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Tell Me About West Virginia

GhostofDanJones

By GhostofDanJones
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WBT

WBT 20419

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JACOBSBURG, Ohio — “Where’d you get that thing?”

“Dang, it’s got teeth!”

“Can I touch it?”

Matt McKivitz rattles off a string of encounters in which curious strangers approached him over the past four years. Known to some as the father of West Virginia’s senior left tackle Colton McKivitz. More broadly recognized as the long-bearded fan in the coonskin cap — and sometimes coyote — he eagerly embraces his role as the program’s middle-aged mascot.

Regardless of which furry conversation piece adorned his head at any given game, one thing remained constant: He had trapped it, shot it and skinned it himself.

That authenticity only made the hats, and his whole mountain-man persona, more alluring. In a Stillwater tailgating lot, an Oklahoma State fan stepped out of her Escalade and asked, “Will you sell me that hat for $400?” She was particularly incentivized by belonging to a women’s tea club that offered members a prize for the most unique hat.

At Texas’ Darrell K Royal Stadium, the Silver Spurs spotted Matt in the hat and asked him to take a photo with Bevo.

Then there was the drunken woman on another road trip who started off fondling the hat and quickly moved to rubbing his beard as she whispered, “You are soooooo medieval!” Matt politely extricated himself from that situation by nodding toward his wife Wendy, patiently waiting for her mountain man a few feet away.

Colton may have 47 career college starts plus a promising outlook for next spring’s NFL draft, but it’s the guy in the critter lid who’s constantly posing for photos and attracting the TV cameras for cutaway shots. “Yeah,” Colton said, “Dad definitely thinks he’s more famous than me.”

A fellow team parent once texted from the Milan Puskar Stadium box seats and said, “Get up here. There’s a man who says he’s gotta have that hat.” Matt made his way up from the bleachers for a negotiation cut straight out of the Champlain fur trade. “Gimme $200 and it’s yours,” he said. They exchanged hat for cash on the spot.

Several ex-players purchased coonskin hats from Matt, and he made one for former offensive line coach Joe Wickline.

The McKivitzes have befriended several of the actual Mountaineer mascots, and Matt makes for one heckuva doppleganger, with fans frequently prompting, “You ought to be down there on that field!”

On Saturday, he actually was on the field, joining Wendy in escorting their son for a Senior Day walkout. Matt wore his signature coonskin hat.

“Of course he did,” his wife said.

hat.jpg
 
(Courtesy of Dale Sparks / West Virginia University)

At the McKivitz home in rural Jacobsburg, Ohio, about a two-hour drive from Morgantown, there’s a “Flying WV” flag jutting off the front-porch column. Matt throws open the door and says, “Come on in, ol’ buddy,” even though it’s the first-ever meeting. He’s wearing a long-sleeve camouflage shirt — also featuring the West Virginia logo — and has a spit bottle tucked into the back pocket of his blue jeans.

Inside the house, he points toward a pan piled high in meat appetizers with toothpicks.

“Grab yourself some and try it,” he says.

Smells good. What is it?

“I’ll tell ya after you eat it,” he says.

At this point it’s impossible to forget Colton’s joke about his dad’s philosophy on hunting deer, squirrels and everything in between: “If it’s shot, it’s getting eaten.”

Turns out to be bacon-wrapped duck. Just the right twang of saltiness mixed with sweet from the duck being soaked in apple juice and Coke. It’s delicious. (Matt plans on taking the rest to Morgantown for the Oklahoma State tailgate.)

The warm welcome extends from two eager dogs, a chocolate lab named Lizzy and a 3-year-old yellow lab, Rosie, who Matt identifies as “Colton’s college girlfriend.” Rosie has split time between the homestead, where there are acres of woods out her backyard, and the Morgantown apartment where Colton lives.

They tried taking her hunting as a puppy, where she laid on Matt’s chest behind a duck blind. Once the guns started booming, however, Rosie made tracks across his face, bolted under the netting and waited out the shooting across a slough. As hunting instincts go, Matt says, “she’s a really fine lap dog.”

