Between The Eers: Where is the Respect?
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00:10 Josh Pate of CBS Sports labeled West Virginia as a tier three
00:15 Big 12 program on his recent episode of Late Kick with Josh Pate.
00:21 And we're gonna dive into that a little bit today.
00:24 I already did it on my article that's up now on Mountaineers Now, but
00:27 I figured let's bring it to this space as well.
00:30 Let's have a little chat.
00:31 So thank you guys for tuning in to Between the Ears on this Monday morning.
00:36 It's a little later than we typically, we post between seven and
00:41 eight in the morning is when we run the show.
00:44 Had some technical issues going on so we couldn't get it up a little bit earlier.
00:47 But thank you for tuning in as always.
00:51 And so yeah, let's just go ahead and dive into it.
00:53 So Josh Pate, fairly well respected around business.
01:01 I personally don't know him.
01:03 I've honestly probably only become familiar with him within the last year or so.
01:11 But when you have that type of brand attached to you,
01:16 it's gonna start carrying a lot of weight in terms of what he says,
01:21 what he thinks, and when this came out,
01:26 I was just beside myself, I was shocked.
01:31 So here it is, here's his criteria for how he kind of organized these tiers.
01:40 He's got four tiers.
01:41 It's based off the last three years, recruiting, retention,
01:48 talent acquisition overall, development, and kind of a peek into the future.
01:54 And I think anytime you start putting parameters on these things,
02:01 like I said in the article, you can kind of skew this, right?
02:04 You can say what she put in these last three years.
02:11 Well, yeah, obviously West Virginia hasn't been that great.
02:14 They had one winning season in the last three years.
02:18 But it's also the same for Kansas, who he has as a tier two program.
02:24 But if you start putting parameters on it and say the last three years,
02:30 the last five years, the last seven years, that's gonna constantly change.
02:33 Even if you move it a year, if you say the last two years,
02:37 if you say the last four years, that picture's gonna look completely different.
02:41 How he settled on three, I don't know.
02:44 I don't know the reasoning behind it.
02:46 Doesn't make sense to me.
02:47 But I think if we're gonna look at the actual tiers here, right?
02:58 We're talking big 12 program tiers.
03:01 That's what he's discussing in this episode that he had.
03:04 You have to take everything into account that that program has done
03:10 since the very beginning.
03:12 If we're talking program, program is from the moment you started that football team
03:18 to now, not the last three years.
03:21 If you wanna talk about the last three year window, then that's the last three
03:25 years, that's the best big 12 teams over the last three years.
03:30 That's a different conversation.
03:34 You wanna put West Virginia at technically number 11,
03:38 I can't necessarily disagree on that.
03:41 They had one 9-1 season outside of that, two losing seasons,
03:45 in which things didn't look all that great.
03:49 And when it comes to recruiting, I get it,
03:54 West Virginia's not gonna be up at the top.
03:57 They never have been.
03:59 They've always been a team that sits anywhere between 30 and 50 or
04:03 55 or whatever in the class rankings.
04:08 And I mean, I think you all know my point on that,
04:14 or my take on that, in that it really doesn't matter.
04:20 Because how many years has Texas A&M or a Florida or
04:25 some schools like that have had top five,
04:30 top ten classes and struggle to get to a bowl game?
04:34 Kansas State, West Virginia, I'm just trying to think off the top of my head here.
04:42 NC State and some of those others that just,
04:46 they continue to punch above their weight.
04:48 Even Duke, throw them in the mix.
04:53 So I think the star rankings doesn't make any sense.
04:59 Never has, never will.
05:01 There'll never be a perfect science for it.
05:04 That's why I don't really put a whole lot of stock into it.
05:06 And that's why I don't think it can be a part of this evaluation.
05:09 To me, the only thing you can look at, or
05:14 the only things you can look at, is the on-field results,
05:17 in the trajectory of the program.
05:20 Now, you can say, well, yeah, scholar recruiting does play into that.
