Published: December 16, 2007 11:09 pm      

‘It’s been a rough day'

MORGANTOWN — A cold wind whipped the falling snow harshly across the parking lot outside the Puskar Center on Sunday afternoon. The barren trees, stripped of their leaves, provided a stark contrast to the festively decorated Christmas trees that stood at each end of the lobby of the building that serves as the headquarters of the West Virginia football program.

A team meeting had ended not too many minutes earlier, practice was about to begin when a burly figure walked briskly toward the door. He was dressed neither for practice nor the weather he was heading out into.

“This bleeping sucks,” said Keilen Dykes, a senior, a team captain, a starter on the defensive line.

He then disappeared out the front door, a sweatshirt pulled up over his head to protect him from the elements.

Inside, at one end of the Puskar Center, Rita Rodriguez stood with friends and children, occasionally getting a hug from a passerby.

Just a few steps away, within the bunker that was his office, was former West Virginia University football coach Rich Rodriguez.

Former coach. Hard to write. Hard to say but you’d best get used to it.

Moments later, 50 minutes after he had entered the Puskar Center, maybe 25 minutes after he had held a 12-minute meeting with his team, he hurriedly left his office, speaking not a word to the waiting media.

Over his shoulder was an overnight bag.

He headed for a side door, where he climbed into his waiting white Mercedes-Benz SUV, which had been moved from its spot in front of the building, and drove off into tomorrow, presumably heading for Hart Field, from where he would fly to Michigan to become the new football coach there.

He was alone in his car, his family following in another vehicle, alone with whatever thoughts he had as he left the office that he had occupied since late 2000.

Practice was held in the Caperton Indoor Facility, more spirited than most as players worked off the emotions of the day.

And what a day it had been.

The rumors had circulated all weekend that Rodriguez was talking with Michigan, although no one connected with the Mountaineer program thought it was anything more than his flirtation with Alabama had been a year earlier. After all, hadn’t he said then when his contract was extended through 2013 at an average of $1.8 million a year and when he received all the concessions he wanted on facility improvements that he was here for the long haul.

“When the details (of the new contract with WVU) come out, you’ll see that I’m committed to West Virginia University for a very, very long time,” he said then.

And so it was when the players gathered for their meeting, they were not exactly expecting to hear a farewell speech.

Yet something was different, something in the air, something in the approach.

“Last year I had a gut feeling he was staying when the meeting started,” senior linebacker Marc Magro said. “This year I had a gut feeling he was leaving.”

Asked to described the meeting between the exiting coach and the players whom he had brought here, urged to stay and then now were being left with a devastating defeat to Pitt on their resume and a bowl date with Oklahoma on their menu, words like “emotional,” “silent,” and “awkward” were used.

There were tears coming from the coach, although it may be difficult to understand what he had to cry about. He had just lost the biggest game of his career and picked up a pay raise of about $700,000 a year as his Michigan salary is expected to pay $2.5 million.

And this wasn’t a case of being pushed out the door. It was more a matter of having his bluff called, of him going to the well one too many times. He’d renegotiated his WVU contract so often that the original was unrecognizable.

He told the players that a decision had to be made. What he didn’t tell them was why.

All he would say is that there were a lot of reasons involved “and some day you will understand.”

Many felt violated, if not by his decision, then by the timing of it. Instead of lifting them from the depths to which they had been dragged by the Pitt defeat, he simply walked away.

Others, of course, didn’t care why he left.

“Do you have dreams?” senior fullback Owen Schmitt asked a reporter. “Do you like to follow those dreams? You gotta do what you gotta do sometimes. Coach Rod did all he could for us.”

“He brought me here. I love him for that,” added senior cornerback Vaughn Rivers.

Had those who offered undying support for Rodriguez known that a source said he had called Jeanette High School quarterback Terrelle Pryor, considered the nation’s top recruit, and told him he was heading to Michigan before he told those players that he had bonded so closely with they may have felt as used as the WVU administration probably does today.

Rodriguez’s departure puts WVU in a deeper dilemma than just being in an awful mental state for Oklahoma. There’s a matter of replacing Rodriguez and doing it quickly. There’s a question of whether or not super freshman Noel Devine will want to remain at the school.

And as close as Rodriguez was to quarterback Patrick White and running back Steve Slaton, it could well influence them to leave for the NFL rather than return for their senior seasons.

As Rivers said summing it up, “It’s been a rough day.”

A cold, snow-blown rough day.

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.