And the McKivitzes’ den is a really fine exhibit of Matt’s taxidermy. After Wendy acquiesced by allowing him to have “one wall” for his mounts, he hung the heads of 10 bucks and two gobblers above their sectional.

“Just about out of space,” he says.

Down a narrow set of stairs, however, is the basement, which is truly Matt’s space. Work shelves. Fleshing tools. Tanning oil. Acid bottles. Epoxy. Polyurethane forms for deer. A plastic bin containing various sizes of glass eyes for different animals.

“Sometimes Wendy gets mad because there’s meat hanging off the ceiling,” Matt says, though his basement is tidy this day. Two cured raccoon hides hang from hooks alongside a lengthier gray one. “That’s a coyote,” he says.

For now, taxidermy remains a hobby, albeit a well-regulated one. (He keeps paper work on all the mounts he constructs for friends and family members.)

The whole process of preparing the hide takes about a week. Because raccoons are especially greasy, he pressure washes them to break down the fat and muscle and make it easier to scrape away. Every speck of meat must be removed. Then it’s three days in brine, rinsed, bathed in acid and washed again.

Once the hide is stretched over the skull form, the artistry begins. Inserting jaw sets. Angling the eyes. Using clay to fill in gaps. Using Bondo to shape the ears. Gluing or stitching multiple hides together, sometimes needing as many as three for one hat.

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(G. Allan Taylor / The Athletic)

His basement shop features several mannequin heads, one adorned with the coonskin cap destined for Senior Day. It’s been with Matt for three years.

“This ol’ boy, he’s been through a bunch. He’s getting pretty beat up,” Matt says. It travels in one of Colton’s duffel bags that occasionally gets crunched in the overhead bin on flights.

“The real fun,” Matt says, “is getting him through security at the airport. You’ll see the bag start going through the scanner, and then it stops. Then it backs up, goes again and stops. The TSA person just looks and looks and the line just keeps getting longer and longer.”

There’s a picture of Colton, maybe a few days shy of his third birthday, holding his first catch. “A little bluegill,” Wendy says.

He killed his first buck when he was 6 and has been at dad’s hip through deer season ever since. Plus turkey season, dove season, squirrel season, etc. Lately they’ve taken to duck hunting, because they can talk freely and “enjoy each other’s company,” Colton says.

Now he’s majoring in wildlife and fisheries resources, and last year’s decision to put off entering the NFL draft was based partly on a desire to finish a senior internship in which he compiles data on fish from the Monongahela River and area ponds

He inherited his love for outdoors honestly. Matt recalls his own childhood, “always wanting to be in the woods, because that’s where I went for my solitude.”

The taxidermy interest surfaced early too. Matt was around 10 when he and his dad went into a little bait shop.

“There was a guy who did taxidermy in a tiny room upstairs, and I said, ‘Can you show me how to do that?’ He looked at me funny, but told me to give him my phone number.”

A couple weeks later, the taxidermist called and Matt came running, initially learning how to preserve hawks for museums.

Soon after, Matt noticed three baby raccoons dead on the road, “so I grabbed them.”

He ordered a plastic form and began his first solo project with mixed results.

“My mom comes downstairs, and there I am mounting a raccoon on her dining room table,” he said. “She flipped out.”

On one of his early experimental mounts, he also learned the hazards of leaving even minuscule flesh inside a raccoon’s nostril. After a couple weeks he realized, “It ain’t supposed to smell like that.”

A couple decades along, Matt’s work is refined and even celebrated. When fans see his raccoon hat snarling, they tell him, “That’s what the Mountaineer mascot needs to be wearing. That thing’s got an attitude!”

Occasionally, opposing fans see the cap and bring some attitude of their own.

After West Virginia’s victory at Texas Tech last season, Matt and Wendy were walking to a fast food restaurant near the stadium when a few guys in a pickup truck pulled around and hit the brakes.

“They yelled, ‘You think you’re something strutting around in that hat? I oughta drag your ass back to West Virginia behind this truck!’

“Well, I got into it with ’em — you bunch of blankety-blank so-and-sos — and I probably needed to apologize for what the people inside that Chick-fil-A heard over the drive-thru speakers.”

