Post by rainman on Oct 3, 2007 6:05:23 GMT -5
Enhancing memory of WVU legend
By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN— There were times on Friday night — quite a few of them, to be precise — when West Virginia’s consensus All-America running back Steve Slaton was certain there were 12 players on defense for South Florida.
We’re not talking about the traditional 12th man, although there were times when the raucous crowd did play a part in the intensity with which South Florida played defense. And we’re not talking, as West Virginia fans and announcers all too often do, about the 12th opponent wearing a striped shirt and carrying a green whistle.
No, this opponent was actually rooting for his beloved Mountaineers to win the game, but he was making one last stand in defense of his own school touchdown record.
If Ira Errett Rodgers was going to give up his record, it was going to have to be taken from him the hard way. He — or, the ghost of the man they called “Rat” Rodgers — wasn’t about to just step aside and let it be broken at will.
As play started on Friday, there was much at stake, considering that Rich Rodriguez was also going for his 100th coaching victory and West Virginia’s season stood in the balance.
Then there was Rodgers’ record of 47 career touchdowns, a record so old it was set in the same year the Chicago White Sox threw the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds; the year World War I officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the year the first Miss America was crowned and the year women got the vote, the year Prohibition was ratified as the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the year a most eclectic a group of celebrities was born including Andy Rooney, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Liberace, Jackie Robinson, George Wallace, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Nat King Cole and Eva Peron.
Football was not the wide open, high-scoring game in 1919 it is today, yet Ira Rodgers set a WVU school touchdown record that would last for 88 years, matched once by Avon Cobourne, but never broken.
Always courteous, always humble, Slaton admitted he knew of Cobourne far more than he knew about Rodgers, and that is a shame for the years have eroded the legend of one of WVU’s greatest personas.
Physically, Rodgers was a bull of a man, a fullback who played his first game at WVU as a quarterback.
While earning a chemistry degree from the university, Rodgers was elected captain of the football, basketball and baseball teams as a senior. He moved on to coach the Mountaineers in football, baseball and golf, compiling a 41-31-8 mark as a football coach and a 204-208-3 mark as a baseball coach.
Rodgers’ baseball skills led to an offer from Connie Mack, the long-time manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, but he chose instead to remain at West Virginia to teach and coach. He was the Mountaineer baseball coach for 23 years. During summer months, Rodgers did play and manage some professional baseball, including a stint as the player-manager of the “outlaw” Kingston Highwaymen in the East Carolina Baseball Association.
Able to excel in just about anything, Rodgers won the West Virginia Amateur golf tournament at White Sulfur Springs only one year after he was persuaded to take up the game.
He did all this despite coming from rather humble roots, one of 11 children born to William and Rosa Rodgers in Bethany. Having no high school to play on, Rodgers was allowed to play four years of football for Bethany College.
So, in some ways, it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise in 1919 when he had the most amazing of seasons at WVU for it was his eighth year of college football, something that was often complained about by opponents.
In 1919 Rodgers led the nation in scoring with 147 points on 19 touchdowns and 33 extra points. Oh, it didn’t count on his point total but the former quarterback also threw 11 touchdown passes, which stood as the school record for 30 years.
Grantland Rice, he of the “Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again” lead, had this to say about Rodgers as a player five years before he wrote of Notre Dame’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:
“There was no greater football player in the land.”
Then there was Princeton Coach Bill Roper after WVU beat the Tigers, 25-0:
“I have never seen Rodgers equal as a forward passer for accuracy and distance and he is the equal of (Ted) Coy of Yale as a runner.”
That, of course, is as high a praise as former Heisman Trophy winner Desmond Howard gave Slaton when he described him on ESPN:
“Slaton’s like putting olive oil on your hands and trying to hold a live fish. He’s got Ferrari speed. He’s just a phenom to watch. He’s the type of guy who can make a defense look like it’s standing still.”
But Slaton is not compared to Rodgers, perhaps due to the change in the way the game has played.
Football then was played in leather helmets without face guards. There were no game films, no steroids, supplements or hi-tech training methods.
Just men.
Homer Hogue, who played for Rodgers, once described what it was like playing football then:
“If you didn’t get your nose bloodied on the first play or two, you weren't playing right.”
That is why they had to find someone other than Rodgers to whom Slaton could be compared. Even Cobourne and Amos Zereoue, the top two career rushers for WVU, do not fit.
The closest anyone has come is a fellow by the name of Tony Dorsett, a college and professional Hall of Fame back with electrifying speed and moves who, heretofore, was thought to be incomparable.
More than likely, this Saturday at Syracuse, Rodgers will take a break from defending his career touchdown record and WVU will find a way to get Slaton into the end zone.
It will be a wonderful moment for him, a wonderful moment for college football, for Slaton has been nothing but an inspiration in what he has accomplished for the Mountaineers. Hopefully, when he does score the go-ahead touchdown, it will not erase the memory of Ira Errett Rodgers, only enhance it for men like that apparently come around only every century or so.
