MORGANTOWN - Cleaning out a crowded notebook and a cluttered mind while enjoying the blissful relative silence surrounding West Virginia's football team:

That's relative, of course, to most of the month of June, when if the former coach wasn't being tied to plots and subplots, the new one was tarnishing his image and then almost immediately resurrecting it by, of all things, jumping out of an airplane.

And this is the offseason? When nothing much happens?

And hey, I'm not the only one who is enjoying the silence. Julian Miller doesn't turn on ESPN and see the Flying WV nearly as much.

"And that's a good thing,'' the senior defensive tackle said.

Still, in some ways, even bad press is good press, if for no other reason than people are talking about West Virginia football again.

And let's face it, wasn't that the real issue with Bill Stewart's tenure? Yes, his teams won nine games in three straight years. Not many programs in the country can match that. But there's also no question that the buzz was gone. No one, at least on a national scale, was talking about West Virginia football.

So in some possibly warped way, Miller figures even the nonsensical publicity his team received in June was better than no publicity at all. Regardless of the reason, there is again curiosity about the Mountaineers.

"You don't want the negative media attention, but at the same time some attention is good,'' Miller said. "People out there in the nation can see, 'All right, we've got to look out for West Virginia. There's something going on there.' People want to see if we can get through this.

"A lot of people think that we can't, but I think there's something special here this year. And I think we're going to be able to show the nation when fall starts.''

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a fan of preseason polls and rankings and lists.

Sure, I understand that in the long run they are actually bad for Division I college football. Very bad. In the only sport known to man where public opinion - and not actual on-the-field competition - goes a long way toward determining an eventual champion, establishing the framework for that opinion months before the season even begins is ludicrous.

(And, by the way, don't let anyone associated with the BCS lead you to believe that that group's convoluted ratings system eliminates the problem. Even the BCS formula consists of one-third computer ratings and two-thirds public opinion polls.)

The inherent problem, of course, is that if a pecking order is established prior to the season, the teams that are thought to be strong have a huge advantage over those who are not. How often does a team picked to finish in the top 10 lose three or four games and never drop out of the rankings? Conversely, how often does a lightly regarded (at least in May) team get on a roll and have too much ground to cover to climb in those same polls?

Still, I'm a fan of these ridiculous ratings because I want to know what people think. And so do you.

I bring this all up because there's a new phenomenon out there now that I just can't enjoy. It's the watch list.

Sure, they've been out there for a few years now, touting a group of defensive backs or offensive linemen or receivers or punters or whatever for some award named after a guy few of the potential honorees even know (show me a kicker who knows who Lou Groza was or a quarterback who has ever heard of Davey O'Brien).

When there were only a few of these awards it was kind of novel, I suppose.

But now, get this: There's actually a group that organizes these watch lists and has a list of release dates for them. Really. It's the National College Football Awards Association, and now through July 18 the group is publishing its watch lists for 15 different awards.

Shoot, at least in the case of preseason Top 25 lists it's always some independent publication or a writer or blogger for the publication (until the actual preseason writers and coaches polls in August) who is just trying to show how smart he is by throwing that stuff out there. But an organization coordinating watch lists? Wow.

Then again, even reputable organizations get carried away sometimes. Sure, all conferences have preseason team ratings, and some have preseason all-star teams voted on by either coaches or the media. The Big East asks the media to vote on preseason football rankings and the coaches to vote on the basketball rankings and a preseason all-star team. All of which is great.

But then they also ask those coaches to pick a preseason rookie of the year in basketball. Before he's ever laced up a sneaker for the official start of practice.

Isn't it all just getting out of hand?

Reach Dave Hickman at 304-348-1734 or dphickm...@aol.com.