MORGANTOWN - Today it maintains one of the strongest voices in college football Twitter, but the success of the Russell Athletic Bowl account is rooted in a whisper.
"The first post that got us some attention," said Matt Repchak, the main mind behind @RussellAthBowl, "was just some joke."
It was the 2011 regular season, and Louisville had just shaken up the Big East with a win at West Virginia. Suddenly, the Cardinals, who'd lost non-conference games to FIU and Marshall, were in position to win some games as a favorite and at least share the conference title as a one-loss team.
And then Louisville lost at home, not to Pitt, but to a video game. A few days after the 21-14 defeat, coach Charlie Strong actually blamed the loss on the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and the way it distracted his players.
He was serious. He was later hired by Texas. He was later fired by Texas.
Repchak, the senior director of media and marketing for Florida Citrus Sports, which operates the both the Citrus and Russell Athletic bowls, heard about it. And then he tweeted about it.
Ok, so no Call of Duty in the Big East player hospitality suites. Got it.
It was retweeted 16 times and favorited - that was the term back then - twice. It only received five replies. A tweet of a seating chart at Camping World Stadium on Dec. 4 drew 68 retweets, 89 likes - the new term for favorite - and 10 replies.
"There was no mention of Coach Strong and no mention of Louisville," said Repchak, a graduate of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. "We were very careful, but from the very beginning we knew we were at the bottom of the totem pole. When you think about everything going on in college sports, the bowls have to be at or near the bottom, which is why we get away with so much silliness now. We figure, 'Let's poke fun at ourselves.'"
Repchak had a tiny bit of social media momentum with the Call of Duty burn. The actual game that year, when it was the final Champs Sports Bowl, fanned the flames. Florida State and Notre Dame, teams with massive fan bases and Twitter populations, sent the bowl and its Twitter reputation on its way.
This season, Repchak and the co-workers he relies on for ideas and contributions will work with another dynamic rooting duo. No. 14 West Virginia (10-2) takes on Miami (8-4) in the 5:30 p.m. ESPN game on Dec. 28.
"I'm not sure what to capitalize on yet," Repchak said. "I've been looking forward to the West Virginia fan base since maybe November-ish, when we knew something like this was possible based on watching previous games. Me just being present in the college football Twitter world, I knew that it was going to be a vibrant and colorful fan base that was going to make for some interesting conversations."
The Russell Athletic Bowl account was born in April 2009 as the Champs Sports Bowl account. It was not the first of its kind, but it is perhaps the best and easily among the most popular. It has more than 26,200 followers, which bests the Orange, Fiesta and Sugar bowls and barely trails the Cotton. Those are New Year's Six games.
Repchak takes this - well, he doesn't take much about it seriously, which is why it works so well. But he's committed to the project, to why it works and to the style he and his teammates have established that has been studied and used as the model for so many other games now.
A few years back, a writer covering a regular-season UCF-Houston game noted bowl scouts from the Fiesta and Russell Athletic bowls were at the game. "Yeah and SOMEONE didn't bring enough chips," Repchak replied.
But he's competitive, too. The Belk Bowl account is basically just as popular, and Repchak and his counterpart will exchange texts about their work. One will congratulate the other for a good idea he wishes he thought of first.
Last year, the Texas and Russell Athletic bowls were played on the same day. A survey revealed the Texas Bowl was tweeted about more often, and Repchak conceded "this round" to the adversary.
The two games are played on the same day this season, too, and it'll be competitive again. It's natural. College football might be the perfect sport for Twitter. There are so many games. And most, especially bowls, funnel fans to Twitter, where they're greeted with updates from games, highlights, gifs, memes, snark and so much more.
And fans will stick around through it all. In 2012, the year after the Call of Duty tweet and the Florida State-Notre Dame game, Virginia Tech beat Rutgers 13-10 in overtime of the Champs Sports Bowl. It set a game record for the fewest points and with 20 punts.
"It was not very exciting to watch," said Repchak, who also operates the Citrus Bowl and Florida Citrus Sports accounts. "It was rough football in the rain, just an atrocious game with not much offense, but everyone was on Twitter talking about it. We were coming up on a big boom period in college football Twitter. We caught on with a lot of people at that time. I think that's the time our voice formed."
Repchak's goal these days is to come up with a few ideas and a few tweets that keep people talking about the game and thinking about the account. Earlier this month, a fan named Sam tweeted that getting her mom to go to the game was "my biggest concern right now." Repchak used Twitter to reach out and set up Sam and her mother with tickets.
"I've got to get a couple good things out there to make sure people believe we haven't lost a step," Repchak said, "and to make sure the Belk Bowl doesn't pass us in the power rankings for bowl games."