Welcome to a “What year is this?” edition of the Friday Feedback. I mean, it is 2009, right? Because yesterday felt a lot like last summer. Back then, the Daily Mail was an afternoon paper, which meant a deadline around 5 a.m., which meant I’d go into full-blown headcase mode and scan the Web editions of the newspapers that came out hours before my deadline.

Not to copy anyone or anything — what could I do at that hour … besides beat myself up? — but to keep up. Remember, there was something just about every day and sometimes it was something you hadn’t seen or heard. To that, there was some really good writing and reporting going on and I know I didn’t want to fall too far behind the race.

And so it was after midnight Thursday morning when I flipped on the MotoQ and saw the story and had a nauseating flashback. I did not need that. Nor did anyone.

Well, one guy did, and there he was with wristbands in hand mustering up something close to an apology with those recruiting tools known as camps right around the corner. A little damage control looks good. Face it, anything he does or says about WVU is going to be news, and when he’s kind to WVU and resembles repentant, he wins.

Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, get it right!

thacker said:

“I do sometimes get on the dark side of life.”

“…wonders if he can ever match his gratitude.”

“…you can kind of hide. But here in this state, you’re out there everywhere and everyone is throwing barbs at you.”

The Bill Simmons ESPN interview and West’s aversion to being referenced as ‘The Logo’.

His intensity, his passion, his drive … the sensitivity, the compassion, the insight, the courage … the darkness, the fear, the self-perceived failures … all coming back around into that endless circle.

Often it is a man’s own ‘beast’ that drives him, unknowingly, to his destiny and perhaps such is never known or understood by that man, at the earliest and for a lucky few, until the moment of his own death.

In my mind, Jerry, you are not the Logo … my best guess is if any justifiable tag will be attached to you, it will be ‘The Legacy’ … and one hell of a one at that.  

The Legacy. Consider it done.

oklahoma mountaineer said:

That intensity is what is going to be necessary for a non-name school to ascend to the uppermost echelon of their respective sport. It’s the difference between good and great.

The means by which the intensity is channeled is the separator. Like it or not, that is something the Product has — he took players that weren’t the first choice of the premier schools and made them better than others thought them capable. Coach Belein and Huggs have that ability as well.

We want to continue to ascend the ranks that is the type of man we need. I’d love to see him take a shot, but I really don’t know if we have the collective pockets to do what he may see as necessary to match his desire to win. He had no such problem with the Lakers and they won consistently.  

Gosh, this comment from Monday should have been an ominous sign of things to come. And isn’t it accurate? Let us never confuse one for the other or compare one with the other, but from far away perhaps they share some things in common that have both enabled their success and also haunted them a little, too. There’s a difference between P-Rod and The Legacy, of course, and it’s rather obvious.

glibglub said:

So, Mr. Hickman says PRod called him out of the blue. Mr. Stump merely says the DM had a “telephone interview”. Did he initiate contact in that instance as well? That’s my assumption, but you know what they say . . .  

Mr. Stump called Michigan a while back. P-Rod returned the call Wednesday. It was from around 11-11:30 a.m. Mr. Hickman says he heard from The Product around noon. Richigan tells Mr. Hickman someone asked him if he regretted anything. I’m assuming that’s all intertwined. 

Erinn said:

Why do we still give him a platform? Who cares what he loves, what he regrets and what he hopes and wishes for?  

We don’t. 

Dave said:

RR would be much more believable if he didn’t argue with paying the buyout, wasn’t being shopped to every school with an opening (Alabama, TAMU, UNC, FSU if I recall correctly), and did not allow his people to conjure up lies about the situation while he left. We’re to believe that a few textbooks, HS coaching passes, ads around the stadium, and a web site, trumped new facilities, an $800k raise, raises for his assistants, a new turf, and basically a contract for as long as he wanted to stay in Morgantown?

