Dana Comes Home

Photo Attribution: Icon SMI

Well “home” is always a relative term when the key to get in your residence is plastic and you never shop for soap, but I’m confident you’ll agree with me when I say there are 1,000,000 reasons to be excited about Dana and Huggy Bear coming west to the Big 12. Oh and just to clarify, the Big 12 currently has 10 teams and is about to have 8 or 9 teams depending on who you ask but will replace those in 2012 to get back to 10 or maybe 11. Right? Makes sense.

I wrote this piece about Dana when he left so I figured it was only fair to follow it up with a “7 things I’m excited for about Dana (and West Virginia)” Here we go…

1. It’s a line I used in the O’Colly’s Pressbox to the Couchbut since a lot of you aren’t subscribed to the O’Colly I’ll re-publish it here: I can honestly see Dana getting wheeled out of the Boone Pickens Stadium tunnel in a chariot wielding a scepter made of cigarettes as his blond mullet flaps around in the Stillwater wind. Him and Monken will play “any play you can call I can call better” every year. There will be final scores of 88-79. It’s going to be spectacular.

2. West Virginia is who I wanted all along, and here’s why: they’re good at football, yes, but they’re also outstanding at basketball. They’ve finished in the top 25 in three of the last six seasons and been to the dance six of the last seven, including three Sweet 16s. An already-loaded hoops conference just took a step up.

3. Trips to Morgantown. Nolan, Amilian, Quade, and I may or may not have exchanged 100 emails about this already. Morgantown seems like it would be the Vegas of college towns, no? You have a better one?

4. Scott Drew finally has a “wow, I might be the shadiest college basketball coach in the country” rival!

5. Mountaineer Mantrips.

6. As Stewart Mandel pointed out the other day, Missouri to West Virginia is probably an upgrade (I argued the same about TCU and A&M). WVU has 2 BCS games and a Final Four under their belt since ’05. Mizzou has 0 and 0. Granted, that Chase Daniel team definitely would have won the Big East at least once, but still if you have to lose two teams (and apparently you do), you did a pretty bang-up job replacing them with the two you went and got.

7. So the Big East, huh. Cincy, Louisville, South Florida, UConn, and Rutgers. And they have an auto BCS berth until 2013. Maybe they should see if Villanova has beefed up that FCS program?