WVU Football Weekly Recap

Our weekly recap and analysis on WVU football. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Ladies and gentlemen, grab your coffee and donuts, because it's
time for the Morning Spiel, brought to you by Royal Water.
The Athenians and topics discussed on the show do not
reflect that of WVRC Media or our advertisers. Now we
head straight to the one O three to three WKMZ
newsroom with your host Alex Widerspiel.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Good morning, everybody, welcome in. This is the Morning Spiel
presented by Royal Water treatment. I want to three to
three WKMZ. I kind of forgot that Monday was Labor Day.
I hope you enjoyed. I forgot on Friday that Monday
was Labor Day. So I hope you enjoyed the annual
tradition of playing the Doctor McCoy Labor Day interview piece
that we do every Labor Day, and we have since

(00:43):
we interviewed doctor McCoy, who was a labor historian and
was great to talk to about it, and maybe we'll
get him back on the show at some point, but
hopefully you enjoyed that. Anyway, we're back and it's good
to be here. I didn't know. I wasn't feeling amazing.
I'm not gonna lie to you. I wasn't feeling amazing
when I got up today, and I wasn't sure I

(01:03):
was gonna have I wasn't gona sure I was gonna
have the juice. You gotta have the juice to do
a show like this. And that's because today, no guests.
We are gonna do two things. One, we're gonna spend
a lot of the show on WVU football. Two, if
you've got anything you want to share with me, feel
free to do that The Morningspiel at gmail dot com.

(01:24):
Here's the deal. What we're doing is we're gonna take
comments basically all week. We're gonna take comments all week,
and we'll take some comments today, but we're gonna take
comments all week. I'm gonna share some of my favorite
ones at the end of the week with Mike Austi
when we do our wv WVU preview show that we've

(01:47):
started doing Friday mornings here on the Morning Spiel. Now,
you also might be wondering, is this is this gonna
be a regular segment that we're gonna do, And the
answer to that is yes. The difference is this segment
is normally gonna be on Monday. Okay, so this segment
is normally going to be a Monday segment. Tuesday is
gonna be a fun little combo of things because obviously

(02:08):
we like to talk about what's going on locally in
Clarksburg on Tuesdays. We'll probably get into some golf related
stuff on Tuesdays at times, but we're gonna bounce around.
We're gonna we're gonna kind of bounce around back and
forth on what we're going to do on Tuesdays. I
also want to dedicate some time at the end of
the show today, take a few minutes to talk about
International Overdose Awareness Day. So yeah, stick around. It's gonna

(02:31):
be it's gonna be a real downer at the end
of the show. But in the beginning, why don't we
stick with the Mountaineers, And that's where we'll start today,
and of course we'll get to your news in sports
headlines here in a few minutes. Now, I know this
is a bit of a weird one because A it
was Robert Morris and b the game was like what
three days ago? Now, yeah, it was three days ago

(02:52):
because of the holiday, So like I get it, Like
we're we're we're kind of moved on and we're in
prep for for next week already, and of course you
know Rod will be speaking to the media today as
he does on Tuesdays. We'll talk about that coming up
with Mike Austi, but we're gonna do a bunch of
Mountaineer reaction stuff on Mondays moving forward throughout the rest

(03:14):
of the season. Plus, I wanted to talk a little
bit about some of my expectations coming up for Ohio.
What I was excited about, sort of the good, the bad,
and I don't know that I would call it the ugly.
I'd definitely call it the odd from Saturday's win over
Robert Morris. But the big, the big takeaway, of course,
is that rich Rod two point zero starts off with

(03:35):
a win and a forty two point win covering a
spread that I am gonna be honest with you, I
wasn't convinced they were going to do. I again, I
don't bet on these That's that's something that I'm not
even permitted to do. But that was That's where I
would have been at is. I didn't think it was
I didn't think it was a good bet to take
the Mountaineers to beat the spread, and I think they

(03:58):
had a real fire lit under them in the second half,
and we'll of course get to that. So let's let's
let's obviously start with the good. And I think the
most obvious thing that doesn't require any spin whatsoever is
the zach Ally effect was real. And I'm gonna need
to spend a little more time watching this defense because
the big thing that I I had two kind of

