Your Mother Slept With Wilt Chamberlain

The latest in the Mountaineer-Rodriguez pissing match: Documents on football players, including notes on scholarship money awarded, community service activities, contact info, class attendance, and also information on boosters has magically “disappeared”. It appears as though some magic fairy may or may not have swooped into the former football coach’s private office and taken them. Maybe some magic fairy that is the dean of the spread offense and currently resides in Ann Arbor???

Ah yes, Coach Paid Rod. According to sources in the WVU athletic department, Rodriguez was in his private office on December 18th along with video coordinator Dusty Rutledge shredding paperwork. No one really paid much attention to it, because everyone thought he was destroying files on his adulterous ways (allegedly). Alas, now all of the player files are missing.

As of right now, the athletic department is not really making any statements except to say that they are focused on getting staffing together for its football team, since Coach Paid Rod took most of the coaches with him. BUT, the school’s very busy legal counsel (with the $4 million lawsuit against Rodriguez) has taken an interest, presumably because FERPA laws may have been violated. If Rodriguez did in fact do what is alleged and destroyed players’ records, he deserves whatever comes to him.

However, where was the school’s athletic department and records office??? Any information that the former coach had on players, the athletic department and/or records office should have had copies. This is sensitive information, and though I am not a lawyer, a conversation I had with an attorney at a university has stated that the school is just as liable because they allowed one man, presumably, to keep student records, and not have a backup copy. According to my lawyer buddy (who we will call Jim, he asked not to be named personally), at their college, the records office has not only electronic copies, both on hard drives and backed up flash drives (they used to use tapes), but also paper copies. Their records office is one of the biggest departments on their campus in terms of the amount of staff, and a representative of the school’s legal department actually has a lawyer with an office in the department. Also, the athletics department is routinely audited by accountants and another lawyer. But to be fair, the school that my buddy “Jim” is a counselor for is a lot bigger of a school than West Virginia and has a lot more resources, but at the very least, there was no oversight…

Speaking of the school’s fine record keeping, yesterday, WVU’s Faculty Senate recommended that a three member panel also include those with no ties to either the school or any government organization, so that a proper investigation can be conducted in the wake of MBA-Gate. The university has had some controversy because Heather Bresch, WVU alum (allegedly), daughter of WV Gov. Joe Manchin, and COO of Mylan, Inc., may or may not have received her MBA honestly. The school has blamed the lack of records on a transition from paper to digital media, but magically, no other students have come forward and said that they have had the same problem with record keeping. I find that very interesting…….