05:24 Well, yeah, it does, but more of it is the development.
05:31 It doesn't matter if you have five five stars in your class,
05:36 if three of them transfer out by the time their first year's over with,
05:42 or by the time the spring comes around.
05:43 All that matters is the development of the players that you get and keep.
05:50 Neil Brown finally got a chance to keep his roster.
05:57 The first few years he was in Morgantown, schools were coming in poaching that team
06:02 left and right, the only talent that they did have.
06:05 Now they've kind of got it to a spot where they feel pretty comfortable,
06:09 the NIL opportunities are there, things are more sustainable.
06:13 And you look at the guys that they've developed,
06:21 like Hudson Clement, who was a walk-on.
06:26 One of the top receivers in the country in terms of yards per catch.
06:29 You look at a guy like Nick Malone, who didn't start, but
06:34 was a very key sixth man, if you will, on that offensive line.
06:38 Preston Fox, a really solid depth piece receiver and special teamer.
06:47 I mean, I could keep going on and on and on, but the fact of the matter is,
06:55 it comes down to winning and developing.
06:57 And if we're going all the way back, and this is what we should be talking about,
07:01 right, program, program history, program success.
07:08 I hate to tell you, but West Virginia's at the top.
07:13 I mean, they are, let's be honest.
07:18 They are the winningest program in the Big 12.
07:25 Right now, when you remove Texas, you remove Oklahoma,
07:30 West Virginia has more wins in college football
07:36 than any other team in that league.
07:39 May not have happened in the Big 12, but
07:44 it has shown, they've shown over numerous decades that they can be successful
07:51 in different conferences, in different eras of college football.
07:56 It doesn't matter, they've always found success.
07:59 And that's why, like I've stated a couple of weeks ago,
08:02 they're gonna find success in this NIL era.
08:05 And they might be more successful in this era, believe it or not,
08:09 than they have been in other eras because of the passion that the fan base has for
08:16 this school, and this team, and this university.
08:18 They're able to literally help these guys get guys that maybe otherwise they
08:23 wouldn't have been able to get in years past.
08:25 I think it's silly to sit here and say,
08:32 we're just gonna look at the last three years.
08:37 I think it's silly that we're gonna sit here and
08:41 say that Kansas, Texas Tech is a better program than West Virginia.
08:49 In what sense?
08:50 What has Texas Tech done in the last three years that West Virginia hasn't done?
08:57 They've been average, they've been mediocre.
09:02 You wanna talk about recruiting, okay, well,
09:04 Texas Tech's bringing in all this top tier talent.
09:07 What have they done with it?
09:08 They've not even sniffed a Big 12 championship.
09:12 I don't care how many connections that coaching staff has to the top
09:18 high school talents in Texas.
09:20 It's not translating to wins, and I get it.
09:23 The quarterback situation has been awful down there with the injuries.
09:28 But I still don't think that even if Tyler Shuck is healthy,
09:35 that they're a nine or ten win team.
09:38 There's no way.
09:39 UCF?
09:41 Come on, man.
09:44 What has UCF done?
09:47 In power five football, they've had one season.
09:53 The other two you can basically remove cuz that's not even talking about the same
09:59 thing here.
10:00 Again, if we're just going in these last three years, we're going off potential?
10:06 UCF struggled in year one.
10:09 I'm sorry, but adding KJ Jefferson is not gonna make this team a Big 12 contender.
10:15 It's just not.
10:18 I don't know what the whole hype train is about over there.
10:22 And then Kansas, like I said, one good year in the last 20,
10:27 and they're a tier two program?
10:31 What are we doing, people?
10:33 I mean, seriously.
10:34 I didn't think I'd get this fired up on a Monday, but here we go.
10:37 Kansas, a tier two program after winning nine games,
10:42 the same amount West Virginia won.
10:45 I failed to see how this makes sense.
10:54 I don't know.
10:57 Someone explain it to me.