(04:19):
big takeaways. The first was that I did not want
to overreact to because I actually said this to my
my group of friends in our WVU group chat. I
didn't want to overreact to the first like, this was
a quarter and a half in and I went, the
defense looks really it might have even been earlier that
I might even like the third drive, I was like, man,

(04:40):
the defense looks really good. And I didn't want to overreact.
And I still don't want to overreact to how the
defense looked in Game one against rm U, but I
did want to note and I should have been I
should have What I should have done is I should
have kept tally on this. But there are certain plays
that I I think poorly coached defenses will allow. I

(05:03):
think a poorly coached defense is going to allow chunk
yardage on third and long. I think a poorly coached
defense is going to allow positive, sometimes legitimately good yardage
on screen passes, particularly bubble screens. And I think that
bad defenses or particularly poorly coached defenses are going to

(05:26):
struggle with tackling. And I think you can check all
three of those boxes. In the exact opposite of that,
WVU I thought was really good in pretty much every
third down situation in this game. They were not allowing
cheap yards for RMU either. They were not allowing the
sort of misdirection plays to go anywhere. They were not
allowing screen passes to go anywhere. I mean, these are

(05:47):
the plays where teams typically pick up easy yardage against
bad defenses. And again, I get it, there's a distinct,
even with seventy plus new players, a distinct advantage on
both the coaching side and on the talent side for
WU against ARMU. But to me, those are huge factors
that I'm taking away from that Cheap easy yards not

(06:08):
something that they allowed, especially in the first game of
the season. Keep in mind, keep in mind again talent aside,
that this is the first game of the season with
seventy new players, and you've got to be thinking a
little bit to yourself, they are going to make mistakes, which,
of course we will get to. They're going to make mistakes, right,
that's the thought. And defensively there were really none to

(06:31):
be found. Right. They got put in a lot of
not great situations, which we're again we're going to get
into here in a minute, put in a lot of
not great situations by the offense, and they battled. It
wasn't an issue for them. They were good. And yet
so through all of that, probably not thrilled at the

(06:54):
offense as you walk into halftime. The defense has played
it's behind off really missing tackles. Again, I don't have
the exact numbers on I'm sure PFF keeps that, but
I'd love to know what the misstackle rate was. I
have to think it was pretty good. These were all
issues that we saw in the tail end of the
Neil Brown era where things were at their absolute worst.
These were all things that we saw. So for Game one,

(07:17):
the rich rod effect was very, very real, because Zach
Alley is probably not at WVU without rich Rodriguez. The
defense looked fast, they looked well coached, they looked hard
edge right off the bat and I think in the
rich Rod era, that might be the highest compliment that
I can give. Now, it's one game. You don't overreact

(07:40):
to one game of what's going to be twelve or
thirteen games potentially of data. Probably going to be thirteen
games of data. But I would say early on, that's
a real check for the defense. I would say. The
other thing is and this is where the bin comes

(08:00):
into the things that I was excited by. So again,
I think everybody is aware of what went wrong, and
that's why I want to start with that before I
get into this other element of what I was excited by.
Because you have obviously the ball touching the ground? What
five times for lost fumbles? How many total turnovers did
the Mountaineers have in that game? Way too many? And

(08:21):
you're not going to win most games. I mean, I
would love to know what the all time historic record
is just for wvu's program alone or rich Rod alone,
in a game where they had that many turnovers or
lost the turnover battle, went minus two on the turnover battle,
and lost the penalty battles well, Because here's the thing

(08:42):
about penalties is that they're cumulative. Right, That's the big
issue with penalties is that. I think there was a
study done way way way way back, like an analytic
study done, and it's probably not great that I can't
remember the fine print of this study, but the basic
premise was this that penalties do not have as much
impact in the wins and lost column as columns as

(09:05):
turnovers do. And most football coaches that's I mean, that's
pretty obvious to them. They're gonna tell you that that's
the name of the game. Having the football and particularly
having the football with less space needed to go, that's
a huge difference, massive difference. But penalties do have accumulative effect.
So yeah, maybe you know, listen, you have five penalties

(09:27):
in a game, you're not gonna be thrilled about it.
But you start getting into that nine and ten category,
you start getting into that category, and you know that
some of those penalties are going to be resulting in
first downs and that that yardage is going to accumulate. Now,
in this game, it didn't matter for obvious reasons because

(09:48):
for one half of football, WU played about as poorly
on offense as they could outside of two drives, played
about as poorly on offense as they could. And okay,
maybe that's unfair. That's really unfair to the offensive line.
That's pretty unfair to Nico Markiel. It was the skill
It's probably unfair to Jeheim White. It was the skill positions.