At FedEx Field, during the spirited 2017 opener against Virginia Tech, Matt noticed a woman cutting not-so-friendly stares at his furry cap.

“She kept getting drunker and worked up enough beer courage to say, ‘That’s a disgrace on top of your head.’ When I said OK, she went, ‘Maybe you didn’t hear me — I think that hat is disgusting.’

“So I told her, ‘Well, those are some pretty fancy leather boots you’ve got there. And I think what you did to that cow is disgusting!”

hat-4.jpg
 
(Courtesy of McKivitz family)

Most interactions, however, have been pleasant. Some even spawned lasting connections.

Trisha Trylch operates a Budweiser kiosk near the parents’ will call gate at Milan Puskar Stadium. Three years ago, when Colton was seeing his first action as a redshirt freshman, she noticed Matt in his oversized coyote hat, with pelts that dangled nearly to his waist.

She left the beer tent to chase after him.

“I told him I had to have that hat, and I wanted to know where he got it,” Trylch said.

By the next home game, when Matt delivered a freshly stitched coyote hat of her very own, Trylch was elated. She began wearing it to her teenage son’s travel hockey games — partly “to embarrass the hell out of him” but mostly to mess with the parents at the Pittsburgh rinks.

“Some of them can be snooty,” she said. “So I’ve had the most freaking fun wearing this thing — coming in with a dead animal strapped to my head. I ham it up and tell them I named it Cujo and ask, ‘Do you wanna pet the puppy?’ They don’t know what to think.”

Matt would always stop for a hug and photo with Trylch, but he noticed something wrong the following season. Trylch was on the verge of tears when she relayed that her coyote hat had been destroyed.

Greta, her German shepherd, had chewed the paws off.

“I guess she was eliminating competition,” Trylch said.

So Matt made a replacement coyote hat. That one’s still around, but when he learned months later that Trylch’s husband died of a stroke, he wanted to do something else for “a super-awesome woman who’s a real sweetheart.” He offered his sympathy by bringing her a third hat, this one a raccoon version.

“I named that one Rocket,” she said, “It’s bad-ass.”

 

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Longboard Horn

Longboard Horn 40139

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8 hours ago, MotownHorn said:

It's so funny how WVU wants to be Texas's rival. 

What makes it funnier is how desperate they want to be UT's rival. Sorry moonshiners, not interested. You want a rival, go to the ACC where all your rivals are(Pitt, Louisville, Syracuse, Virginia Tech). In a way, it's pathetic. 

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MotownHorn

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It is pathetic. I lived and worked in Morgantown for 7 years. I've left that shit hole now, thank God. 

They've completely made up this imaginary rivalry. Students fly upside Texas flags year round, throw the Horns Down year round in pictures, talk about this week as "Texas Hate Week," etc. etc. etc.

We live in their heads. Meanwhile we barely pay attention to them.

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83Horn

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1 hour ago, clapclapclap said:

Timely thread, thanks for bumping.  I just got a job up there reclaiming abandoned land mines and want to learn as much as possible about WV.

Abandoned land mines?  Is your new job in Cambodia?  Or maybe you meant to say abandoned coal mines...or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.

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LTtxfan

LTtxfan 48966

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Thx for finding below tweet  @Wayne 

Total of 14 players possibly leaving West Virginia this year...

WVU starting defensive back leaving the team

by Chris Anderson.  19 minutes ago

West Virginia starting cornerback Dreshun Miller dropped some shocking news on Thursday night, announcing that he was entering his name in the NCAA Transfer Portal. The former junior college defensive back came to WVU, redshirted, and then started nine of ten games last year, missing just the bowl game due to health safety protocols. He graded out as one of the better players on an elite defense

Miller joins safety Noah Guzman, offensive linemen Briason Mays and Blaine Scott, running back Alec Sinkfield, wide receiver Ali Jennings, quarterback Austin Kendall, and linebacker Charlie Benton as scholarship players that have entered the portal since the end of the season. Offensive lineman Junior Uzebu, defensive backs Tavian Mayo and Tacorey Turner, defensive lineman Quay Mays, and wide receivers Zack Dobson and Keion Wakefield entered the portal prior to that. 

