When West Virginia University and Marshall University began negotiating to play an annual football series, I was one of the earliesst and most enthusaistic supporters of that effort.
Why shouldn't the only major state universities play each other in football, I reasoned.
They already did so in basketball and that series not only was competitive, well accepted, and virtually guaranteed a sellout crowd at the Charleston Civic Center.
I compared a potential WVU-MU football series to the one that takes place every year in Colorado, where the University of Colorado, a member of the Big 12, plays a game against Colorado State, a member of the far-less prestigious Mountain West Conference in the Rocky Mountain Showdown.
It took Governor Joe Manchin to get the major players from West Virginia University and Marshall University together, but they managed to hammer out a seven-year deal that would see four games in Morgantown, two games in Huntington and one game at the site of the winner of two of the first three games.
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