(10:08):
It was the wide receivers and tight ends, and again
I think it was a little fluky as well, but
those were the guys letting the team down. So the
worst essentially the worst case scenario. In the first half,
you have three lost fumbles, and keep in mind also
that you have put it on the ground four times,
and that statistically speaking, fumbles are essentially fifty to fifty balls,
so while you have to treat every fumble as if

(10:30):
it's a turnover, and so them putting the ground the
ball on the ground four times is just simply inexcusable.
It's also worth noting that this is the nature of
the game. That they put the ball on the ground
five times lost four of those fumbles, that's really statistically uncommon.
You would anticipate it would be closer to three. I

(10:50):
whan you do it an odd number of times in
the first half, statistically you would think they would lose
two of the four fumbles. Again, it's about a fifty
to fifty proposition, that's not what happened. And so yet,
in spite of all that, they're still up ten to three.
And you know, rich Rod, you knew he was gonna
light a fire under them in the second half. I
felt really confident that that was going to happen and

(11:12):
that they were going to clean it up in the
second half. I didn't know to the extent that they
were going to. They really treated the second half pretty clinically.
And that's where I will say, that's what I'm excited
by is that I thought from a mental toughness and
resiliency perspective, these guys understood the assignment that after the
first half that they had, they could not come out

(11:34):
and put together another performance like that in the second
half and just coast right. It would have been very,
very easy for them after the first two scores of
the third quarter to then say, all right, we're gonna
coast the rest of the way this game. That is
not what they did. Zach Ally didn't allow that. On defense,
and even when the backups came in, they were still

(11:56):
playing hard. So lots and lots of credit, I thought
team looked well coached. I thought the normal issues that
you would see from seventy new guys were not really
evident on defense. They were a little evident on offense. Again,
some of the motion penalties You're always going to be

(12:18):
a little bothered by. I'm trying to be a little
less bothered by it when you consider what are we
talking about? Was it four new start? Is it forour
new starters on the offensive line? See, this is the
one thing I'm probably not paying close enough attention to.
I don't remember how many new starters it is along
the offensive line, but you have all these new starters
along the offensive line, you have a quarterback who has

(12:38):
only started a couple of games in his collegiate career.
There is a lot of opportunity there for mistakes to occur,
and you can be understanding of that to a point
when the games matter less and they are not as
high leverage, that's the time to make make these mistakes.

(13:00):
These games against I don't want to say this about
Ohio University, but I will say this about arm You
these games to an extent, this is your preseason. The
real season is Big twelve conference play. This is your preseason, right,
You've got all these new starters. It's at least three
new starters. I think it's actually five new Is it
five new starters? Yeah, I think it's five new starters

(13:21):
along the offensive line. You have all these new starters
along the offensive line, so you haven't had these guys
do quarterbacks. The quarterback exchange, the handoff exchange or I'm sorry,
the snap exchange center quarterback snap exchange has not really
occurred all that much between these guys in live situations.
So the idea that there might occasionally be a hiccup

(13:42):
I can live with for now. Now is the time
you got to clean it up. And I think they're
going to What I would expect going forward, though, is
I think you're going to see something similar against Ohio
University again. And I won't be shocked if Ohio is
actually tied or ahead going in to halftime of this
next game, and it won't be by much, not like
they're gonna be blowing out WVU. But if this is

(14:04):
like a three point Ohio lead at halftime, I'm not
gonna be surprised by that. Here's why my expectation is
that there's still probably going to be some kings to
work out. I highly doubt they got all of it
out of their system in the first two have or
first two quarters of the first game of the season,
if they did, fantastic. But I have been thinking for

