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Can’t wait? Look back at past media days

July 17, 2016 by Mike Casazza

 

We’re heading to Dallas today for the first of six road trips during the football seasons, and though the first day of two Big 12 media days doesn’t begin until tomorrow and you have to wait another day to hear from West Virginia’s head coach and representatives, you can chew on this until the time arrives.

Take a look back at the always-eventful Mountaineers through their years at the Big 12’s kickoff event.

2012

– Paul Rhoads volunteered to be your huckleberry. Now a position coach at Arkansas, Rhoads was then the head coach at Iowa State after serving as Pitt’s defensive coordinator, and he knew he’d be less-than-popular in Morgantown.

“I’ve been blessed to be a part of a lot of great rivalries just because of where my career has taken me. Michigan-Ohio State. Auburn-Alabama. Iowa State-Iowa. Pitt-West Virginia,” said Rhoads, who was a graduate assistant for the Buckeyes and the defensive coordinator at Auburn.”Those are some pretty classic rivalries and being a part of that one for eight years, being a part of the 100th Backyard Brawl, yeah, I’d imagine some of those people know my name back there.”

For that, as well as Iowa State’s odd distinction as the Big 12 school closest to WVU, Rhoads believes the schools are now rivals.The Mountaineers are in need of one after conference realignment robbed them of old foes Pitt and Syracuse and even newer ones like Louisville and South Florida.

“I think that all contributes to it and I really think the fact we’re playing late in the season, the last game on our schedule, contributes to that as well,” he said. “But I also think there’s a lot that will take place in years one, two and three that will have an influence on that.”

(That reminds me: New Cyclones coach Matt Campbell has to do something this week to stoke the smoldering flames of the WVU v. Iowa State rivalry.)

– Dana Holgorsen caused a minor, minor kerfuffle with business casual attire before slipping into a sharp suit. He seemed to have fun, even though he knew it wasn’t supposed to be.  “No offense,” he said, “but usually it’s not fun when it’s a media thing.” None taken! Holgorsen wound  up trending on Twitter during his news conference.

– A WVU fan — I never confirmed it, but it had to be one — tried to rattle Mike Gundy, though to no avail.

– That hollerin’ was a snapshot among many moments the Mountaineers submitted in their first appearance. Remember, they showed up to their first Big 12 media day having been picked second in the preseason poll and with Geno Smith as the preseason offensive player of the year and Tavon Austin a preseason all-conference receiver and punt returner … even though he was pretty shaky as a punt returner the year before. Reputations preceded WVU.

But rather than act like they’d been there, the Mountaineers instead acted like they belonged.

On Monday morning, West Virginia University mascot Jonathan Kimble was standing among his costumed peers inside the Westin Galleria when the Oklahoma Sooners arrived. Three players and the Sooners’ head coach made their way through the room when Kimble spoke.

“Hey, Oklahoma,” he said with his rifle in one hand and the coonskin cap perched atop his head. “See you in Morgantown Nov. 17.”

There were gasps and laughs, smiles and winces and then a reply from Oklahoma Coach Bob Stoops.

“We’ll be there,” Stoops said.

2013

– Kimble returned for Round 2 and was armed with three pounds of beef jerky.

– Mack Brown and I had this exchange.