I think RR regrets leaving, I think he knows deep-down that the lies were disclosed in the deposition, and today, these ploys are to simply try to mend his public reputation. Remember, when *he* chose to leave, it was “poor me, I’m the good guy and look at how they behaved.” Today, it’s “poor me, look at them … they’re still mad, but me, I just want everyone to be happy.”

It’s ironic for him to imply that he wants sympathy because he hasn’t changed. As the story unfolded, many found out that they didn’t really like the guy. I’m not sure that stating that he’s the same guy will earn him anything. This is the guy who, for some reason, maintained Stewart on the staff following Nehlen and yet today, still has not spoken to him since he left. Stewart has not said anything (to my knowledge) publicly, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he had some choice things to say about being a Mountaineer when RR decided to bolt.

I think we can agree The Product has been reminded of his exit, spent a lot of time thinking about all this and that there was a certain amount of premeditation to his phone calls Wednesday. And yet, after all of this time, it’s a pretty transparent defense. By the way, Stewart stays above this mess, which I don’t think he’s ever gotten enough credit for that, especially when you see how much time the other guy spends in the muck.

Josh24601 said:

Those who have sufficient gumption to succeed in spite of impossible circumstances (like turning Glenville St. into a national power) and who are used to marching to their own drummers because following established beats means they’re left out (see Rodriguez’s offense and its myriad incarnations over the years)–these people are nearly always in the 95+ percentile for bull-headedness among people. This stubbornness is imperative to the success of entrepeneuers like Rodriguez.

Does any of you know a type-A achiever come from nothing such as Rodriguez, even if on a smaller scale? Think of that person really intently; when was the last time, unless he was utterly cornered, you heard the person admit any wrong or apologize? Never, right? Special cases like Rodriguez won’t even admit fault or apologize even when cornered. Such people can be insufferable because of this quality, but if Rich Rodriguez did not possess it, none among us would know his name.

If you keep in mind that Rodriguez is wired such that he is incapable of admitting a material wrong, his motivation for engaging in today’s WV media tour becomes clear. He feels guilty about skulking off under metaphorical cover of darkness, he regrets blowing Hickman off (notice he copped to the tiny wrong that no one would care about), and above all, he wants to be able to cross the state line and visit his folks in his hometown without too much fuss.

Well adjusted people understand that alleviating guilt requires a person in Rodriguez’s position to recognize culpability and offer a complete, sincere apology. Well adjusted people, however, would never envision the path Rodriguez took to career success, let alone survive it.

It isn’t possible for this to be smoothed over any time soon; if it were, there wouldn’t have been any bumps.   

Bingo. Would you have been OK with P-Rod incorporating that into his stories this week? “Hey, I know I can be a jerk and I’m extremely driven and I could have handled things a lot better, but I was always trying to push to the next level. I guess the lesson to be learned is I need to get that under control … and maybe WVU needs to be more open to that behavior.”

rekterx said:

Gosh. I guess I’ll join the party.

Rod, we know that you, or someone close to you is reading all of the blogs and chat boards after you made this peace offering. I guess you’ll understand that we really don’t care what you think.

I believe it when you say that you love WV. We all do. That is what makes the manner of your departure even more stupid with hindsight. Right?  

Felt the need to include that, just in case… 

Foul Shot said:

Wow, just saw the picture on the Daily Mail site of Huggins with the shiners.
That must have been quite a knock on the door.
The door got the better of it for sure.
Hopefully Pastilong did not injure his wrist also by running into a door.
Was wondering if there was a dustup over the new practice facility – JUST KIDDING!

Seeing as if he had two black eyes, it’s now one of the best knock-knock jokes ever, right?

Dave said:

“Wow, just saw the picture on the Daily Mail site of Huggins with the shiners.
That must have been quite a knock on the door.”

A door? Come on. Huggins is a big guy. We’re supposed to believe that a door put a shiner on him around his eye? Both eyes? I’ve bumped into doors in the middle of the night. I stubbed my toe. I’ve never hit my face, much less hit my face hard enough to get a black eye … or eyes. When doors are open, they swing when bumped and when a person is looking for a room, they’re familiar with where the doors are … the danger zone.

