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WVU celebration turns ugly
West Virginia fans are sprayed with pepper spray by police
Barry L. Reeger/Tribune-Review
Rob Rossi is the Penguins beat writer. He can be reached via e-mail. Also check out Rossi's blog or follow him on Twitter.
Almost Heaven?
"I think it's kind of dumb," said 19-year-old WVU student John Gordon of his school's strange tradition of burning furniture in the streets following the football team's big wins and losses. "A bunch of drunk people standing around a fire seems kind of stupid to me."
Gordon's not alone.
Mountaineer Field had not played host to a nationally televised night game since Sept. 19, 1998, when WVU played Maryland. A long time coming? Well, maybe if during that game fans had decided against launching whiskey bottles and golf balls onto the field.
A couple of differences Wednesday night: The projectile of choice was empty plastic bottles; and WVU was playing Virginia Tech, which is much better than Maryland.
Last season, when the Mountaineers upset Virginia Tech, three people were arrested, firefighters turned hoses on rowdy fans and students brought down the goalposts at Mountaineer Field -- even though the game was played in Blacksburg, Va.
Wednesday night, students made six attempts to bring down the goalposts, but failed in each try.
The goalposts were still standing. That's quite the display of red-zone defense. Of course, pepper spray certainly helps.
"I was standing on the side cheering for West Virginia and the next thing you know, there's a cloud of pepper spray, and I'm throwing up," said Jim Jay, a junior journalism major from Richmond, Va.
WVU coach Rich Rodriguez pleaded with the fans to leave the field, and it quickly cleared. But some students said anger about the pepper spray helped fuel the starting of fires.
"As long as no one's getting hurt, I think they should leave people alone," Jay said. "People are out having fun and celebrating. No one's trying to hurt anybody."
Rodriguez said some players and team staff members were inadvertently sprayed, as well.
"Some players came in all choked up with tears in their eyes, and they weren't crying," he said yesterday.
But Rodriguez added that he hopes the public will focus on the victory, not the aftermath.
Fired-up fans are a fairly common sight in Morgantown on football Saturdays. Wednesday night's game had students standing in lines 12-persons deep outside Mountaineer Field an hour-and-a-half before kickoff.
The kindest of the random chants went something like, "Go Home, Hokies!" Other versions were less kind.
Then, there were the messages on T-shirts that were made especially for this game, such as the bright yellow one Gordon was wearing: "Hey Virginia Tech. How are you going to leave the Big East when your bus is on fire?"
Earlier this month, university officials disciplined three students who participated in unruly behavior after the Mountaineers dropped a nationally televised Thursday night game against No. 2 Miami. Some of those students were identified through newspaper photographs of scenes surrounding couches burning in Sunnyside, a student-housing section on WVU's lower campus.
A common joke told at pregame tailgates outside the north end zone of Mountaineer Field on Wednesday afternoon: "What do you think will happen tonight if they lose? What do you think will happen if they win?
Reply: "This whole damn town is gonna burn!"
But, of the more than 100 reported fires, only about a dozen were described by Monogalia County emergency officials as "sizable." Quick-to-flame-out futons hardly compare to the Eazy Chair infernos that have become legend on campus.
"An officer came to my house Sunday and said we had to move our furniture off the front porch before Wednesday," Gordon said immediately after the Mountaineers' victory. "He said we'd get a $1,000 fine if we didn't move the couch. It isn't worth $1,000."
Fire and police officials spent two days before Wednesday night's game removing garbage and couches from residents' front porches.
"Yeah, but I think everybody made too big a deal out of the fires," Gordon said. "Everybody is missing the point, we just beat Tech."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