The NCAA introduced the portal on Oct. 15, 2018, providing athletes a path to explore their options. Players do not need to ask permission from their coaching staff in order to transfer. They merely need to request that compliance enter their name. Usually, it takes 24-48 hours for a player to appear following their request. Schools are free to contact a player without restriction once their name appears in the portal.

While a player entering their name in the transfer portal means they intend to explore their options, it does not necessarily mean they will leave. A player is free to withdraw his name at any time. However, schools are under no obligation to keep a player on scholarship once they enter the portal.

The first portal cycle saw 1,942 FBS players enter in the initial calendar year of its existence, per a source. 

 

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LTtxfan

LTtxfan 48966

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On 3/23/2021 at 3:53 PM, Machinator said:

Quite the fall for him. Was considered a rising star just a year ago.

 

 

 

West Virginia's hiring of Kirk Ciarrocca is a late-March steal

By  CHRIS HUMMER Mar 24, 2021

Quote

Penn State hired Kirk Ciarrocca away from Minnesota almost 16 months ago to the day. The move drew national acclaim at the time and was considered to be the most important coordinator hire of the offseason. Minnesota’s offense had just jumped from 67th to 23rd nationally in yards per play, sparking the first 11-win season for the Gophers since 1904. Few offensive coordinators had Ciarrocca’s cache, and he chose to go home and work at Pennsylvania’s flagship university.

One year later, Ciarrocca is on the move again. His hiring at West Virginia as an offensive analyst drew far less fanfare this time. Ciarrocca was fired in January after Penn State’s offense slipped to 83rd nationally in yards per play, down from 49th the year prior, and was promptly replaced by Mike Yurcich in Happy Valley.

Yet one year of poor results in a season in which the pandemic made things difficult on everyone, but especially first-year coordinators, should not take the shine away from what is again one of the offseason’s most intriguing hires.

Ciarrocca won’t be on the field for West Virginia. But his experience and game-planning acumen will be invaluable for the Mountaineers.

West Virginia head coach Neal Brown and Ciarrocca worked together at Delaware in 2005 and Brown tried to hire Ciarrocca as his initial offensive coordinator in Morgantown. He did so for good reason. History indicates Ciarrocca makes offenses better when given time. Let’s take a look at how Ciarrocca’s initial offense performed at each of his last three starts versus his final offense.

Western Michigan: 112th (2013) | 16th (2016)
Minnesota: 118th (2017) | 23rd (2019)
Penn State: 83rd (2020) | NA (2021)

The situations at Western Michigan and Minnesota were different than Penn State. There was an immediate expectation of success with the Nittany Lions compared to rebuilding jobs at Ciarrocca's prior two stops. But that statistical rise with the Broncos and Gophers indicates Ciarrocca-led offenses tend to thrive when given runway. 

West Virginia won’t undergo an offensive overhaul with Ciarrocca coming in as an analyst. The role of an analyst is to accent and augment the system that’s in place, aiding the offensive staff in anything that's needed. This is a Nick Saban-like hire by Brown. He’s bringing in a highly-respected coach for a gap year (or two) before said coach rebounds for another job. It’s a deal that works out for both parties, but it’s especially favorable for the Mountaineers.

With a great defense and the second-most production returning of any team in the Big 12, the Mountaineers are positioned as a Big 12 sleeper entering 2021. The offense, which finished 85th nationally a season ago in yards per play, just needs to improve to make a jump like that possible.

Brown is West Virginia’s play-caller. He’s done so throughout his career to much success. But there were times last season in which Brown was openly critical of himself and an offense that often failed to produce explosive plays: “I didn’t do a good enough job,” Brown said after last year’s game with Baylor.

One thing head coach play-callers often say about the task is that split focus can cause them to fall short in other duties. It can cause situations in which they lose sight of the big picture or, conversely, the down-to-down play-calling situation. Gerald Parker and Chad Scott were Brown’s co-OCs last year. Both are highly-respected coaches, yet neither have play-calling experience in their careers. Ciarrocca helps fill that hole on West Virginia’s staff. He’s an injection of experience into the room and someone Brown can lean on from a game-planning perspective.