(14:26):
a while that the way this is going to work
is they're gonna start games slow because they're gonna make mistakes.
I think the speed and pace of the offense was
really good when it was working, and I expect that
when things are clicking, that's what it's going to look like.
It's gonna be really hard to stop. And there will probably,

(14:47):
as a result of that, be games this season that
WVU plays that they will almost certainly jump out to
very fast leads. We don't know what those are yet,
especially if the defense is gonna play like this, if
the Zach Alley effect looks as real as we think
it is, and boy was it good in that first game,

(15:08):
limiting ARM you to one hundred and twenty three total
yards of offense, despite four turnovers, no trips to the
end zone three of fifteen on third down, arm you
had the ball more than WVU in terms of total
time of possession, and it just it didn't bother this
mountain your defense. But so as we start to see

(15:33):
as the weeks go on, who in the Big Twelve
might have let's say questionable defensive bona fides. I wonder,
especially if any of those games occur at home. I
wonder if those won't be the games where WV gets
out to an early lead. And I suspect, based on

(15:53):
what we saw, I think Zach Alley is gonna be
the type of coordinator who's going to really enjoy playing
with a lead. I think he's gonna that's gonna be
his bread and butter is playing with a lead. What
defense doesn't want to play with a lead? So I'll
be curious to see how this goes I'll be very
curious to thee this goes down, because you can't really

(16:14):
take much from the first week of the season. But
I mean, Baylor obviously got a little carved, right, Baylor
got a little carved. Now that was We're not sure
how good of an Auburn team. But otherwise, for the
most part, seems like the Big twelve defensively did all

(16:34):
right in these first couple weeks of the season. So
it's gonna right now be hard to tell who's going
to be let's say, lower on the totem pole in
this instance. I'm not really sure, we are gonna get
to our first break here in a minute. I'm almost
almost out of stuff to talk about here on the Mountaineers,
but we're we got stuff to talk about, and then

(16:55):
we're gonna get to your news and sports headlines. So
I am thinking the game script against Ohio is going
to probably work pretty similarly, And kudos to Ohio. They
nearly upset a Rutgers team two things of Like I
thought Ohio in sort of the post Tim alban Era,
I thought there might be a little bit of a

(17:17):
little bit of time for them to regroup, and they
seemed awfully comfortable in that first game against a Big
ten opponent who, while no one's going to confuse as
being an elite Big Ten opponent, what Rutgers does have
going for them, they have a couple of really impressive

(17:38):
things going for them at the moment, in that Greg
Chiano has found consistency with this program, and that there
is some real talent along the defense, particularly along the outside.
Their edge rushers are supposed to be pretty good, and
then offensively there's some real talent in the receiving there.

(18:00):
Rutgers is a legitimate powerfl program, one that again had
a winning record. I believe they had a winning record
in Big Ten play last year, which you know, who
knows how good their schedule was a year ago. But
I don't know. We've reached a point now where we
used to we would used to think like going four

(18:22):
and four or five and three in conference play was
just okay. We've reached a point now where doing that
and of course they played nine in the Big Ten,
but doing that, and actually they were four and five
last year, so I will say this, they were four
and five. Four and five is not bad in the
modern Big Ten. As crazy as that sounds, four and

(18:45):
five in this Big Ten is actually not bad. It's
not great, but it's not bad. And so Ohio keeping
it with Rutgers, like that's not like a joke of
a Rutgers program like it had been pre Chiano, which
seems seemingly every time. But you think about that Rutgers team.
They took the They pushed Illinois to the limit last year.
They pushed Kansas State to the limit in the bowl game,

(19:06):
right they they you know, pushed Nebraska to the limit.
They pushed UCLA to the limit. They had a lot
of close losses last season and they beat a solid
Minnesota team. So I guess my point is this, I
don't think you can just discount what Ohio did against

(19:26):
Rutgers is like, oh it's Rutgers. No, No, that's thinking, okay,
Rutgers team. That's like a really solid Rutgers team. And
so I think, like, no one's gonna confuse them for
a national champion, right, But I doubt they're even gonna
sniff the playoffs because they're probably like a max eight
win team. But you still kind of have to look

