Rod gets ball

[rainman]

Rodriguez gets ball for 100th victory
By Mickey Furfari
For the Times West Virginian


MORGANTOWN— West Virginia University honored Rich Rodriguez on Tuesday afternoon with a football commemorating the 100th victory of his football head-coaching career.
Athletic director Ed Pastilong made the presentation before the start of Rodriguez’s weekly press conference at the Puskar Center.
“On behalf of the athletic department, Rich, I’d like to congratulate you, the coaches that were working with you, the players that played for you, and all the people that supported you in this fantastic accomplishment,” Pastilong said.
He noted that the milestone, which came at Syracuse in a 55-14 rout last Saturday, hiked his number of wins as Mountaineer mentor to 55. The other 45 came at Salem and Glenville State.
Pastilong continued:
“Equally as important, I’d like to compliment you for the manner in which you run the football program: Attention to academics, compliance and putting out a very competitive team each year.”
Rodriguez said, “Thank you very much. Obviously, if you coach enough years, you’ll probably get enough wins.
“As I’ve said before, I haven’t made a play in any of those games. I’ve had a great staff here and it has extended beyond the coaches.
“(That includes) the support personnel, the administration, a whole lot of folks. It’s nice, and I appreciate everybody’s help.”
Rodriguez’s overall record is 100-61-2 for 15 years. He’s 55-25-0 for his seven years at WVU.

[cviller]

Rodriguez on top of the world

By Mike Casazza
Daily Mail sportswriter

MORGANTOWN -- As Rich Rodriguez took a handoff from his athletic director while being presented a football commemorating his 100th career victory Tuesday, he stood atop the mountain he'd climbed as the coach at West Virginia University and looked down at the beginning.


That beginning very nearly was the ending.



"I went 2-8 my first year and got the program dropped," said Rodriguez of his first dalliance in the lead position as a 24-year-old head coach at Salem College. "I was thinking there probably aren't a whole lot of programs who are going to hire a guy who got his program terminated."



Ultimately, he was wrong. But there were tense moments after he went from the youngest head coach in the country to the youngest unemployed head coach in the country.



He'd been on the job barely a year when Teikyo University bought Salem and dropped football.



Rodriguez' world was spinning with his wedding just two weeks away, but his world was not his greatest concern.



He spent more than a month trying to help his players find a new place to call home and his assistants a new place to call work. His honeymoon never happened.



"We didn't have any money," Rodriguez said.



Eventually, he landed a job as a volunteer assistant at his alma mater, WVU, which is where things began to make sense.



"If I still want to stay in coaching after all this," he recalled thinking, "then I'm a lifer."



Today, he's 100-61-2 overall, 55-25 at WVU and assured of wearing a set of headphones for as long as he wants. Where and who he is now, though, is largely the result of where and who he was before.



After being exposed to the intricacies of Division I football for one year in Morgantown, Rodriguez was back in charge, hired as the head coach at Glenville State in 1990.



Naturally, his move could not be without unique circumstances. Remember, he was promoted to the top spot at Salem when his predecessor bought a boat and a bar and headed for a new life. Rodriguez's second gig arrived just as auspiciously.



"I think only three of us interviewed," he said. "The other two had never coached. I think I got that one by default."



He didn't care and was happy to be coaching, even in a situation that produced few smiles and sufficient frustrations.



"We went 1-7-1 the first year," he said, "but that might have been the best coaching job I ever did."




Pause for a moment to consider how bold a statement that truly is. Even if you didn't know all of his background, which includes coaching in the NAIA national championship game in 1993; crafting an ingenious, often impersonated offense; recruiting and tutoring All-Americans and NFL stars, winning a Bowl Championship Series game and, now, positioning teams for national championship runs, to say that season was his best would seem completely counterfeit.


Yet, he means it. Rodriguez realized how significant that season would be when he first met with a team that would win just once in nine games.



"We only had about 30 guys on the team and half of them didn't play in high school," he said. "And I was the biggest guy in the room."



Together, they set their aim as high as possible and, perhaps, even beyond that. Rodriguez pledged Glenville State would win the West Virginia Conference championship that season.



Never mind the Pioneers hadn't done that since 1959. This was their plan, one they cheered for wildly as soon as Rodriguez finished announcing it.



"They were so uncoordinated they couldn't even high-five each other," he said. "I thought, 'This might not be as easy as I think it's going to be.' "



That conference title eventually came in 1993. It was the first of four straight. By the end of the 1996 season, Rodriguez had created such a buzz that he was hired as the offensive coordinator at Tulane and the rest, as they say, is history.



And to think, it's a history that almost was never written.



"My first two years as a head coach, we won a total of three games," he said. "It wasn't a great beginning, but we didn't have a great beginning here. We went 3-8. But I always thought if you hang around long enough, maybe you'll get something to bounce your way."