The Bad

From MSNSportsNet.net, the Friends of Coal Bowl is a fact, not a rumor anymore. It's hard for me to put into words why I am against this idea without getting too personal. I guess that it would be enough to say that my grandfather died of Black Lung Disease in his 50's, and in my job, I talk to miners with Black Lung every day. It's also important that I make the point that I am very interested in the health and well being of miners, and I have no concern for the well being of Coal Companies.
Ok, I'm off my soap box now. What this whole thing means to me is that this is not going to be a 7 year experiment (the contract for this series is seven years). There is no way in the world WVU or Marshall will ever come out and say that they are not interested in the money they will receive every time this game is played. So, you can expect this series to continue for many years to come.
The story of the Marshall football program is an extraordinary one. Loosing the better part of your football team in a plane crash would be devastating to most programs. They fought and clawed their way back to respectability, producing quite a few household names along the way. Troy Brown, Chad Pennington, Randy Moss, and Byron Leftwich, just to name a few. However, I don't like the idea of having this game forced upon us, and I never will. Is Marshall a step above a cupcake program? Yes. But, we don't do one and one, or two and one with the cupcakes we schedule, because we lose money if we play them at their field. Marshall doesn't have the facilities to host a game with WVU. The game will be sold out in Morgantown and Marshall, but there is a big difference between 60-65,ooo and 30,000 people attending the game. If your wondering, that's a $750,000 difference in ticket revenues. Correct me if I'm wrong, but we are only getting a split out of $100,000 from the Fiends, oops, I mean Friends of Coal. So, a net loss of $650,000, and no national interest in the game, ie. no interest in televising this game.