(19:48):
at them and say, Okay, what Ohio did, considering some
of the disadvantages they should have been at in game one,
is impressive. On the other hand, On the other hand,
how difficult is it for a group of five team
to face back to back power for teams in that

(20:09):
span of time. I gotta imagine that's a little on
the tougher side. So that's why I'm thinking Ohio might
start out fast, they might start out strong. They might
ultimately be leading at halftime in this game, and which
would be kind of the opposite of the game script
in the Rutgers game, where they Rutgers was actually leading

(20:30):
and Ohio fought their way back into that game. I
think it's probably gonna be the other way around. I
think that if WVU is as disjointed as they were
at times in the second quarter, you're probably gonna see
it go the other way where Ohio gets the Mountaineers
to sweat a little bit in the first half and

(20:50):
they'll probably ultimately have the talent to pull away. And
that's the mental toughness aspect of this first game that
to me is a huge blue for them. That showed
that they have the mental toughness to overcome mistakes. You
have to have it. It is a must in today's
sports world because you're gonna make a ton of mistakes,

(21:12):
especially in this sport. You're gonna make a ton of mistakes,
and some of them are really fluky. Fumbles are by
nature really fluky. I'm not sure there was anything that
Robert Morris was specifically doing the fumble going into the
end zone that to me was the flukiest of them all.
But I digress. So I think this is gonna be

(21:33):
I think this is probably ultimately going to be not
all that dissimilar from the arm You game, and I
think that is fine because I just want this team
to be healthy going into the pit game, healthy to
and zero. Nothing too crazy in the first games, even
if the first halves don't look great, get that out
of your system early. Yes, the season technically starts with

(21:55):
big twelve play, but that pit game, everyone knows that
game circled, that's gonna be a really meaningful I mean,
I'll be curious to hear what he says about it
when we get to that week. I haven't heard him
say anything about Pitt and I think makes sense because
my anticipation is that he's probably saving it up. If

(22:18):
he's gonna say anything, it's gonna be for that week.
But for a guy who seems who is quite literally
the most motivated person WU could have possibly hired, I
can't imagine a week where he's going to be more
motivated to win. And in the early goings of any
I'm going to use this hard edge in the early
goings of any coach who's trying to establish a different

(22:38):
type of culture, a different type of culture like Rod
is doing. I suspect that in the early going, the
guys who are trying to buy into it, and the
guys who are trying to show that they deserve a
place in the Rodriguez cannon and the Rodriga's depth chart

(23:02):
and the Rodrigaz rotation of plays that they deserve a
spot here. I suspect that they're going to take this very,
very seriously. So that's where I'm at right now, because
there is the emotional element of yes, the pit game
does not matter. It doesn't. It really does not. It
will make almost no difference for WVU when at day's end,

(23:27):
if they are trying to push for a playoff spot,
I sincerely doubt it will make a huge difference for WVU.
The most important thing is still winning the conference. So
all that being said, I think there was plenty of
good to take away. It's a good thing that it
wasn't a perfect game. There's plenty to improve upon. In fact,

(23:48):
there's a lot that needs to be improved upon. The
red zone play wasn't very good. The ball hit the
ground obviously way too many times, including one time in
the red zone. What looked to me like a really
careless play of a guy who I think, in theory
doesn't make that mistake five weeks from now, because I
think that gets coached out of you. I think he
was trying to make a play and he made a mistake.

(24:10):
I think that gets coached out, but we'll see all right.
On that note, The Morning Spiel at gmail dot com.
The Morningspiel at gmail dot com. This was a overall
good start. Zach Ally, that's the guy that's that's he
gets the game ball. If we can't give it to him,
If we can't give it to him, give it to
the defense as a whole. I was so impressed with

(24:31):
with the way the defense played. They were They were really,
really good. Reid Kariko would be right up there with
with guys who I think would probably deserve deserve a
game ball. But Zach Ally's defense was superb and kudos
because they easily could have worn down in that game
and they just didn't. They didn't let the mistakes on

