Lyons speaks: Scheduling
West Virginia is set to restart match ups with traditional rivals over the next couple years and that remains the focus heading into the future, according to director of athletics Shane Lyons.
The Mountaineers will open against Virginia Tech this season in a neutral site game between the Black Diamond Trophy contestants will square off in a two-game series in 2021 and 2022. West Virginia leads the all-time series 28-22-1 and the two teams last met in 2005.
West Virginia will also have a four-game series with Pitt rotating between Morgantown and Pittsburgh from 2022-25. The Backyard Brawl has been played 104 times and is one of the longest tenured rivalries in all of college football. The two were annual fixtures on the schedule against one another until conference realignment halted the series following the 2011 campaign.
Finally, a two-game series with long-time rival Penn State will restarted in 2022-23, giving fans yet another opportunity to see the Mountaineers against a regional historical opponent.
The focus for now is trying to keep out-of-conference scheduling on those teams that generate interest from the fan base and there has been no discussions with other teams such as Louisville, Syracuse or Virginia.
Although Lyons did say that there could always be the potential of a neutral site game down the road with different types of opponents.
For now, Lyons is looking at cementing the schedules for the future but not getting too far ahead and in fact one unnamed institution contacted him about dates in 2035-36, but at this time he isn’t prepared to look that far out when it comes to putting things together.
Lyons said that he has talked with Virginia Tech about continuing the series in the future and has looked at some of the dates in the future to add them into a rotation. He also plans to monitor how the Pitt series goes and if that could become a fixture on the schedule but that is still off in the future.
“We’ll see how Pitt goes,” he said.
But one team has not been discussed.
West Virginia hasn’t played Marshall in football since the 2012 season and basketball since 2015. And according to Lyons there have been no discussions on continuing either.
The two teams met on the gridiron in an annual sense from 2006-12 in what was referred to as the Friends of Coal Bowl. Overall, the two teams have met 12 times with West Virginia winning each. On the basketball side of things, the Mountaineers and Thundering Herd had met annually in Charleston since 1992 until the end of the series prior to last year. The Mountaineers lead the all-time series 33-11.
There have been no discussions to reignite the series.
“If they want to play we’ll play them here but there hasn’t been a lot of interest in that,” he said.
