Experienced with Weekday Games, Neal Brown Leads Mountaineers into Waco

Football players and coaches tend to be creatures of habit.

They get into routines of doing the exact same things on the exact same days, all leading towards game time on Saturdays. A Thursday night game this week, however, has got the WVU football team operating on a completely different schedule.

“It’s different cause the week’s all backed up,” sophomore defensive lineman Dante Stills said. “We had practice this weekend so it’s very backed and very different, but I don’t look at that. I just kind of want to play football all the time so I’m kind of just focused on this game.”

The Mountaineers will face the Baylor Bears in Waco, Texas Thursday night on national television. As the only college football game on that night head coach Neal Brown sees this as an important opportunity for the team.

“We’ve played about every night you can possibly play on,” Brown said. “I like these games, I think they’re showcase-type games. I think players, in general, enjoy playing in these games.”

Brown is no stranger to weekday games. Over his four years as the head coach at Troy, Brown’s teams played in eight such affairs, four times on Thursdays, twice on Fridays and one time each on a Tuesday and Wednesday. Troy went 5-3 in weekday games under Brown.

This will also be WVU’s first night game of the season. Being on the road, Brown said it will be important to keep the team busy before the game on Thursday.

“Especially on these midweek games, you’ve got to be a little creative because, if you play a night game on Saturday, there’s plenty to watch on TV. Unless you’re into soap operas, there isn’t a whole lot going on midday TV,” Brown said. “This is the one trip too where they’re going to miss significant class time. They’ll miss most of the day on Wednesday and then all their classes on Thursday and so what we’ll do is, we’ll tie in an academic window on Thursday.”

Playing a weekday game meant that West Virginia had last Saturday off. It will be 10 days in between the team’s most recent game at Oklahoma and the game in Waco, Texas. Stills said this time was best spent resting.

“There’s a side of me that I want to rest and recover but otherwise I just want to keep going, non-stop football,” Stills said. “Sometimes your body needs that, because if you just keep banging and banging for a long time your body wears down and gets tired and gets hurt. I feel like these weeks off that we’ve had have been very important.”

Kickoff in Waco will be at 7 p.m. EST on ESPN.