Today, we are putting down the spreadsheets, ignoring the draft analytics, and stepping into a time machine to completely rewrite the history of college football.
For three decades, ever since I was just a kid first learning how to throw a spiral in the backyard, I have lived and breathed West Virginia Mountaineers football. I have ridden the highest of highs and suffered through the absolute lowest, most gut-wrenching lows. And if you have followed this program for even a fraction of that time, you know exactly what date I am about to bring up. It is the date that is permanently seared into the retinas of every single person who bleeds gold and blue.
December 1, 2007.
It was the 100th playing of the Backyard Brawl. Milan Puskar Stadium was an absolute freezing, chaotic madhouse. The Mountaineers were 10-1, ranked #2 in the country, and staring down a 4-7 Pittsburgh Panthers team that had absolutely no business being on the same field as us. The math was incredibly simple: win the game, and West Virginia is going to the BCS National Championship.
We all know what actually happened. The score was 13-9. It was a suffocating, miserable offensive performance. Pat White dislocated his right thumb in the second quarter. The read-option offense, which had terrorized the entire country for three years, suddenly slammed on the brakes. We missed field goals. We turned the ball over. We watched the national championship dream die in the freezing rain, and a few weeks later, we watched head coach Rich Rodriguez pack his bags and bolt for Michigan in the middle of the night.
It was the single most destructive night in the history of the program.
But what if it wasn't?
What if we pull one single thread from the fabric of that night? What if we change one tiny, isolated physiological event? Let’s step into the alternate timeline. Let's look at the absolute, landscape-altering butterfly effect that happens if Pat White never gets hurt.
The Point of Divergence: The Second Quarter
It is the second quarter in Morgantown. The Mountaineers are locked in a gritty defensive struggle. Pat White keeps the ball on a read-option, darts through the line of scrimmage, and takes a hit from a Pitt linebacker.
In our reality, he lands awkwardly, dislocates his thumb, and the offense completely flatlines.
In this alternate timeline, White lands on the turf, pops right back up, shakes out his wrist, and steps back into the huddle. He’s fine. It’s just a bruise.
With Pat White completely healthy and operating at maximum processing speed, the Pittsburgh defense cannot crowd the box. They cannot blindly commit to stopping Steve Slaton and Noel Devine between the tackles because White is a lethal threat to pull the ball and run for forty yards down the sideline.
The Mountaineers don't stall out in the red zone. They don't settle for missed Pat McAfee field goals. In the third quarter, the floodgates open. White hits Darius Reynaud on a post route to break the tie. Slaton breaks a 60-yard touchdown run late in the fourth quarter to put the nail in the coffin.
West Virginia wins the 100th Backyard Brawl, 31-13.
The goalposts in Milan Puskar Stadium are immediately torn down and marched down High Street. The couch fires in Morgantown can be seen from space. And on Sunday evening, the BCS standings are officially released. The #1 Ohio State Buckeyes will face the #2 West Virginia Mountaineers in the Superdome for the National Championship.
The Domino Effect, Part 1: The 2007 National Championship
The matchup is set. Jim Tressel’s sweater-vest-wearing, ground-and-pound Ohio State Buckeyes against Rich Rodriguez’s chaotic, warp-speed spread option.
When you look at the tactical breakdown of this hypothetical game, it is an absolute nightmare for Ohio State. The Buckeyes had a phenomenal defense led by James Laurinaitis, but they were built to play Big Ten football. They were built to stop traditional, pro-style running games. They had absolutely no preparation for the sheer horizontal speed of the West Virginia offense.
If you remember what Florida and Urban Meyer did to Ohio State in the title game the year prior—spreading them out and exposing their lack of sideline-to-sideline speed—West Virginia does the exact same thing, but with an even more lethal rushing attack.
Todd Boeckman, the Ohio State quarterback, simply does not have the firepower to keep up in a shootout. The Mountaineers' 3-3-5 stack defense, led by Reed Williams and Marc Magro, brings chaotic pressure from unpredictable angles, forcing Boeckman into two costly interceptions.
In the third quarter, on the fast track of the Superdome turf, Noel Devine gets the edge and outruns the entire Ohio State secondary.
The final score is 38-24. West Virginia wins the National Championship. Pat White is named the MVP. Rich Rodriguez is hoisted onto the shoulders of his players as the confetti falls in New Orleans.
The Domino Effect, Part 2: The Coaching Carousel Goes Nuclear
This is where the timeline completely fractures and reshapes the entire modern era of college football.
Because Rich Rodriguez just delivered a National Championship to his alma mater, he is a living god in the state of West Virginia. The boosters open up the vault. The governor probably offers him the keys to the state. There is absolutely no amount of money that the University of Michigan can offer to pry him away. He signs a lifetime contract in Morgantown.
So, where does that leave Michigan?
In our reality, Michigan panicked after Lloyd Carr retired, swung and missed on a few guys, and ultimately backed up the Brink's truck for Rich Rod. But in this timeline, Rich Rod isn't answering the phone. Michigan Athletic Director Bill Martin is desperate. He needs a home run hire.
He turns to the guy he always wanted in the first place: Les Miles.
Remember, in 2007, Les Miles was the head coach at LSU. He was a Michigan Man. He played for Bo Schembechler. The only reason Miles didn't take the Michigan job in our reality is that the timing was impossible—LSU had miraculously backed into the BCS National Championship game after WVU lost to Pitt. Miles couldn't abandon his team before the title game.
But in our alternate timeline, LSU didn't make the National Championship. They finished with two losses and were relegated to the Capital One Bowl.
With no national title on the line, and his dream job calling, Les Miles leaves Baton Rouge. He is announced as the head coach of the Michigan Wolverines in mid-December.