(24:53):
the offense harm them. They powered through it. That shows
real mental toughness. I'm excited for it. The defense has
the potential to look like this season. We've seen some
really good mountaineer defenses. Folks forget this a lot, whether
it was Tony Gibson going way way way back, We've
seen some really good mountaineer defenses over the years, in

(25:18):
both the rod Era and the whole now, we've seen
some pretty bad ones as well. I won't lie about that. Obviously.
Last year felt like just a complete and total fiasco.
But we've seen some pretty good defenses under this, you know,
in this era of Mountaineer football, and I won't be
at all surprised if this winds up being right up

(25:41):
there with some of the best that we've seen defensively
in the last you know, twenty five years or so.
They looked. The potential is there if if what we
saw in game one is that they're not gonna they're
not gonna get fooled by the easy stuff. They're not
gonna let up easy yards, it's a huge sign of encouragement.
All Right, let's go ahead and get to a break.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
We're gonna go and do the uh. Uh, We're gonna
go and do the news and sports headlines coming up
here in just a moment on the radio. Uh for
those of you listening in podcasts form, we'll jump to
the next segment after this.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
Never miss an episode. Recorded versions of The Morning Spiel
are online at wkmznews dot com.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
All Right, folks, we're gonna wrap the show up here,
final segment today, and I want to get to a
couple of things there. Actually, there are really two items
on my agenda whant to get to you, one a
little bit shorter, one a little bit longer. The first
is and I feel like this probably would have been
better said before the holiday, But you know, I did
forget a little bit about Labor Day. I was thrilled
to see as many uh labor themed parades and protests

(26:46):
as there were. I think again, I I know the connotation,
but I also think that it goes kind of without
saying that without labor in this country, we would be
in a grim, gri re in place. And it bothers
me that, But mostly every presidential administration of the last

(27:07):
I don't know sixty years has done its absolute darnedest
it's honestly longer than that to break labor. And the
only true labor friend, for all their other faults, the
Biden administration was probably the best friend of labor that
had been in the White House in a very very
long time. They didn't get a lot else right. That

(27:30):
was one of the few things that they were. They
were an extremely pro labor White House, and I part
of that has to do, I think, with when you
have a guy whose roots are working class, blue collar.
I think that's part of had to work for a living.
You know, understands the concept of being a commuter. That

(27:50):
that makes some sense to me. And you know, I
got to thinking about this because I I just don't
understand at what point in this country we got to
the point where labor unions became the villain, became demonized.
It doesn't make any sense to me. Now. Listen, am

(28:11):
I aware of the fact that there have been some
instances where labor, like organized labor, has exploited certain situations
at the very top. Yes, of course that has occurred
in any political organization you are going to have, and
labor unions are inherently regardless of the origin of the
word a political organization. But it's worth noting that in

(28:35):
any political organization you're going to have some level of
correct that's the nature of it. There's gonna be some
level of corruption at some point in every organized political movement.
But by and large, I can think of no political
movement in the history of the world that has done
more for people than labor. And so I hope that

(28:58):
this past Labor Day spent it thinking about the five
day work week, thinking about the forty hour work week,
thinking about the very concept of weekends, or the child
labor laws. These are all things that you can thank
a union for. We would literally not have them were
they not for a union. Unions are not as powerful

(29:20):
as they once were. They make up I think fewer
than one in five households in the United States. I
don't belong to a union because there is no union
for me to belong to in this instance. But I
don't even know. I hope I'm not gonna get in
trouble for being mister labor, pro labor union guy. But
that's the reality. I'm not gonna pretend otherwise. I'm a
pro labor cheerleader. That is who I am, with the

(29:43):
full knowledge that nobody's perfect. Nobody is perfect. But that
is a movement that has done more good than I
think just about. It's that and the Civil Rights movement
as far as doing good in the United States, right
at the very top there, the abolitionist movement, the civil
rights movement, this is not in any particular order, and
the labor movement take your pick, pick your poison, any

(30:09):
one of those three most consequential and certainly in US
history and certainly internationally as well. Anyway, not what I
came here to talk to you about today, No, no, no,
I wanted to remind you that Sunday was also a
different holiday. Well holiday is the wrong day, but it
was a day. It was a day of days. It
was International Overdose Awareness Day. Now, I've been pretty candid
about this before that when I was man. We're going