10:59 Again, because if we're talking programs,
11:02 the best programs top to bottom in the Big 12, you're talking the history.
11:09 You can't just exclude the 88 team, the 93 team, the 07 team, the 2011 team.
11:18 You can't.
11:19 This is the program history.
11:23 We're talking about a program that won 33 games in three years.
11:31 And we're going to talk about this as a last three years thing
11:37 to skew it whatever angle.
11:39 And even in that skewed three year angle, it's still wrong.
11:44 I mean, come on.
11:45 West Virginia is not a tier three program in the Big 12.
11:52 And on this tier system, they're the last tier.
11:59 They're the last team in tier three.
12:00 They're borderline tier four.
12:02 In what world, in what world has West Virginia ever
12:11 been a bottom four team in their conference year in and year out in football?
12:18 You're going to have to go back several years
12:24 to find any sort of two to three year window
12:28 where they were just bottom of the barrel.
12:31 I don't see how this is a tier three program in any respect.
12:40 You may be skeptical that this 2023 season was kind of like a one hit wonder
12:47 thing.
12:48 I get it.
12:49 I do.
12:50 But again, program success.
12:53 West Virginia up here.
12:57 OK?
12:59 You can't disregard that.
13:01 They've won in every era, in every conference, in every decade.
13:06 That's why they're the winningest program in this league.
13:09 I don't know, man.
13:15 I don't know.
13:16 Show me the math is basically what I'm saying here.
13:18 Show me your work.
13:21 It's like the teacher back in fifth grade where you just come up
13:23 with some random answer and they write on the thing,
13:27 show me your work because this doesn't make sense.
13:29 How did you get here?
13:30 How did you get here is what I want to know.
13:35 So I mean, maybe I'm wrong.
13:40 I don't think I am.
13:42 Again, I'm not saying that West Virginia in these last three years
13:47 is a tier one program.
13:51 And again, if we're doing the whole tier thing,
13:56 I don't know how I would do it.
13:58 But I would probably say, yeah, tier three
14:02 might make sense towards the top end of that
14:06 because you did just win nine games.
14:08 And if you're going to put a team that won nine games in tier two,
14:10 you got to have one near them in tier three, right?
14:12 But I don't like this.
14:16 This three year thing doesn't make sense.
14:18 The teams that he has in front of West Virginia in this three year window
14:23 still doesn't make sense.
14:26 It needs to be reordered badly.
14:30 But again, you can't talk about program tiers with just a three year window.
14:36 So I don't know.
14:42 I think it's just another thing for West Virginia to kind of hang on to.
14:49 It's going to be another year where folks aren't going to be high on this team.
14:53 I'm telling you now, nobody loves this team.
14:58 Nobody.
14:59 And I guarantee you, they won't be in the preseason top 25.
15:03 Not that I believe that that should be the case.
15:06 I'm just telling you, I think that's what's going to happen.
15:08 They're not going to end up being in the preseason top 25.
15:11 You've already seen the Vegas win total sitting at 6 and 1/2.
15:16 You've got guys like Josh Pate putting them as a tier three program in the last
15:19 three years shows you how much he really thinks about this team.
15:22 And I'm sure when the preseason poll rolls around again,
15:29 they'll be, I don't know, seventh or eighth.
15:33 No one's going to think West Virginia's got a standing,
15:36 a fighter's chance in this thing.
15:38 Nobody.
15:41 They're going to be doubted again.
15:43 And they're going to have to go out and prove people wrong again.
15:47 That's the world we live in.
15:50 So that's it for me here today.
15:52 I'll get off my rocker.
15:54 Josh, I'm sure you're a great guy.
15:56 I have no disrespect to you at all.
15:58 I just don't--
15:59 I fail to see how you got from point A to point B on this one.
16:03 So make sure you hit that subscribe button on YouTube of Mountaineers Now.
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16:12 And we will be back here tomorrow with another episode of Between Ears.
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