Suddenly, Michigan doesn't spend the next three years trying to fit square pegs into round holes with a spread offense. Les Miles brings his "Mad Hatter" physical, pro-style offense to Ann Arbor. He recruits massive offensive linemen, elite running backs, and keeps Michigan firmly established as a dominant, smash-mouth power in the Big Ten. The "Dark Ages" of Michigan football under Rich Rod and Brady Hoke simply never happen.
The Domino Effect, Part 3: The SEC Power Vacuum
With Les Miles leaving for Michigan, the LSU Tigers are completely blindsided. They just lost Nick Saban to the NFL a few years prior, and now they have lost his successor.
The LSU athletic department scrambles. Who do they hire in the winter of 2007? They need someone who understands the SEC defensive landscape. They look internally and promote their fiery, intense defensive coordinator: Bo Pelini.
In our reality, Pelini left LSU that winter to become the head coach at Nebraska. In this timeline, he stays in Baton Rouge and takes the top job.
While Pelini is a phenomenal defensive mind, he is notoriously volatile and struggles to modernize his offenses. LSU remains a very good, 9-win program, but they do not win the 2007 National Championship, and they certainly do not build the 2011 juggernaut that went undefeated in the regular season.
This creates a massive power vacuum in the SEC West. And guess who just arrived in the division in 2007?
Nick Saban at the University of Alabama.
With LSU taking a slight step back under Pelini instead of flourishing under Miles, Saban's hostile takeover of the SEC happens even faster. Alabama doesn't just dominate the 2010s; they establish a complete stranglehold on the conference by 2008. There is no epic Saban vs. Miles rivalry. Saban runs the SEC West completely uncontested.
Furthermore, the entire "SEC Dominance" narrative takes a massive hit. In our reality, the SEC won seven straight national titles starting with Florida in 2006. But in this timeline, a Big East team (West Virginia) breaks the streak in 2007. The media cannot push the "SEC Speed" narrative quite as hard when a team from Morgantown just ran laps around the Big Ten champion in the Superdome.
The Domino Effect, Part 4: The Big East Survival and The Mountaineer Dynasty
Back in Morgantown, things are glorious.
It is the fall of 2008. Rich Rodriguez is back on the sidelines. Pat White is a senior. Noel Devine is the starting running back. Jock Sanders is in the slot. The Mountaineers are the defending National Champions and they are playing with absolute supreme confidence.
Because Rich Rod never leaves, the Bill Stewart era never happens (loved the guy but he just wasn't a head coach). We never endure the painful, conservative offensive regression. We don't have the awkward "coach-in-waiting" transition with Dana Holgorsen. The offensive system remains incredibly stable and lethal.
West Virginia absolutely steamrolls the Big East in 2008 and 2009. They are recruiting at an elite, national level because they have the ultimate trump card: a shiny crystal football in the Puskar Center. Four-star and five-star recruits from Florida and Ohio who want to play in a hyper-aggressive, high-scoring offense flock to Morgantown.
But the biggest ripple effect here isn't just on the field; it is in the boardroom.
In the early 2010s, conference realignment tore college football apart. The Big East collapsed because it was perceived as weak in football. Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College had already left for the ACC, and the conference was on life support.
But in this timeline, the Big East has a reigning, multi-time national title contender in West Virginia serving as its anchor. The television networks look at the Big East differently. They see a premier football product.
Perhaps the Big East doesn't completely dissolve. Maybe they manage to poach a team like Penn State or Maryland to bolster their ranks.
Or, if the conference realignment wave is simply unavoidable, West Virginia's resume is so undeniably elite that they don't have to sweat out a last-minute lifeboat invite to the Big 12. With a National Championship pedigree and dominant TV ratings, the ACC or the SEC comes calling immediately. The Mountaineers enter a super-conference not as a scrappy underdog, but as absolute college football royalty.
The Butterfly Flaps Its Wings
It is wild to think about how fragile sports history truly is. We spend countless hours analyzing depth charts, debating play calls, and breaking down recruiting classes. But at the end of the day, an entire decade of college football was completely rewritten because of a single, awkward tackle on a cold night in West Virginia.
If that thumb doesn't pop out of place:
- West Virginia possibly wins a National Championship. At the very least plays for one.
- Rich Rodriguez never becomes a punchline at Michigan.
- Les Miles brings power football back to Ann Arbor and restores Michigan's glory a decade before Jim Harbaugh.
- LSU never wins the '07 title and struggles to find their footing under Bo Pelini.
- Nick Saban's Alabama dynasty faces significantly less resistance in the SEC West.
- The Big East potentially survives the conference realignment apocalypse.
Instead, we got 13-9. We got the Fiesta Bowl under Bill Stewart. We got the chaotic Dana Holgorsen years. We got an entire fanbase that still stares blankly at the wall whenever someone mentions the year 2007.
That is the beauty, and the absolute brutal torture, of being a sports fan, a Mountaineer sports fan more specifically. The margins between immortality and devastation are razor-thin. You can do all the prep work in the world, build the perfect scheme, and have the best player on the field, and it can all vanish in the blink of an eye.
But sitting here today, looking back at what that team was capable of, I will go to my grave believing that the 2007 West Virginia Mountaineers were the best team in the country. They were a terrifying, revolutionary buzzsaw that the rest of college football simply wasn't ready for. The history books will say LSU won it all that year, but in the war room of my mind, Pat White is still holding that crystal football in the Superdome.
Mountaineer fans know it all too well, all we can do is dream.
About Captain Phil
A die-hard West Virginia Mountaineers fan, Atlanta Braves fan, Green Bay Packers fan, and Sacramento Kings fan, Phil breaks down the game from the film room to the final whistle. He provides a high-IQ, conversational take on the sports world that feels like talking ball with your best friends.