, I, well, have history with all of the above.
If you watched ESPN's "30 for 30" piece on the Big East, you no doubt saw former commissioner Mike Tranghese and Tom Odjakjian. Those men worked with me as I covered WVU navigating into and then out of the Big East.
Yet embedded in my soul is a stretch covering the Big East from June of 1984 to May of 1985.
Ring a bell? Yep. That was the season three league schools - Villanova, St. John's and Georgetown - made the Final Four. (Give yourself bonus points if you knew the fourth was Memphis State.)
I'd rolled the dice working without a full-time job in Pittsburgh and landed an internship as well as stringer work. I wrote for the then-Pittsburgh Press, Associated Press and then-United Press International. (Kids, ask your parents about the latter.)
What I stumbled upon was magic.
Covering games at Pitt's old Fitzgerald Field House, I met and interviewed college basketball legends. I watched incredible talent and unforgettable characters. Little did I know, I was knee-deep in very special proceedings. It only grew my love for the games I cover.
Pitt's Roy Chipman had nice talent that year: Charles Smith, Curtis Aiken and Demetreus Gore. The team finished with a respectable 17 wins. But it couldn't hang with the tornado of talent that blew through the Big East.
Georgetown had Patrick Ewing and company. (I once interviewed Ewing and shook his hand. In doing so, I looked down. My hand disappeared as a child's would in that of an adult.) Syracuse had Rafael Addison and "Pearl" Washington. (I've written about scorekeeping for a "Pearl" game.) You could go down the line. Boston College had Michael Adams. Seton Hall had Andre McCloud.
Two memories, however, glow in my mind. The first had to do with St. John's, which won the Big East regular-season title that year with Chris Mullin, Walter Berry and Bill Wennington. More specifically, though, it had to do with the coach, Luigi P. "Lou" Carnesseca.
As a young reporter working for the Associated Press that day, I had to get quotes from both teams. I went first to Pitt's press conference before dashing back to the St. John's locker room. What I found was the SJU presser had broken up. I saw, however, a drooping Carnesseca.
"Coach," I said, "I'm sorry I missed your press conference, but could I just ask a couple questions?"
"Sure, son," he smiled weakly. "If you don't mind sitting down with me I'll give you as long as you need. I'm just not feeling too well."
We sat on a wooden bench and he was kind enough to do so.
Yet it was that day, that January day, he first wore the famous "Sweater." Because St. John's won that day, he continued to wear his "lucky sweater" as his team rode into the Final Four. When his team met up with Georgetown, coach John Thompson famously unveiled his sport coat - with a replica of the sweater underneath. The streak ended that day.
Yet the hideously famous red, blue and brown "Sweater" will go down in college lore. Today, it sits in the Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. And I was fortunate enough to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with Carnesseca that afternoon as he broke it in.
The other vivid memory centered on Villanova. I chuckle because the coach then wasn't as dapper as today's Jay Wright. It was quite the opposite, a disheveled cross between Danny DeVito and Joe Pesci: Rollie Massimino.
In case you're unaware, the Wildcats pulled off one of the most remarkable and stunning national championship victories that season. They beat Georgetown in the finals by shooting 78.6 percent from the floor.
But the season before, while covering WVU's football team in the Hall of Fame Classic, I'd met the main characters: Massimino, Ed Pinckney, Dwayne McClain, Harold Pressley and the gang. I was working for the Martinsburg paper that year and was sent to cover the bowl. As an aside, we were given hoops passes for the Birmingham Classic, which pitted Alabama-Birmingham and Villanova.
What the heck, right? I went and, afterward, simply introduced myself. (I didn't cover it because who in Martinsburg cared about a Villanova-UAB hoops game in 1983?) Little did I know that bunch would go on to provide one of the most amazing NCAA tournament runs in history.
Little did I know what I was witnessing that season. The kicker? WVU and Marshall were having good seasons as well. Gale Catlett's crew, complete with Lester Rowe and Dale Blaney, were winning the Atlantic 10. (Villanova had left the league five years prior.) MU, under Rick Huckabay, won the Southern Conference tournament and went on to play VCU in the NCAA event.
So it was a special time. You'll have to forgive me if I do root for the Wildcats on Saturday. Within the Big East, there were characters, there were special moments. I don't know if the Big 12 can recreate the magic, the texture, of that season. I don't know if any league ever can - ever.
Yet the Big 12 has a heck of a coaching lineup. There are indeed characters within. And many in West Virginia would love to see something similar.
Don't we all, after all, love magic shows?.