How many people here know someone who showed up to work with a shiner, blamed a door and you believed the story?

My dad, who’s not as tall as Huggins, once walked into a wall at night. Somehow, he split his face open in the small area where the eyebrow meets the bridge of the nose. My sister and I have reenacted this for years to determine the logistics. It’s near impossible. Long story short, he developed two black eyes, though not as big as Huggs’. The left eye (crash side) came quick, the right a few days later. What’s this mean? Not sure, but it doesn’t take anything away from the blog.  

Latin Hillbilly said:

no way a door does that to huggy’s face. shiners on both eyes? and a welt?? come on mike. do some investigative reporting for the good of the blog.

I’ll admit, I’ve heard a lot of rumors. But really, does it matter?

Dave said:

“no way a door does that to huggy’s face. shiners on both eyes? and a welt??”

It was around the same time he announced a player was leaving the program. 

OK, that’s a rumor I’ve heard and I’ll address. Huggins says he hit the door two weeks ago today. Dee Proby’s been gone for longer than that. As I’m told, it was pretty amicable … Proby enters the office, leaves with permission to transfer. It’s not like any of that was a surprise.

glibglub said:

That Raiders statement is unattributed. Yet it must’ve come from Big Al. Hard to take his words seriously anymore. And yet. And yet. Kiffin is looking like a bit of a loose cannon at UT. Can there be method to such madness, or is it just plain vanilla madness? The Vols might want to hire an extra hand for their compliance office, whose sole job description would be to follow Kiffin around and say “Again? Are you frickin’ kidding me?” whenever Lane’s about to cannonball into the secondary violations pool. Which apparently is often.  

In theory, the “Assistant in Charge of ‘Are You Kidding?'” is a good idea … until you remember the school hired someone to assist Kiffin with various things and he promptly Twittered the name of a recruit who committed. Seriously. Another violation. But, yes, one of the strangest parts about this is somewhere someone is saying, “Maybe Al Davis isn’t that crazy.”

Dave said:

Notice that all of these are secondary violations? They’ve kept UT in the news, Kiffin in the news, and what will be the probable result? Maybe one less day of recruiting on the road? Maybe some other insignificant slap on the wrist?

It’s kept UT in the headlines during a period where recruit access is limited.

I’ve considered this and I think it’s possible and maybe even a good idea … but also deplorable and a little stupid. And remember, he was running his mouth about Florida and Urban Meyer committing recruiting violations that weren’t actually recruiting violations. Maybe he’s clever, but maybe he doesn’t know all the rules.

JP said:

I love this part of the linked article:

During the segment, Kiffin again denied telling a recruit that he would end up pumping gas like other South Carolina graduates, if the recruit went to play for the Gamecocks.

“No, there’s no way that I said that,” Kiffin said. “I wouldn’t say anything like that. First of all, if you look at, I don’t think that anybody pumps gas because everything is self-serve nowadays. There’s no full-serve stations, so I’m smart enough to not have said it because of that, number one. But number two, we don’t negative recruit.”

Brilliant logic: “there’s no full-serve stations.” Way to bat down that rumor. I’m completely convinced. We can assume, then, that he wasn’t talking to a recruit from New Jersey?

Yes! Honestly, that’s one of the reasons I picked that article. I love this guy. 

overtheSEC said:

I love the “Statement of Facts.” He must be a student of the Dwight Shrute Method of Press Releases  

If only Forcier was interested in going to Cornell.

glibglub said:

Fact: I want to be part of the “Greatness of Fuhman (sic) University” academic’s (sic).

Well, the young man is off to a smashing start then, isn’t he?

Fact!

Josh24601 said:

Anyone else feel cheated that Tajh Boyd didn’t come to WVU, get beaten out by Coley or Starks or whovever, and have the Player’s Daddy issue a Tajh FACTS release by e-mailing it to Bob Hertzel? No one? Everyone’s still miffed that Rich Rodriguez is allowed to use a telephone? Cool.

Enjoy the weekend!