Rodriguez

MORGANTOWN — As West Virginia rolled into its second week of spring football practice and the second week of Rich Rodriguez’s quest for redemption, the football coach let us take a peek inside himself to see what it is that is driving him toward completing the mission that came up short in his first term as coach.

Rodriguez, who built the Mountaineers into national contenders in the mid-1990s only to let the big one get away when his powerhouse team built around quarterback Pat White and Steve Slaton was upset by 28.5-point underdog Pitt in a home Senior Day game that would have taken them to a national championship meeting with a very beatable Ohio State team, admitted that he is driven to prove himself every day and that he believes his players must feel that way to complete the mission.

He was talking about being tough and being a winner when he volunteered his feelings on how attitude is the fabric from which championships are made.

“Did you ever hear an athlete or coach say, ‘Well, I don’t have to prove myself. I have already proved myself,'” he began.

“Well, I’m like just the opposite. If they’re keeping score, you’ve got something to prove. When you get to the point where you feel you have nothing left to prove, you’re probably never going to get better. Every time we play, I feel like I have something to prove and I want my team and my staff to feel the same way.”

He may be 61 but he consciously tries to feel like the 21-year-old football player who was out to prove that a kid from Grant Town could be a big time player and, shortly thereafter, as his football skills and attitude steered him into coaching the game, he went at as if he had to prove himself day by day.

This has been key in shaping him into what he has become, into creating not a subtle brand of football where toughness and dedication are the primary skills and where he is the sun from which the vibes he expects to see in his players are radiated.

He is, he stresses, asking as much and probably more from himself.

When the subject turns to culture, his football team’s culture, he understands what he’s looking for and how he has to develop it on this new team of his that he is introducing to Rich Rodriguez Football 101.

It comes slowly but already has started and he’s convinced he can draw it out of the players on hand and those who will be added.

“I don’t want to say [the culture] is all bad, because we have some good kids and good players, but we got to have it all. It isn’t if getting half of them playing the way you want them to play or seven or eight of them is all right,” he said. “No, it’s got to be all of them all the time.

“I’m convinced every one of them has it in them,” he said. “I’m not talking just here at West Virginia. I’m talking about everywhere. I’m convinced every player has that competitiveness in them, especially at this level. If you made it to this level, I’m not doing my job if I don’t get the very best out of them.”

They are young and eager but don’t really know what is necessary. This isn’t about them to Rodriguez. It is about him.

“If that happens, I failed,” he said.

A coach builds what he wants, shapes his team to play with the image and aura he wants to create.

“I’ll tell you a story,” he said. “When I was here before — and everybody talks about the past — did you ever hear anyone say a puppy won’t bite when he’s a puppy but he’ll bite when he’s a dog? I used to believe that, too.”

It was as if it was a natural step forward, one that just happens.

But is it?

“I had a young receiver — I won’t tell you his name — and he wouldn’t bite as a puppy at all,” Rodriguez went on. “He was soft, soft. Then we had a drill and he had to do six reps in a row and we were challenging him and he went from being the softest wide receiver to being the best blocking wide receiver I ever had to this date.

“He was a three-year starter and we won a lot of games with him at wideout. They change. He grew up and matured. That puppy wouldn’t bite when he was a puppy but he sure would bite when he was a dog.”

And it was coaching and challenging him that brought the dog out in him.

To Rodriguez, it comes from leadership. You hear about leadership, but Rodriguez has his own views on that.

“I’m a little different when you say you have to have leadership at practice. That’s my job. When you need it is when I’m not around. Everybody says they have to have leadership on the field. Well, it better be me,” he said. “The quarterback has to obviously be a leader because he’s calling the plays and a linebacker has to be on defense because he’s calling the defenses. But who’s the leader up front? Hell, it’s Coach Bickell and myself.”

And that is what this spring is about. He is teaching schemes, teaching fundamentals, evaluating but it would seem he honestly believes he is teaching how to be a football player, not how to play football.

He took them to the brink before and then failed. He obviously hasn’t forgotten it, that he’s run it over and over in his head in the 17 years since he left and created in his own mind a style that he believes will get him back there and erase the one moment of disaster on his WVU record.