By Bill Raney
President, West Virginia Coal Association

As we close the books on another truly great game, the Friends of Coal would like to thank the people of Huntington for playing host to thousands of our state's best - our hard-working coal miners and their families.

Over the past five seasons, this game has been the highlight of our annual calendar, whether it was held in Huntington or Morgantown. It is our honor to serve as the sponsors of the game.

While we all love football, our Mountaineers and our Thundering Herd, the Friends of Coal Bowl is about more than a game. Every fall, whether you wear the Blue and Gold or the Green and White, it lights up our expectations. It fills the pages of our newspapers and our television screens. It energizes us. It has become a symbol of our state, much as that little black rock for which it was named, has energized our nation for the past 100 years.

But it is more than football. It is about more than pride. It is about our future.

 About what is done to or for it.

The cover of The American Scholar quarterly carries an impertinent assertion: “The Earth Doesn’t Care if You Drive a Hybrid.” The essay inside is titled “What the Earth Knows.” What it knows, according to Robert B. Laughlin, co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics, is this: What humans do to, and ostensibly for, the earth does not matter in the long run, and the long run is what matters to the earth. We must, Laughlin says, think about the earth’s past in terms of geologic time.

CHARLESTON – The West Virginia Coal Association would like to thank NIKE and West Virginia University for their tribute to West Virginia’s coal miners.  The decision to exchange the Blue and Gold of the Mountaineers for the “Black and Gold” is a touching tribute to the hard work and sacrifice of the 50,000 men and women who make their living in West Virginia’s coal industry.

The uniforms were the creation of NIKE as part of their introduction of the “Pro Combat” equipment line.  Coach Bill Stewart’s Mountaineers will wear the uniform for the November 26 “Backyard Brawl” at Pitt.

“The Mountaineers are truly West Virginia’s team and much like our coal miners, they are the heart and soul of our state,” said Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association.  “We would like to thank the folks at NIKE and at West Virginia University for making this happen. This recognition means so much -- to our current coal miners and their families and to the generations of West Virginians who have worked and given so much of themselves to provide the resource that has made our nation great.