By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN— There were times on Friday night — quite a few of them, to be precise — when West Virginia’s consensus All-America running back Steve Slaton was certain there were 12 players on defense for South Florida.
We’re not talking about the traditional 12th man, although there were times when the raucous crowd did play a part in the intensity with which South Florida played defense. And we’re not talking, as West Virginia fans and announcers all too often do, about the 12th opponent wearing a striped shirt and carrying a green whistle.
No, this opponent was actually rooting for his beloved Mountaineers to win the game, but he was making one last stand in defense of his own school touchdown record.
If Ira Errett Rodgers was going to give up his record, it was going to have to be taken from him the hard way. He — or, the ghost of the man they called “Rat” Rodgers — wasn’t about to just step aside and let it be broken at will.
As play started on Friday, there was much at stake, considering that Rich Rodriguez was also going for his 100th coaching victory and West Virginia’s season stood in the balance.
Then there was Rodgers’ record of 47 career touchdowns, a record so old it was set in the same year the Chicago White Sox threw the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds; the year World War I officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the year the first Miss America was crowned and the year women got the vote, the year Prohibition was ratified as the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the year a most eclectic a group of celebrities was born including Andy Rooney, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Liberace, Jackie Robinson, George Wallace, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Nat King Cole and Eva Peron.
Football was not the wide open, high-scoring game in 1919 it is today, yet Ira Rodgers set a WVU school touchdown record that would last for 88 years, matched once by Avon Cobourne, but never broken.
Always courteous, always humble, Slaton admitted he knew of Cobourne far more than he knew about Rodgers, and that is a shame for the years have eroded the legend of one of WVU’s greatest personas.
Physically, Rodgers was a bull of a man, a fullback who played his first game at WVU as a quarterback.
While earning a chemistry degree from the university, Rodgers was elected captain of the football, basketball and baseball teams as a senior. He moved on to coach the Mountaineers in football, baseball and golf, compiling a 41-31-8 mark as a football coach and a 204-208-3 mark as a baseball coach.
Rodgers’ baseball skills led to an offer from Connie Mack, the long-time manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, but he chose instead to remain at West Virginia to teach and coach. He was the Mountaineer baseball coach for 23 years. During summer months, Rodgers did play and manage some professional baseball, including a stint as the player-manager of the “outlaw” Kingston Highwaymen in the East Carolina Baseball Association.
Able to excel in just about anything, Rodgers won the West Virginia Amateur golf tournament at White Sulfur Springs only one year after he was persuaded to take up the game.
He did all this despite coming from rather humble roots, one of 11 children born to William and Rosa Rodgers in Bethany. Having no high school to play on, Rodgers was allowed to play four years of football for Bethany College.
So, in some ways, it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise in 1919 when he had the most amazing of seasons at WVU for it was his eighth year of college football, something that was often complained about by opponents.
In 1919 Rodgers led the nation in scoring with 147 points on 19 touchdowns and 33 extra points. Oh, it didn’t count on his point total but the former quarterback also threw 11 touchdown passes, which stood as the school record for 30 years.
Grantland Rice, he of the “Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again” lead, had this to say about Rodgers as a player five years before he wrote of Notre Dame’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:
“There was no greater football player in the land.”
Then there was Princeton Coach Bill Roper after WVU beat the Tigers, 25-0:
“I have never seen Rodgers equal as a forward passer for accuracy and distance and he is the equal of (Ted) Coy of Yale as a runner.”
That, of course, is as high a praise as former Heisman Trophy winner Desmond Howard gave Slaton when he described him on ESPN:
“Slaton’s like putting olive oil on your hands and trying to hold a live fish. He’s got Ferrari speed. He’s just a phenom to watch. He’s the type of guy who can make a defense look like it’s standing still.”
But Slaton is not compared to Rodgers, perhaps due to the change in the way the game has played.
Football then was played in leather helmets without face guards. There were no game films, no steroids, supplements or hi-tech training methods.
Just men.
Homer Hogue, who played for Rodgers, once described what it was like playing football then:
“If you didn’t get your nose bloodied on the first play or two, you weren't playing right.”
That is why they had to find someone other than Rodgers to whom Slaton could be compared. Even Cobourne and Amos Zereoue, the top two career rushers for WVU, do not fit.
The closest anyone has come is a fellow by the name of Tony Dorsett, a college and professional Hall of Fame back with electrifying speed and moves who, heretofore, was thought to be incomparable.
More than likely, this Saturday at Syracuse, Rodgers will take a break from defending his career touchdown record and WVU will find a way to get Slaton into the end zone.
It will be a wonderful moment for him, a wonderful moment for college football, for Slaton has been nothing but an inspiration in what he has accomplished for the Mountaineers. Hopefully, when he does score the go-ahead touchdown, it will not erase the memory of Ira Errett Rodgers, only enhance it for men like that apparently come around only every century or so.
