IT NEVER fails.

Every football season, West Virginia plays Syracuse.

And every season his name pops up because of an incident that happened between the teams almost 18 years to this day.

Marvin Graves.

You may think Mr. Grinch was vile. That he had termites in his smile and the sweetness of a crocodile. In West Virginia, though, he was Cindy Lou Who compared to Graves.

The teams were playing in Morgantown that Oct. 17 in 1992. WVU held the lead late, but SU was driving. Graves, then the quarterback at Syracuse, was run out of bounds, but then touched off a bench-clearing brawl by throwing the ball at the head of Mountaineer cornerback Tommy Orr.

With 3:33 remaining in the game, four players were ejected for fighting - three from WVU (end Tom Briggs, safety Mike Collins and cornerback Leroy Axem) and one from Syracuse (lineman Ken Warren). Graves was not tossed. He proceeded to lead the then-Orangemen to a game-winning 17-yard touchdown pass to tight end Chris Gedney with 51 ticks left in a 20-17 victory.

It did not sit well within the Mountain State. "I've been coaching for a long time but I don't think I've ever had one taken from me like that before,'' said WVU coach Don Nehlen that day. "It's a crime." He would repeat those last three words twice more in his brief post-game remarks.

The headline in the next day's Sunday Gazette-Mail: "Mountaineers robbed, Nehlen says."

There were other headlines to follow, like "Officials made three judgment errors, Big East says,'' and "[Syracuse coach Paul] Paqualoni insists WVU also at fault.''

The following August, however, there was another headline. One many forget. It read "Graves apologizes for sparking infamous brawl last October.'' And he did. "I apologize," Graves said. "If I had to do it over, I wouldn't do it."

Anyway, I started thinking about that day. And wondering. What the heck ever happened to Marvin Graves?

I not only found out; I reached him.

Graves is now the quarterbacks coach for The Catholic University of America, the national university of the Catholic church, in Washington, D.C., his hometown. The school is situated just north of Capitol Hill. The Cardinals play in the Division III Old Dominion Athletic Conference. They are 2-4 this season and play at Emory & Henry this Saturday.

So Graves is at a different station in life now. But he does remember that stop.

"I definitely do,'' he said with a laugh. "It's funny you called because one of my players here has been on me to bring in some of my old film. So I brought some in. I'm sitting in my office showing him some of the '92 highlight film when we beat Texas [31-21].

"It must be Syracuse day."

Saturday this week is Syracuse-West Virginia day, a day in which Graves will always - at least in West Virginia - live in infamy.

"The thing you remember about West Virginia is it was a conference game," Graves said. "It wasn't like playing a team one time, like Texas or Colorado. We were familiar with them; they were familiar with us. We didn't like them; they didn't like us.

"You always had to bring your 'A' game. You knew it was going to be physical."

Nobody, though, could have predicted how physical that game would be back in 1992. After Graves threw the ball at Orr, Syracuse players and coaches quickly surrounded the pair. When WVU players went to Orr's assistance, shoving matches and fights broke out. Finally, the officials restored order and ejected the players. Just not the one who started it all.

"I got caught up in the moment of a rivalry game,'' Graves reflected on Thursday. "I felt I was getting hit out of bounds the whole game. I didn't feel the officials were taking control.

"I don't think Orr meant to hit me maliciously. It's not something I walk around bragging about. We were just down and rallied to win. If that's what it took to win, that's what I'm about."

Graves, you may remember, won a lot. He is still Syracuse's all-time passing leader with 8,466 career yards. He went on to play quarterback for Toronto, Saskatchewan and Montreal of the Canadian Football League before entering coaching.

He said, however, he'll not forget that October day in Morgantown.

"I hear about it all the time," he said. "We have a couple kids on our team whose parents are big West Virginia fans. I see other [WVU fans] here and there. Some of them still don't like me. But I remind them I'm still upset [the Mountaineers] beat us 43-0 my senior year."

That was the year Nehlen guided his team to an 11-0 regular season and a spot in the Sugar Bowl opposite Florida.

It's funny, though, isn't it? How some of us can't remember where we parked our car an hour ago, yet can remember details of a game 18 years ago? It's funny how the emotions of a game can bubble up all these years later. And how a rivalry can stick.

 "There are a lot of West Virginia fans around here,'' Graves said of the D.C. area. "But there's a big Syracuse crowd here too. I don't have to give any ground."

Ah, the remnants of a rivalry.

The hope, of course, is Graves simply gets needled these days by WVU fans. There was certainly heat at Mountaineer Field that October afternoon. A cup was thrown from the stands. Graves caught it and pretended to take a swig. But it was 18 years ago. Graves is a 39-year-old man in his third season at Catholic University. He's married with four daughters.

This Saturday, the coach and his team will be on the road for their game. But, yes, he'll be checking his BlackBerry phone for scores of the game. And, yes, he'll be rooting for Syracuse to recover from its beating last week at the hands of Pitt.

"I wish those [SU] guys luck," Graves said. "It would be a great week to bounce back."

Reach Mitch Vingle at 304-348-4827, mitchvin...@wvgazette.com or follow him at http://twitter.com/MitchVingle.