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<\/i> Updated: March 30, 2022 @ 5:51 am<\/small>
West Virginia\u2019s Jalen Bridges (left) goes in for a dunk.<\/p>\n
West Virginia\u2019s Jalen Bridges (left) goes in for a dunk.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WV News) \u2014 Welcome to the brave new world of college athletics, a revolving door of comings and goings where the words of a long-ago sportswriter ring truer than ever.
The great sports columnist, Frank Graham, once mused back in the days of Babe Ruth that his cantankerous New York Yankees teammate Bob Meusel \u201cdidn\u2019t learn how to say hello until it was time to say goodbye.\u201d
And so it is with today\u2019s college athlete … here today, gone tomorrow.
The new \u201cfree agent\u201d system threatens to destroy the very fiber upon which the college sports were built, and this hits no harder anywhere than in West Virginia, where the state\u2019s pride runs directly through the state university and its athletic success.
Once it was built strictly upon state natives, be they named Hundley, West, Huff or Howley, but as the sports grew in popularity, as television took it nationwide, so, too, did the recruiting spread to the point that the story today is as much about West Virginians leaving the state to play rather than staying at home.
Over the past couple of weeks, Fairmont alone saw native son Jalen Bridges, who well might have blossomed into a star during this upcoming season, declare his own free agency \u2014 aka enter the transfer portal \u2014 while Marley Washenitz, one of the state\u2019s greatest-ever girls\u2019 prep basketball players, committed to \u2014 of all places \u2014 Pitt.
In Bridges\u2019 case, he did spend three years at WVU, a redshirt season and two playing seasons, which is a long stay in today\u2019s world, but the fact that he is opting to leave is a sign of how the hold the school had upon its players has diminished, and with it the loyalty of the fans has to also diminish.
This is not to point a finger at Bridges for a decision he had every right to make any more than it is to point a finger at Washenitz, once a WVU commit whose scholarship offer was withdrawn because the Mountaineeers felt they did not have room for her on their roster.
But the emotion, the ties that once bonded the school and the state\u2019s populace, have loosened.
The love is there, but it is not an unquestioned love any longer.
What has happened to the men\u2019s basketball team over two seasons is frightening, just as frightening as what has happened in football.
The transfer portal has claimed not Bridges from this year\u2019s team but another starter with a year of eligibility remaining, guard Sean McNeil announcing on Monday via social media that he would enter the portal as a graduate transfer and continue his career elsewhere.
\u201cMy time at West Virginia and the memories I\u2019ve made will hold a special place in my heart for the rest of my life,\u201d McNeil said in his announcement. \u201cAfter much thought and consideration, I have decided it is in my best interest to enter the transfer portal.\u201d
The words \u201cin my best interest\u201d echo loudly, for that is the way the world has evolved.
McNeil knew what he was leaving.
\u201cI want to say thank you to coach Huggins and the entire West Virginia staff. You all took a chance on me from junior college and gave me an opportunity, and I am forever grateful for that,\u201d he wrote.
McNeil was overlooked coming out of high school, his only offer coming from Bellamine, an offer he took but stayed only a few days in school. He wound up at a junior college named Sinclair in Dayton, Ohio, playing before 50 fans or so until Huggins rescued him.
Yes, he gave Huggins what Huggins expected from him, two years, so again one can\u2019t accuse McNeil of disloyalty, but owning that COVID extra season of eligibility, he opted to use it elsewhere than at the one school that gave him the break of a lifetime.
How have things changed? McNeil is the fifth player to transfer since this 16-17 season ended with WVU finishing last in the Big 12 and the eighth player, six of them starters, to transfer in the last two years.
Perhaps WVU should stop playing John Denver\u2019s \u201cCountry Roads\u201d and instead play The Irish Rovers\u2019 \u201cJohnny, We Hardly Knew Ye.\u201d.
Indeed, players came to WVU and became Mountaineers, adopted citizens of the state if from outside. If anything has polished what once was a shabby national image of West Virginia it was the athletic programs in Morgantown.
People came to know the players and their stories. The school offered its citizens a way out through not only fame from sports, but with an education and degree beyond those prime athletic years. Out-of-staters were offered a way out of the slums of Florida or off the streets of Georgia.
Bruce Irvin, the football star who went from having no future at all to a millionaire football player who gave back to the community and state, is the prime example.
But there have been so many others, who became students and citizens, friends and neighbors whose tales became well known, sometimes such as with Huff, West and Hundley, even folklore through their time at WVU.
But now college athletics has lost sight of all of that. It\u2019s become a me-first part of a me-first nation in a me-first world.
If Saint Peter\u2019s run in the NCAA Tournament was uplifting, it was nothing but a diversion from what really is happening, for in the end we have a blue-blooded Final Four of North Carolina, Duke, Kansas and Villanova \u2014 college royalty.<\/p>\n
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