Sadly, this was nowhere near as enlightening or entertaining as the Ed Pastilong Deposition. True, there were a few nuggets, most notably Rich Rodriguez’s admission he didn’t completely understand that what’s written in a contract is final, that he was told Mike Garrison would be WVU’s next president well before it was official and that, shockingly, Garrison conducts presidential business in his pajamas.

Actually, that raised a big eyebrow for me. Here’s Rodriguez, seemingly hat in hand — mind you, he’d been throwing that hat on the ground for a loooooong time — as he shows up at the presidential estate and Garrison greets him as if he was getting ready for bed. Rodriguez surely saw it as an unwillingness to work around the clock to keep him. That stuff matters to him.

On the whole, it was somewhat pedestrian, though. There were teases, as there were in Pastilong’s, and there remains a possibility some conversations were recorded (Larry Aschebrook) or that WVU knows more than it’s letting on (blackened out portion of term sheet with the University of Michigan).

It took a while to get going, but WVU attorney Tom Flaherty really worked Rodriguez on his knowledge of contracts and their specifics. The purpose was to discuss the liquidated damages clause — buyout — and basically get Rodriguez to admit that clauses in early contracts were fair, were not unconscionable and protected both sides in the event of firing or resignation.

Remember, Team WVU is stating Rodriguez knew what he was getting into when he agreed to the clause in December 2006 and signed it in August 2007. Team Rodriguez, in part, claims it was unfair and constitutes a penalty and that contracts cannot penalize one side for terminating the agreement.

Out of nowhere, Rodriguez lawyer Marv Robon says, “Mr. Flaherty, can we have an agreement , so I don’t have to object all the time, that when you use the phrase ‘liquidated damages’ that it can be interchangeable with the words ‘a penalty?'”

I wasn’t there, but seeing as if WVU is arguing that it’s nota penalty, Flaherty must have been astonished by this suggestion. “No. We cannot have that agreement,” he said.

The discussion of Rodriguez’s real estate venture back at Clemson was unusual at first, but it eventual showed Rodriguez as someone capable of entering into a very lucrative, if not very risky investment, one that required him to comprehend contracts and their terms and for him to understand everything he was thereby attached to as a participant. Something irrelevant became something very different.

Mostly, though, it was Rodriguez asserting his position and using his sides of various stories to get his points across. He trusted different members of the Board of Governors and took their word as the truth. He felt compelled to sign the contract with the$4 million buyout in part because of the pressure he says was exerted by the BOG and Gov. Joe Manchin, but also because he felt he owed as much to Ken Kendrick.

Rodriguez was under the assumption Kendrick suggested the $4 million and that he was putting up a lot of the money to keep Rodriguez at WVU after his flirtation with Alabama. Months later, Rodriguez learned that was not true. You got the sense over time that Rodriguez was awfully misinformed and that he listened to and trusted a whole lot of people. At key moments, he was simply led astray.

Other things I found worthy of a mention:

> There’s something to the theory UM has agreed to pay part, if not all of the buyout if Rodriguez loses the case. In the term sheet Rodriguez signed Dec. 17, there is a blackened out section that grabbed the attention of Team WVU. Flaherty pressed Rodriguez and even suggested the idea UM agreed to pay the buyout. Robon just wouldn’t let Rodriguez answer and said it was irrelevant. Team WVU disagrees, of course, and would like to argue that as Rodriguez negotiated with UM, he was very aware he not only understood the buyout, but that he owed WVU money and he was going to need some help to pay it.

> Apparently Rodriguez was very close to being the Texas Tech head coach in 2000 and it was actually reported he’d accepted the job, only for him to turn it down. Hmm, this sounds familiar…

> … because Rodriguez admits to negotiating with Alabama in December 2006 and that his agent did a lot of the work beforehand. After meeting with the Alabama A.D., Rodriguez was extended a job offer over the phone and Rodriguez wanted it in writing. Of course, after he decided to stay at WVU, Rodriguez blamed the media for getting it wrong — it being everything contained in this paragraph.

> Rodriguez didn’t seem to know a term sheet was a legally binding contract, though term sheets say they are legally binding contracts.

> As part of Rodriguez’s proposed Web site, subscribers paying $90 or so a year would get “so-called inside information” and a story by Rita Rodriguez.

> Another prank call! Rodriguez said then-interim Nebraska A.D. Tom Osborn called Rodriguez one day last season to return a message Osborn was told Rodriguez had left. Rodriguez said he never made such a call and he and Osborn agreed it was a prank pulled by someone else.

> Rodriguez did call Terrelle Pryor to tell him he was going to Michigan two minutes before he told his WVU team…and he actually made it sound like a good idea. Rodriguez also confirmed making a series of phone calls to UM recruits from a WVU cell phone while employed by WVU. He’d denied such things happened previously.