MORGANTOWN — On Aug. 4, the Big 12 officially announced plans to add Arizona, Arizona State and Utah into the conference for the 2024-25 season and beyond. WVU athletic director Wren Baker was thrilled when he heard the news.
“When you look at where we were in the Big 12 10 years ago, and I wasn’t in the league at that time but I’m a lifelong Big 12/Big 8 fan, the league was on the verge of extinction,” he said during a press conference Wednesday. “When you look where we’re at today, in my opinion, we’re clearly in the top three of most-stable, best-positioned conferences moving forward in college athletics.”
Not all of Baker’s new contemporaries expressed the same excitement.
“I promise I’m not going to Morgantown,” Arizona State athletic director Ray Anderson said while discussing the Sun Devils’ new travel arrangements on Aug. 5. “I’m going to sign that to (deputy AD) Jean Boyd. He can go to Morgantown but send me to Texas and the rivalry with Arizona and starting a new one with BYU, Utah and Colorado.”
Baker heard about Anderson’s comments the following day and quickly got on the phone with him to sort things out.
“We had a great conversation,” Baker said. “I’ve known Ray, not extraordinarily well, but we’ve known each other for a pretty good while. I suspected he didn’t mean that the way it was taken but it definitely hit a sore sport with all of us who are proud of West Virginia.”
Anderson went on the radio in Arizona a few days later to clarify his comments were meant only as a joke.
“All of those comments were said in jest and taken out of context,” Anderson told Arizona Sports on Aug. 9. “They were clumsy comments from me that I sincerely regret because I offended some people when no offense was intended, and for that I apologize, I sincerely do.”
Baker said he shared the same sentiment during their phone call.
“He was gracious, he was kind,” Baker said. “He started the call by saying ‘I’m so sorry, it was an intent to be funny. … It just didn’t land as I thought it would.’ He knew that pretty quickly because the first person who admonished him was his wife.”
Baker, who was hired at WVU last November and just recently finished moving his wife and two daughters to town, said Anderson’s initial comment struck a nerve with West Virginians who are tired of outsiders not giving their state a chance.
“As somebody who really had not spent a lot of time in the state before I moved here, I’m a champion of people giving West Virginia a chance as a place to live, as a place to visit, as a place to vacation,” Baker said. “It is a beautiful place full of some wonderful people and not enough people know about it.”
Baker said Anderson, who allowed that he will indeed come to Morgantown at some point, does not expect a warm welcome in the Mountain State after all of this.
Baker disagrees.
“He said he probably won’t get a very warm welcome when he comes to Morgantown and I told him I think it’ll be the opposite,” Baker said. “All West Virginians want is for people to give them a chance and to love it here. … I think he’ll see a lot of kindness and a lot of people going out of their way to show him how great it is here when he comes to visit.”
In the end, it sounds as though Baker believes Anderson’s apology was sincere and the two soon-to-be conference foes successfully buried the hatchet.
“If he could go back, I don’t think he would say that,” Baker concluded.
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