MORGANTOWN — When the University of Houston accepted an invitation to join the Big 12, head coach Dana Holgorsen knew he would eventually have to face his former team, West Virginia. He just never expected that the first meeting wouldn’t be in Morgantown.
“I’m shocked that that didn’t happen,” Holgorsen said on Monday. “My prediction was in week three of year one that was going to happen.”
Instead, it is the Mountaineers (4-1, 2-0 Big 12) who will travel this week to play at Houston’s (2-3, 0-2) TDECU Stadium for a matchup this Thursday (7 p.m./FS1).
“We’ll see them next year up there, but they’re going to travel,” Holgorsen said. “They have a great fan base — Mountaineer Nation is alive and well.”
Holgorsen, who is in his fifth season at Houston, spent eight years as WVU’s head coach from 2011-2018. This will be Holgorsen’s first time playing the Mountaineers since leaving, as well as the first-ever meeting between new conference-mates WVU and Houston.
“I’ve been in this situation a lot where you leave a place and then you play them,” Holgorsen said. “The best way that I’ve figured out how to approach it is to turn your phone off and get to work. This is for the fans, the fans get into that and appreciate that.”
Like Holgorsen, West Virginia, too, is not making this game out to be something bigger than it is.
“I think if it happened sooner, the buildup around it would have been bigger,” said WVU coach Neal Brown, Holgorsen’s successor with the Mountaineers. “I think whenever Dana comes back here for the first time that’ll be a little bit of a bigger deal.”
WVU was 61-41 under Holgorsen with a pair of 10-win seasons in 2011 and 2016. He guided the program as it transitioned into the Big 12 in 2012 and went to seven bowl games in eight years. The undeniable high point of Holgorsen’s tenure came in his first year when the Mountaineers finished the 2011 season with a 70-33 win over Clemson in the Orange Bowl.
“I think what doesn’t get talked about, Dana did a good job here,” Brown said. “I’m reminded because every day I drive into this parking lot (at Milan Puskar Stadium), I see a picture of him and the Orange Bowl team. He did a really good job, Dana and his staff.”
Holgorsen and WVU mutually split following the 2018 season due to what appeared to be a contract dispute. Holgorsen’s contract with Houston paid him over $4 million per year while the contract WVU gave Brown was closer to $3 million per year. An extension in 2021 bumped Brown’s salary closer to $4 million.
“I enjoyed my time at West Virginia, there’s no question about that,” Holgorsen said. “I met a lot of really, really good people and I know a lot of them are coming (to the game) so it should make for an exciting game. At the end of the day, it’s about me doing my job and getting our team ready to play.”
After five years, there is very little of Holgorsen’s influence left on WVU’s roster. Only one current WVU player, cornerback Malachi Ruffin, played for Holgorsen.
“It’s been five years,” Brown said. “I think it would probably be perceived differently if we had a lot of guys who were here in 2018; we just don’t.”
Houston, meanwhile, has added four former Mountaineers through the transfer portal in recent years, Noah Guzman, Mike O’Laughlin, Tony Mathis and Sam Brown.
“Time heals a lot of things,” Brown said. “There’s no ill will, from anybody in this building, going down there.”
This will be the first time WVU has faced a former head coach since the Mountaineers played Florida State in the 2010 Gator Bowl in Bobby Bowden’s final game before retirement.
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