Have any questions, hate mail, private comments, cease and desist letters, story ideas, death threats (that will be published) or tips? Then drop us a line at
ymswwc@gmail.com
West Virginia: One BIG Clusterf**k (part 3)
Posted by Joel on January 20, 2008
Continuing the fine clusterf**k series that was began when Rich “Michigan Man” Rodriguez left the Mountaineer State to coach at Michigan and has continued to this day, comes this story, from Mr. Michigan himself. In it, Rodriguez offered these nuggets, breaking the silence he had about the Mountaineer program after he had left for Ann Arbor:
“There seems to be a campaign to try to smear me,” Rodriguez said Thursday. “I haven’t said anything until recently, when I felt I needed to defend all the false accusations. It has just gotten ridiculous over the last couple of days. There’s so many inaccuracies and falsehood and innuendo, at some point, you get tired of getting beat up. It was that I erased academic files, then the next day, ‘Oh no, that didn’t happen.’ The corrections are on page six and the lead story is on page one. I know there is disappointment and hard feelings because it’s a small state and the program is a source of great pride, but this campaign is not helping West Virginia’s program. You’re trying to hurt Rich Rodriguez, but you’re hurting West Virginia. I changed jobs. This is America, and sometimes you change jobs. I would hope that at some point when emotions cool down, that you can see the good things.”
See the thing is, I agree with Rodriguez in that it does seem like in the pissing contest of West Virginia vs. Rodriguez, the state and the school has been the one with the fuller bladder and until he spoke out, Rodriguez was doing his best not to try to piss on the electric fence. But the other thing is that I was feeling a sort of Stockholm Syndrome towards the school. While I was not going to become a fan of the school, I felt as though the Mountaineer football program was really all the state had. The fan base is very passionate about the school’s football program, the state is economically far behind any other state in the country, and football is a source of pride in the state. Rodriguez betrayed the school and the state, the switch to Michigan was sudden, and he rightfully owes the school $4 million…
Then I read this article by Ivan Maisel and the original story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette written by Chuck Finder concerning former Mountaineer offensive coordinator Calvin Magee, who left West Virginia to go to Michigan with Rodriguez. Magee expresses anger and betrayal because he was never seriously considered for the West Virginia head coaching position because he’s black.
“For seven years I was told that once you’re a Mountaineer, you’re always a Mountaineer,” said Magee, a Wolverine now after resigning Jan. 4 to become Rich Rodriguez’s associate head coach and offensive coordinator at Michigan. “I bought into that. But I found out … that isn’t true.”
Now the first thing when I read the title of the article was that Magee was at the introductory news conference when Rodriguez was introduced as the new Michigan head coach. Well, according to the story, Magee said the only reason he got on that plane with Rodriguez was because of a conversation he had with an administrator at WVU. When he asked the unnamed administrator if Magee had a shot at becoming the head coach at West Virginia, he was told no, you don’t and pointed to Magee’s skin. Later on, he was off to Ann Arbor.
Now, Magee did come back to help coach the Mountaineers in the Fiesta Bowl win, and the school allowed him. In the midst of it all, they told him not to make any recruiting phone calls and took his school issued cell phone (with “Country Roads” ringtone). A day later, he got his phone back and an apology from athletic director Ed Pastilong.
Later, Magee and Pastilong had a conversation, and though both sides agree that they talked, there is a dispute over what has been said. I will go with Magee on this one since Pastilong keeps giving the old “No comment” line. Magee said that no one even asked him if he was interested in the job until Floyd Keith, head of the Black Coaches and Administrators Association, called and spoke with Ed Pastilong about minority candidates for the head coaching position. Pastilong later told Magee that he had just spoken to Floyd Keith about why no minority candidates had been interviewed. Here’s Magee’s recollection of the conversation:
“I told him, ‘I wondered the same thing.’ … [Pastilong] said, ‘At this point, I wouldn’t want you do to anything that wouldn’t mean much.’ And I told Eddie, ‘At this point, Eddie, you’re right, I don’t want to be part of a meaningless interview.’ Because he let me know that’s what it would be. I told him not to insult me or embarrass me. And I told him that [now] it was my every intention to go to Michigan. It felt like they were trying to appease the BCA.”
Now the school does have a special office to make sure that minority candidates are sought after for jobs on campus. Jennifer McIntosh is the executive director of the West Virginia President’s Office for Social Justice When the paper asked about Magee and why he wasn’t asked about the job, she said “Who? I don’t know anything about [Magee].”
Magee could file a complaint to the school’s department that handles discrimination and harassment claims, but guess who runs that department??? Yup, McIntosh, the lady who couldn’t point out Magee if he was wearing a red and white sweater with matching hat and glasses.
The best case scenario is that the West Virginia administration looks like a bunch of incompetent administrators monkeys trying to fuck a football. Now I understand why Mike Locksley, OC at Illinios, declined to interview. This administration, from the top down, needs to go. We have the governor’s daughter buying degrees, the school’s president being elected even though he has no ties to academia, and an athetic department that is so worried about getting $4 million from their coach that they are slinging turds through the media like they were running for political office. I agree with Maisel, this makes West Virginia (the school) look confused and like a school that can’t get out of its own way. The Ken Kendrick quote when he called the athletics department “intellectually bankrupt” comes immediately to mind. The only administration that I can think of that is this dysfunctional is the New York Knicks. Fans and alums of the school, a piece of advice. Put your hatred for Rodriguez to the side, just for a minute. Start looking at the leaders at the school and direct some of the betrayal venom to the school’s administrators. Is $4 million worth all of the negative press you are receiving??? If you continue to allow those in charge to continue, your beloved school will suffer. You don’t think this situation will be used in recruiting??? What profits a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul??? At the rate the school is going, the answer to that age old question will be found in Morgantown…
JIMBO said
Published: January 20, 2008 11:11 pm
Rodriguez saga only getting worse
By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN — MORGANTOWN — Last week, as the dirt from the divorce between Rich Rodriguez and West Virginia University turned to mud, which naturally progressed into a whole lot of mud-slinging, the former Mountaineer coach went public and accused the powers that be at the school and in the state of conducting “a smear campaign” against him.