(30:32):
on almost ten years now, but it'll be nine years
this December since I lost my best childhood friend to addiction.
And he was the most brilliant person I have ever met,
and I stand by that to this day. I've had
two really close friends who have that I know of,
who have suffered through addiction. One made it through and

(30:55):
is doing really well and one did not. And there's
an element of randomness to it. It's just you get
help at the right time, or you get lucky in
some ways. There's nothing more to it than that. It's
pretty straightforward, but it's worth remembering. And I was encouraged

(31:20):
by someone I talked to the other day who said
to me, it's not a weakness, it's a sickness. And
we do ourselves disservice, we do ourselves harm. As a
society by not recognizing it for what it is, an
illness that requires treatment. You would not ignore strep throat,

(31:44):
You would not ignore pancreatic cancer, You would not ignore
a brain tumor. You would not ignore any of these things.
And yet this is a society that, unfortunately, over the
period of time, has decided that people who suffer the

(32:04):
disease of addiction, at least in some corners of society,
are weak, when in fact it is not that at all.
We have not equipped people with the necessary tools to
avoid addiction in the first place. And while we do
have some tools to help people get back on the

(32:25):
straight and narrow to get back on the right track,
those tools are deeply overwhelmed. Whether they are privately funded
or publicly available, those tools are deeply, deeply, deeply overused
and overwhelmed. And so I remind you, as we passed
get another International Overdose Awareness Day, and in a time

(32:49):
where we have actually seen overdose numbers start to finally drop,
that don't forget that the likely reason that those numbers
are dropping is worth starting to see a decade of
public policy of harm reduction of narcan being readily available.

(33:12):
We're starting to see this stuff. These policies are starting
to catch up. The data is catching up to these policies,
and it would be, I think, just the height of
stupidity to go back on them. Now. I'm not an
expert on this stuff. I'm just a guy who cares.
I lost my best friend on the planet to this.

(33:34):
He was the smartest person I knew, he was the
funniest person. I knew. It's a rare combination, and all
he wanted to do was help people. That's the field
he went into. He went into a field where he
could help people who were hungry and people who were homeless,
and he had his own demons, and ultimately they cost

(33:58):
him his life. But his life means no less because
of that. So I asked folks to remember that it's
not whatever image you have in your head of who
someone suffering from addiction is. Remember that that's a real,

(34:19):
three dimensional person and whether it was someone suffering in silence,
because that is true. That happens where folks can hide
their addiction for a long long time, or they can
be folks who turn their lives upside down and their
addiction eventually overtakes them and consumes them, even if it

(34:41):
doesn't immediately kill them. But either way, they were someone.
They were a three dimensional person who had thoughts and
hopes and dreams and feelings and fears, and they should
be treated as such. They were a person. Anyway, I
told you we were gonna end on a bit of
a downer, So that's where we're at. It's gonna be

(35:02):
tough here in the horns in the background on the
on the song that takes us out of the show today,
but that's that's where we're gonna leave it. So, folks,
that's all I've got for you today. We're gonna talk
a lot more about the Mountaineers coming up on Friday.
So hopefully you enjoyed what I had to say today,
or maybe you think I'm an idiot and you want

(35:23):
to tell me. The Morning Spiel at gmail dot com
is the place for you. That's my email address, The
Morningspiel at gmail dot com s p I E. L.
The Morningspiel at gmail dot com. You tell me if
you think I'm an idiot, particularly on Mountain, your football
and any thoughts, questions, ideas, concerns, criticisms, comments you want
to make. We will share those with Mike Austi when
he comes on the show on Friday morning to preview

(35:46):
this big Ohio University game, which I know he's gonna
be at in Athens. And if you're going to Athens,
by the way, make sure you stop at Jackie O's.
They have some absolutely phenomenal beers and very very good
food as well, but some phenomenal beers, so make sure
you find your way there. Go there Friday night, be
prepared to have a very good time. Anyway. This is
the Morning Spiel presented by Royal Water Treatment. I want
O three three w k m ZC tomorrow, folks,