Q.  Mack, I’m paraphrasing, I think, but I believe you said because of the tempo of the offenses that the defenses in the league kind of have to change identity or tactics or something along those lines.  Apart from being just very good at what you do, is there something you have to do very well just to discourage and slow them down?
COACH BROWN:  I don’t think I said what you just said, but you were kind of unparaphrasing.  I’ve learned it’s not what I say, it’s what you hear, which is a difficult thing for a coach when I’ve got a thousand of you sitting in here.
What I do think is that last year our defense was at a disadvantage in this league because we had trouble preparing for tempo by not seeing it every day in practice.  There’s no doubt, after last year, that the offenses in this league were ahead of the defenses in this league because there were unbelievable numbers being put up.
When you’re happy to win a game 56‑50, things have changed.  I mean, it’s just a different deal.  You walk out mad at your defense or happy with your offense.  You walk out happy you won, and that’s it, or you lose a game 48‑45.
So we felt like it was very, very important for us to make sure our defensive coaches and our players got to practice every day against what they were trying to prepare for on Saturday because, if you haven’t seen the tempo offense on a regular basis, it’s a very difficult thing to do, and I do think something that’s really changed.  Oklahoma did it in ’08, and they had the best offense in the country.
But you go back and look at it, when you can do the tempo offense without substituting and the defensive‑‑ and you can do it at a very fast pace with a 40‑second clock now, the defensive coaches are having difficulty getting defensive calls in, and kids are standing there getting tired some with their hands on their hips, and people are snapping the ball.  They’re feeding off of it.
It happened with us and Oregon State at the end of the game.  There were two kids trying to get off the field that didn’t get off in time, and it was a five‑yard penalty for delay of game because they were trying to get off and they were tired.
So you have to look at who your pass rushers are.  You have to look at are you playing nickel, dime?  Can you play with three linebackers on a regular basis in this league?  We’re looking at running the ball against smaller defenses if you’ve got nickel and dime in the game, and people are really good in this league at what they’re doing on offense.
And at the same time, you’re looking at having to be two deep on defense, in my estimation, and really on offense as well because of the speed of this game.  You’re not taking breaks.  I hope that explains it better, but that’s what I saw.
I remember in our Oklahoma game in ’08, Will Muschamp was calling our defense in the first quarter, and the kids were looking at their wristbands, and the ball was being snapped, and they’re running 20 yards, and they’re still looking at the wristbands.  Will and I decided, let’s throw out all the calls, play base defense, and let’s play because we’re standing around looking.
So it really limits the package you can use.  It limits the calls that you can have, and you need older, more mature players, to get those calls and execute those calls, or in many cases, you have to make adjustments now from the bench during the week that your older players can put you in the right defenses at the right time because you don’t have time to call them.

I still don’t know what happened there, even now as I review my attempt to clear it up that day.

– In my opinion, this was the best of Dana’s four media day news conferences. True, WVU ultimately went 4-8, so a lot of the suspicions reporters pursued and he poured water on proved to be worthy, but he served the preseason purpose that day.

And you’ll remember, the summer story that season was tempo and how some coaches thought it was bad for football and dangerous for players. Dana disagreed.

“Yeah, I’d tell him to get over it because it’s not going to change.  It’s going into the NFL, for crying out loud.  There’s people being hired in the NFL that have the background in college football to be able to create a little bit more parity.

Don’t see it changing any time soon.  So you’d better learn to adapt to it.”

– The attempt at a relationship between West Virginia Radio Corp. and IMG College fell apart.

– Holgorsen played defensive back in high school, and as he attempted to make sense of the new targeting rule, he described his tackling style. “I was not athletic enough to leave my feet and target someone. I closed my eyes and grabbed their ankles. It wouldn’t have affected me whatsoever. You worry about a guy like Karl Joseph, who is aggressive.”

Joseph was never ejected in his final three seasons — he said he thought 50 players would be ejected across the country in the first season — but in the 2013 preseason, there was concern he’d lose a game or games, and Joseph was not immune.

The players don’t completely understand the rule yet, and they admit as much, because they haven’t been able to meet with their coaches to have it explained to them.

Holgorsen said he’s already asked a graduate assistant to compile Joseph’s 10 biggest hits from last season. He said he’ll send that to Anderson and ask him to clarify what was illegal. Holgorsen will take the feedback and use that and a visit from officials to explain the rule.

That’s going help them understand it, and that will pair nicely with the appreciation defenders have for how the rule is supposed to protect players. It doesn’t even come close to making this something with which defenders agree.

“I think it’s just another rule in favor of the offense,” Joseph said. “Sometimes you get in the heat of a game, especially when you’re playing safety, and you’re running full speed at someone, but now you have to think about where you have to hit the receiver. It’s going to be hard, but you’ve got to adjust to it.”

2014

– Kansas tight end Jimmay Mundine recalled a ferocious meeting with WVU safety Darwin Cook. “At the moment when it happened, I was almost, like, in shock that I got hit that hard by something else,” Mundine said.

– Twitter got Clint Trickett into a little trouble.

– This made headlines.