But who is smearing who? Or is it whom is smearing who, or it is whom is smearing whom, or who is smearing whom?
It’s beginning to look a whole lot like the Rodriguez camp is wielding the knife and West Virginia – the school and the state – are just so much peanut butter and not as Rodriguez would have you believe.
The latest shot was fired, by former WVU offensive coordinator Calvin Magee with the not-so-subtle touch of his and Rodriguez’s agent, Mike Brown, in an article appearing Sunday in what is becoming Brown’s own personal public relations vehicle, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Last week Rodriguez charged there were “falsehoods, inaccuracies and innuendo” coming out of West Virginia. Now “Team Rodriguez” has decided it is time to play “the race card.”
In Magee’s eyes, he was passed over as a real candidate for the head coaching job that went to his fellow assistant, Bill Stewart, because of the color of his skin, according to the story in the P-G.
Right! That was it. Sure. We all should have known it was a racial thing.
It couldn’t have had anything to do with Magee getting on a chartered jet with Rodriguez and defensive backfield coach and recruiting coordinator Tony Gibson to fly to Michigan the day after Rodriguez was announced as that school’s new coach.
No, this show of support for Rodriguez, leading to the assumption that Magee was signed, sealed and delivered as a Michigan assistant, didn’t matter at all.
As WVU Athletic Director Ed Pastilong said incredulously Sunday after having been made aware of the article, “[Calvin Magee] virtually pulled himself out of consideration when he went up there.”
The assumption Magee was leaving WVU was so strong that the Michigan papers wrote that his presence at the press conference signaled the imminent firing of the incumbent offensive coordinator and the Ann Arbor News’ coverage of the introductory press conference took it a step further:
“Rodriguez also introduced offensive coordinator and assistant head coach Calvin Magee and secondary coach and recruiting coordinator Tony Gibson, who are coming with him from West Virginia.”
That was the first straw – and the last – as far as any candidacy Magee had for the coaching job.
But Brown saw it differently. To him it wasn’t quite so black and white. In fact, to him it was only white as he charged West Virginia’s athletic department with “racial discrimination and harassment”, according to the article.
Then Brown had this rather farfetched tale to tell the P-G to back up his charge.
“Calvin was in discussions with this West Virginia University administrator, and Calvin kind of politely asked him, ‘Do you think I have a shot [at becoming the next Mountaineers head coach]?’ The administrator said, ‘No you don’t,’ and pointed to his skin. That’s why Calvin got on the plane.”
Let’s see, who do you suppose “this West Virginia University administrator” could be? Pastilong? He says not. President Mike Garrison? Hardly.
It is kind of hard to guess, considering how many administrators there are in the athletic department, from facilities to ticket sales, from promotions to finance. You can rest assured fewer than 5 percent of the administrators in the department had any knowledge of the workings of the search, especially before it started, which was when this alleged conversation took place.
Pastilong completely denies that the color of Magee’s skin had anything to do with the search or the selection of a new coach.
“We make every effort to select the best possible person,” Pastilong said. “We make every effort to work with the Office of Social Justice in our hires. We are conscious of diversification and at the end of the day want to select the best person possible.”
And that person probably never was Calvin Magee. He has no head coaching experience and, working as offensive coordinator under Rich Rodriguez doesn’t exactly free you up to make too many important decisions. In fact, Rodriguez once mentioned in a press conference that there are times during games when he turns off the headset that connects him to Magee, wanting to run the offense totally by himself.”
What’s more, the decline this past year by 2007 All-American Steve Slaton, who was Magee’s prime pupil as running backs coach, certainly didn’t help Magee’s cause any. Slaton gained 1,128 yards as a freshman, 1,744 as a sophomore and 1,053 as a junior.
No one can say at present that selecting Stewart was the right choice, any more than anyone could say Rodriguez was the right choice when he was chosen or after his first season resulted in a 3-8 record.
What you can say is WVU has history on its side in WVU in picking football coaches. It has hired only four – not counting Stewart – since 1970. Two of those coaches – Bobby Bowden and Don Nehlen – are in the College Football Hall of Fame and a third, Frank Cignetti, should go in for the job he did at Indiana, Pa., coaching 20 years and compiling a 182-50 record with 15 post-season wins and two national championship game appearances after leaving WVU when his coaching tenure was cut short by a bout with cancer.
Rodriguez would seem to be on a Hall of Fame path, too, if he can just figure out which hat to wear on his bust.
Joel said
You know, between the time that Rodriguez left for Michigan all the way til a day after the Fiesta Bowl win, we had Mountaineers leaving comments out the yang. Now there hasn’t been a peep in almost 3 week, since the turd flinging really started on both sides…
The Big 11th Blog said
My take has been, so far, that WVU is interested in bashing RR. Sure the $4 mil would be nice, but at this point they have already taken the blunt of the blow. Recruiting is hurting, you have to think RR has already said anything worth saying, and whatshisname from Arizona has taken his shots as well.
While they don’t have much to gain by doing this, based on how stupid the admins sound, revenge is as good an explanation as any at this point.
Joel said
Reputation is a thing that will take years to repair if you’re a college. WVU is screwing themselves in the name of revenge…
They will find out starting next year when they still don’t win the national title. But they will use the Notre Dame “it’s the former coaches fault because he didn’t recruit well” excuse…