In what surely qualifies more as the end of the beginning than the beginning of the end, Team Rodriguez straps on its legal pads and takes to the courtroom against Team WVU tomorrow for a motions hearing in Monongalia County Circuit Court.

At long last.

It has been a long, long time since the morning of Dec. 17 when Rich Rodriguez was introduced as Michigan’s new football coach. I remember watching the press conference live online and wondering how this all happened. We’d gradually learn the details of a deteriorating and ultimately irreconcilable relationship between a self-deifying football coach and a unwilling, though unrelenting athletic department. At the time, though, it seemed surreal. It just didn’t make sense. Wasn’t he sliced bread for WVU, the Brinks truck that delivered revenue to the university, the self-made icon in the industry, the inspiration for so many people in the state?

I could never get past the feeling he truly did not want to be there, that had he just beaten Pitt none of this would have ever happened. I kept seeing Billy Donovan, Dana Altman and Bobby Cremins, coaches who’d left one job for another, only to go back to the original job. Rodriguez would surely show up at a press conference a few days later and say he’d made a mistake and wanted to remain at WVU. Maybe he’d even blame it on his brother.

I was so consumed in the incomprensibility of it all that I nearly missed when Rodriguez said …

“I’m also excited to be back here with my good friend, John Beilein, who I think without question is one of the best basketball coaches in America. He was one of my neighbors (in West Virginia) and I was excited for him when he got this opportunity and I was also excited when his house sold so quickly, hoping mine will do the same. But John is a terrific coach and he’s an outstanding person and it was great to see him, as well.”

That was a whopper. Forget the past relationship between those two — which was, at its healthiest, a professional acquaintance. I was at a spring football practice the day Beilein left for Michigan. Excited is not what I’d say Rodriguez was when he was told Beilein had left. Leave it at that.

For whatever reason, I started to pay more attention at that very moment. It snapped me out of a fog. He took a subtle shot at WVU with his words and seemed happy to do so. This was no longer about making a leap for the better of his carer. It wasn’t about family. It really wasn’t about money, either. This was bigger than all of that. Combined.

And then he was asked about the buyout in his contract with WVU. I’ll never forget his reply. 

“Well, as a typical response, the lawyers are working on it. They are a lot smarter than me.”

“Ah, crap,” I thought to myself. At that very moment, we knew we’d eventually be where we’ll be tomorrow morning. Later in the day, an official in the administration called me to tell me WVU would not blink and expected to collect the full buyout. This was going to get ugly.

In reality, it’s been worse. Questionable recruiting tactics, document shredding, unfounded allegations of harassment, threats about a bombshell, delayed revelations about verbal promises, accusations of racism. Those are only the most egregious actions — and if I’m missing major ones, it’s because there are so many.

I wrote a while back that no one involved was without guilt. In some reagard, I still feel the same way. I don’t think WVU is entirely innocent, but they’re jaywalkers. Rodriguez is a serial arsonist. He hasn’t burned bridges. He’s scorched the earth. An egomaniac has gone to great lengths to defend a reputation he only sullies with every silly action perpetuated by himself or his handlers. 

Their latest and — personally speaking — greatest folly came this past week. The lead from a story in the West Virginia Record made me shake my head:

Former West Virginia University football coach Rich Rodriguez leans on Internet gossip to support his claim that the university leaked news of a lawsuit against him before serving the suit on him.

The lead wasn’t the problem. It was the argument contained within that seemed … well, pretty stupid. Imagine my reaction when I advanced a few more paragraphs.

The coach’s attorneys also claimed that the Charleston Daily Mail posted a copy of the suit that did not bear a court file stamp.

The Daily Mail’s copy “was obviously provided to the press by representatives of plaintiffs prior to filing with the court,” they wrote.

They did not identify the university representatives who released the copies, however, so attorneys for the university have moved to compel him to identify them.

Wow. The entirety of that statement is so wildly inaccurate — it never happened — and irrelevant — so what if it did? — that it defies description. It does, however, supply a definition or just how out of control this has been. Here’s betting Team Rodriguez can’t identify “representatives of plaintiffs.” No such person exists. It’s another dud.

I can’t see the same people who come up with arguments like that prevailing in what seems to be a simple matter of contract law. Team Rodriguez’s greatest argument — the verbal promise — is almost certainly inadmissable. WVU has a contract Rodriguez negotiated and signed, though only after nine months of fine-toothed combing. 

It’s to the point now that even if Team Rodriguez takes this to court and succeeds in making WVU look bad, WVU can’t look any worse than its former football coach.