MORGANTOWN - A week ago today, Dana Holgorsen hired Jake Spavital to be his offensive coordinator at West Virginia, and that refreshed a conversation that's existed in both hushed and exaggerated tones for every one of Holgorsen's six seasons in charge of the football program.
Who's calling the plays?
Should it be Holgorsen, who has always done it here and possesses the profile of a person a fan would want calling plays for his or her team? Or should he be untethered from that duty and step back to oversee the entire operation and everything that requires attention and action during a game?
Three days later, Spavital emerged as the answer, though to a wholly different question.
William Crest, who at one point was the presumed long-term answer at quarterback, announced Monday he will transfer. A four-star recruit in 2014, Crest never threw a touchdown pass for the Mountaineers.
His career was detoured by a bad right shoulder, and his departure actually and improbably affects WVU's special teams more than its offense, because he volunteered to cover kicks as a way to play a part and help the team. Crest was the gem of his recruiting class and he was a gem for the character of the team, but that doesn't quiet another one of those conversations about Holgorsen.
Where are the can't-miss, blue-chip quarterbacks?
This is where Spavital surely comes into play. He may or may not call plays. WVU might need new ideas to get touchdowns instead of field goals in the red zone. Spavital could make quality decisions in an instant and under pressure. Perhaps he cooks up some two-play drives the Mountaineers dearly need.
Or maybe he just makes life easier for Holgorsen. At the very least, Spavital now coaches quarterbacks. Holgorsen did a lot of that the last few years with his graduate assistant, Mike Burchett. But it has to further help Holgorsen to be surrounded by Spavital, his graduate assistant at Houston and Oklahoma State and WVU's quarterbacks coach in 2011-12, as well as Joe Wickline. He was WVU's offensive coordinator last season and Oklahoma State's offensive line coach in 2010 when Holgorsen was the offensive coordinator and Spavital was a graduate assistant.
But the identity of the person calling the plays isn't the concern. It's a condition. Spavital might be a solution, someone who can only help WVU's effort to find, recruit, sign and develop quarterbacks.
It's a lucrative profession, and it's doubly important at WVU, where the greatest quarterbacks were not the greatest recruits. A transfer from Penn State. Lesser-known prospects from Cleveland or Pittsburgh who fit WVU's plans. A kid from Alabama who the SEC saw as a cornerback or a receiver. A kid from Miami who wasn't even getting a lot of attention from the Mountaineers until they lost a committed player and enacted a backup plan.
Spavital lured Davis Webb from Texas Tech to Cal last season. He recruited Kyler Murray and Kyle Allen to Texas A&M and Chase Garbers to Cal. He's worked out West and in Texas, the Pac-12, the Big 12 and the SEC. His family's name is revered in Oklahoma and his reputation is healthy in living rooms and junior colleges in the East.
Now, he's not going to fix it altogether. Nothing in recruiting is harder than the quarterback position, and then the Mountaineers have to deal with their ordinary obstacles, like geography and competitors. It's why there's nothing wrong with welcoming a junior college transfer like Skyler Howard, an FBS transfer like Will Grier or a graduate transfer like Clint Trickett - or Webb.
"How" should never matter as much as "who."
Except maybe when it comes to the recruiter.
Relationships matter, but so, too, does reputation, and Spavital has a good one. Critiques of Holgorsen himself recruiting quarterbacks tend to overlook he inherited Geno Smith at WVU, Brandon Weeden at Oklahoma State and Case Keenum at Houston - or that he recruited a few of the stars at Texas Tech - but it's also true Smith, Weeden and Keenum were far better players once they secured shelter under Holgorsen's wing.
The quarterback keys the offense, and the offense ordinarily holds the keys for the Big 12 champion. Getting the right one on campus, and then battling attrition to keep him there, is a chore, but it's also necessity. In the end, what does it matter who's calling plays if you don't have the best player running them?
Contact Mike Casazza at 304-319-1142 or mikec@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @mikecasazza and read his blog at http://blogs.wvgazettemail.com/wvu/.