The winner in the bitter, Kramer vs. Kramer style divorce between Rich Rodriguez and West Virginia? Despite the rough 1-2 start to Rich Rod’s tenure at Michigan, it appears that the Mountaineers are approaching total meltdown mode following their 17-14 overtime loss to Colorado on Thursday. When you go from national title contender to described as “just a mess” by Erin Andrews in the span of three games, things are bad.

But at least head coach Bill Stewart still has the support of the local press, such as THE CHARLESTON GAZETTE:

WVU’s football team is on a downward spiral that only Dante could appreciate.

Well, maybe it’s not great yet, but I’m sure that once he gets used to coaching, you’ll see that…

New head coach Bill Stewart has taken a team once resembling a streamlined yacht and turned it into a motorboat. In embarrassing fashion. In front of the college football world.

Umm…never mind.

So even though, as THE ANN ARBOR NEWS points out, the Wolverines could not go bowling for the first time since 1974, it’s a totally different situation: Rodriguez left West Virgina much better stocked for a good 2008 than Lloyd Carr left him at Michigan.

And there’s at least some optimisim that things might get better for the Wolverines, while Mountaineer fans are starting to dread the day that they ran smack into Oklahoma’s knack for blowing bowl games, making Stewart seem like the perfect choice to replace Rodriguez.

I know that some people would consider it classless to fire a coach midway through his first season, but is this something West Virginia needs to consider? It’s pretty clear from this point that Stewart is in way over his head, and is not prepared to be a head coach, and the “Fire Bill Stewart” e-mails and message board posting are sprouting like wildfire.

Let me put it this way: if I took a job as a butcher, and on my first day just stood there staring at the cleaver and the map of cuts of beef with a blank look on my face, I probably wouldn’t be back for Day Two.