There’s no guarantee the Mountaineers make a huge jump offensively. There are pieces in place for success, yet questions remain about the offense’s ability to create explosive plays due to limitations of both quarterback Jarret Doege and the wide receiver group.

Regardless, this is a no-lose situation for the Mountaineers. Adding Ciarrocca to the staff only helps elevate the offense’s ceiling in 2021. 

 

 

 

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LTtxfan

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Video: Take a tour of West Virginia's redesigned football facility

Neal Brown and the Mountaineers spent $55 million to rework and upgrade their football facility, and they made some impressive changes.

DOUG SAMUELS   3 HOURS AGO

Earlier this summer, West Virginia put the finishing touches on $55 million worth of upgrades and renovations to their football facility.

“It was renovated for three reasons: for our current players, for recruiting - or our future players - and as a source of pride for former players and coaches.” 

They not only reworked the space, like moving the Hall of Traditions from the back of the building to the front so it is accessible to the public and moving the meeting rooms to a different area of the facility so they're no longer split into offensive and defensive wings, but they've added some really nice branding and changes in the way the players utilize the facility too.

The Hall of Traditions is now an interactive area for fans and recruits. The area has footballs honoring some of the biggest games in Mountaineer history with a video screen accompanying it, and when someone touches the football, a big moment from that respective game flashes on the screen. Also featured in the Hall of Traditions is technology that allows you to create your own custom uniform. 

The school recently released a video featuring an extensive tour of the new facility with athletic director Shane Lyons where he talks about some of the changes.

Among the new additions in the facility is a nap room complete with a few egg-shaped sleep modules, the now customary barbershop that is a must-have in every modern college football facility, massage chairs and zero gravity chairs, an extensive recovery room featuring a light therapy pod (that looks like a tanning bed) and cryotherapy pod, and a new location for the team meeting room and position meeting rooms.

Also, Neal Brown's office overlooking the stadium will double as his family suite, with glass that can be frosted at the touch of a button.

One of the coolest subtle touches that they show off is the family pictures of coaches and players on the wall as they head in and out to the field. It may seem small, but it's an idea that they picked up after seeing the same type of thing done at coal mines in the state. Before coal miners would head down to work for the day, they'd see a similar wall with pictures of family everywhere.

Once players come off the field, they've got an assigned place where their shoulder pads, shoes and gloves can dry and then they head right into the "car wash" where they walk through a high wind area, followed by vertical and horizontal streams of water to remove any of the black turf pellets before getting into a cold tub. After that, they head directly through the showers before hitting the locker room. It's a super efficient setup that is being used more and more in major college programs.

Take a tour with Lyons below, who shares some great behind the scenes thoughts on the renovations that only an AD has.

 

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ITHorn

ITHorn 797

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Dana absolutely despises Gordon Gee and the current WVU administration (rightfully so). I can guarantee that he's had this game circled for quite a while. This is also the exact type of game WVU loses under Neal Brown. Houston is going to pull the upset this week and make people wonder why they spent so much time worrying about WVU.

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Hard Times

Hard Times 299

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15 minutes ago, ITHorn said:

Dana absolutely despises Gordon Gee and the current WVU administration (rightfully so). I can guarantee that he's had this game circled for quite a while. This is also the exact type of game WVU loses under Neal Brown. Houston is going to pull the upset this week and make people wonder why they spent so much time worrying about WVU.

I sure hope you're right, but remember cooger high is worse than Rice. Will take a perfect game and turnovers/penalties from WV.

 

Hey yorsuck, how do you like cooger high in the B12?? They're basically giving away tickets and they can't get people to come. If you build it, they won't come!

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ITHorn

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On 10/9/2023 at 9:22 AM, Hard Times said:

I sure hope you're right, but remember cooger high is worse than Rice. Will take a perfect game and turnovers/penalties from WV.

 

Hey yorsuck, how do you like cooger high in the B12?? They're basically giving away tickets and they can't get people to come. If you build it, they won't come!

Didn’t take close to a perfect game. I can’t believe you thought that much of a Neal Brown coached team. They are softer than dog shit. They’ll lose again in next two weeks and then people can stop pretending they have any shot of engaging in a tie breaker with us. 

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