Q.  After your Orange Bowl victory over Clemson coming into the league, tons of excitement around West Virginia football.  Two years later, how important is it to rekindle that excitement after the two seasons you’ve had?
COACH HOLGORSEN:  Well, the days of rolling through the Big East and being able to play in a BCS game are long gone.  We’re not thinking about that anymore.  Although that was fun and that was a huge moment in West Virginia University, it’s a whole different ballgame right now.
And one of the things that has happened in the Big 12 over the last two years, we have not been dominant in the Big 12, obviously.
I don’t know how many teams have been dominant in the Big 12.  Parity is upon us.  Better be ready to go each and every week.  You take Baylor last year, tremendous season.  Art has done a great job.  In 2012, they were at a pretty bad place about mid‑season.  Now, they got it together towards the end of the season, but they weren’t in a very good place then.
They stuck with it and went.  We’ve been competitive.  This past year we lost‑‑ we were in three overtime games.  We lost fourth quarter leads.  Won a couple of close games.  Each and every one was pretty much competitive.  We need to stay the course.  Continue to develop our talent, continue to recruit better, and then we’ll win those games.  Hopefully we can put a season together that everybody will be proud.

– Holgorsen announced Shelton Gibson was eligible after a mysterious two-semester absence.

– Nick O’Toole had a large day.

2015

– The Red Bull year. Never forget.

For starters…

Holgorsen was sitting at the table, drinking a sugar-free Redbull of course, answering every question with that flare that has made so many love him. The first question from a TV reporter, how many Redbulls will he drink between now and the end of the season.

“So we’re talking around 185 days,” Holgorsen said. “I would say somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000.”

And later…

Showmanship!

– You’re not going to believe this, but Holgorsen has always pushed back against the idea he’s One Type of coach. He cringes when someone calls him an Air Raid coach and swears he’s never referred to himself as one. He doesn’t like the label of a pass-first offense. He likes the words “balance” and “multiple,” but he also flinched when it was suggested his offense was a running offense.

Q.  Just given the amount of experience you’ve got coming back at the running back position, you answered a few questions ago about some new receivers and some guys who are going to be getting a lot of playing time this season, do you expect that the running load will kind of carry this offense, maybe for the first time in your career?
COACH HOLGORSEN:  Hope not.  Geez, I still like to throw the ball a good bit, you know.  I know one thing:  If you can’t do either one, you’re not going to be worth a darn, I can assure you of that.
We worked hard‑‑ and Ron Cook coming in has been instrumental in this.  But we’ve worked hard on getting our run game to where people got to respect it.  Last year we were still top seven or eight in passing in the country, but we ran the ball over 50 percent of the time.
That’s just kind of what our philosophy is, and that’s the way it’s going to be.  The more success we have running the ball, the more we’re going to do it.  But if people are putting too many people up there to block, we’re not going to do it.
So you’ve just got to figure out what the tendencies are for what they do defensively, what their plan’s going to be, and you need to be able to adjust accordingly.  If you can’t run the ball and throw the ball, then you’re not going to be successful offensively.

– Holgorsen’s Big 12 peers who know him best backed him up on that.

“Dana will try to play to his strengths,” Kingsbury said. “If there’s some quarterback run game, it’s because he trusts him to do that. If he’s better at getting out of the pocket, he’ll let him do that. A lot of those guys, you call the plays and if they’re not there they have an ability to get out on their own and make a big play.

“But I don’t think he’ll completely shift things. I think he’ll let that young man use his talents when things aren’t there to make a play.”

2015

– The Daily Mail folded!

– The William Crest Hype Express started chugging, thanks to some sage input from Trevone Boykin.

– The Big 12’s centers took center stage.

– Wendell Smallwood reflected upon how much can change in a one year.

– Karl Joseph appeared to be the most respected, most fearsome defensive player in a league with a bunch of candidates. “He’ll leave you with a memory anytime you play him,” Oklahoma State receiver David Glidden said.

The best part? Joseph earned his reputation in practices as well as games and against teammates as well as opponents.

Joseph’s ferocity knows neither boundaries nor allies. Teammate Wendell Smallwood had just arrived for spring football as a freshman in 2013. The running back was having a good day in one early practice, which meant Joseph was not.

That would not stand.

“I kept getting first downs and he was like, not crying, but he was yelling at me, ‘You get one more first down, I’m going to kill you,’ ” Smallwood remembered. “I’d just gotten to school. I’m like, ‘Oh, man. This kid’s’ crazy.’ Then we get off the field and he’s on the sideline next to me, like, ‘What’s up? What are you doing out there?’ ”

I’ll see you live from the media room tomorrow morning.