The Sock 'Em, Bust 'Em Board Because that's our custom

Not-so-strange bedfellows

Had to laugh at the pairings at the Chick-fil-A Bowl Alma Mater golf outing Tuesday. Alabama Coach and noted liar Nick Saban played with Michigan Coach and accused truth contortionist Rich Rodriguez. They’re friends from Marion County, Saban coached UM rival Michigan State for 10 years and, of course, Rodriguez took and then abandoned the Alabama job before Saban accepted it. Must have been a fun round.

“Horrible,” said Saban, when I asked him how he played.

I don’t want to say they have trouble telling the truth or that one tried to overshadow the other, but Rodriguez’s card said he shot a round of 17. Not bad!

By now you’ve heard that not only do some people think very little of Bill Stewart — one national writer called him the worst coach in the Big Eat — but that Stewart actually enjoys the otherwise alarming lack of faith.

However, with WVU finishing spring practice in Saturday’s Gold-Blue scrimmage here, the Mountaineer coach is in anything but a stew about this.

“That’s great,” a grinning Stewart said when told of the Big East ranking. “I love it. Fantastic. I live in the greatest country in the world, where everybody can have an opinion. I haven’t seen it; I don’t read it.

“I’ve been called a lot of things, a (house) painter, a fan. I’ve been called Gomer Pyle. It doesn’t bother me. To be brutally honest with you, I’m not real sharp on the computer.

“But unlike some other coach who says he never read the paper or got online – which is the biggest lie I’ve ever heard – I read the West Virginia guys. You guys at the Daily Mail, the Gazette, and the other West Virginia papers on the Web.”

It doesn’t sound like Stewart is going to be sucking up to the dot.com national scribes that fawned then and now over Rich Rodriguez and his move from WVU to Michigan.

“Why do I do that?” Stewart said of his home-based Internet reading. “Because I want to know what our guys are doing. I want a pulse on the state. I don’t care, anything outside this great state of ours, what anyone says. That’s all I’ll ever care about.

“Outside the friendly confines of our beautiful state of West Virginia, I could give a flyin’ doo-doo what any other outfit thinks of me.”

(Yes, flyin’ doo-doo. And I know what you’re thinking. The answer is no. No, Bill Stewart never worked with Jim Mora.) 

Stewart would enjoy CoachesHotSeat.com, home of the brilliant Hippopotamus Standards.

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I’m not nearly qualified to go public with a statement that warrants any consideration regarding the Heather Bresch Debacle other than to say it’s a sad, sad situation. That said, I’ve heard and read a lot of the “Garrison must go!” demands and I can’t get past one ironclad fact.

If President Mike Garrison is to go somewhere, be it by firing, forced resignation or a simple stepping down — and please allow me to say I’m presenting public opinion and have no opinion myself on the matter and will gladly stay within the realm of sports — it absolutely will not happen until after the culmination of WVU v. Rodriguez.

Remember, Team Rodriguez says Garrison promised to reduce or eliminate the $4 million buyout. Team WVU denies such a thing ever happened. Imagine the fun Team Rodriguez would have, to say nothing of the nightmares Team WVU would have, if the President was suddenly out of office because of his role in a scandal involving questionable ethics. Imagine that because Marv Robon, captain of Team Rodriguez, already has and says he doesn’t need a firing or resignation to add to the point his side is trying to make.

Rodriguez contends Garrison promised to help him find a way out of paying the university $4 million if he left his contracted position early. Garrison says he never made that promise.

Robon said if Garrison makes that denial in his upcoming deposition, Garrison’s role in the scandal over top WVU officials giving Gov. Joe Manchin’s daughter a master’s degree she didn’t earn would become relevant in a trial setting.

The date of Garrison’s deposition has not been set. His lawyers have suggested several dates, with the latest in mid-June.  

“It depends on what (Garrison) says in his deposition,” said Robon. “The question is: Is he going to deny the promises that he made?

“Any good trial lawyer would look into his credibility.”

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Owen Schmitt does not care for this test

Amusing — and revealing — little story about Seattle Seahawks fullback Owen Schmitt and his disdain for the the norm.

The psychological test given to all NFL players asked a question as offbeat as it was simple: Are you a dog or a cat?

Neither, Owen Schmitt decided, and he wrote in his own answer: “Lion.”

“I just didn’t think I was a dog or a cat,” Schmitt said.

A lion. That’s more like it. He’s got a Mohawk for a mane and takes a king-of-the-jungle approach to the football field. He’s a 247-pound fullback from West Virginia who bench-pressed 225 pounds 26 times at the scouting combine and has a personality that might be even stronger. He’s not afraid to color outside the lines on an either-or question.

I have to think this maverick answer was endearing to the Seahawks. Another example of how much fun it can be to see the people we know introduce themselves to a new audience.

He also changed his hairstyle, trimming the woolly Mohawk that looked as rugged as his playing style during his senior year of college. He’s still got the single stripe of hair, it’s just shorter. More military than wild man.

I have the shaved, business ‘hawk now,” Schmitt said. “It’s professional now.”

Hmmm. Can a Mohawk ever really be professional?

“You know, I’m an ugly guy,” Schmitt said. “So I don’t think the mohawk is really the thing I have to worry about.”

It’s funny, to me, at least, to see how the public perception about John Beilein has changed in the past 12 months. His resignation was an abrupt and ugly one, but I always sensed the people who were mad at him most were most mad because it was hard to be mad at the guy…if that makes any sense.

What I mean to say is that he was a really likable guy who was adored for winning and the way he won. He was a source of pride and to lose him and to learn of the way he exited was hard to accept because many just didn’t see it coming and certainly didn’t want it to happen. Then there’s the contingent, and a rather sizable one at that, that was tired of the way he was always looking around for the next job and was frankly relieved when he found one.

And so it was that he was disliked, to put it mildly, for quite some time and both groups took great pleasure in his struggles this season at the University of Michigan. The tide turned somewhere along, and I’m only guessing here, but I believe it has something to do with the way Rich Rodriguez’s departure to U-M has mushroomed into the quintessential coach-college breakup. Don’t get me wrong. People are still mad about Beilein, but the presence and the success of Bob Huggins — with Beilein’s players — has tempered that anger and the constant shenanigans of Team Rodriguez has by and large overshadowed that anger.

I think there’s at least a mild respect, at least in retrospect now, for the way Beilein conducted himself. He didn’t wage his buyout battle in the public — it was quite hard to get any information from him or his attorney on the matter — and he didn’t drag the process along while dragging WVU in the gutter. It was, by comparison, a tidy little tryst. That’s worth something, right?

Oh, and he made his first buyout payment on time and included with it a kindly worded letter that offers to help WVU President Mike Garrison handle buyout business in the future.

“I have not had the pleasure of getting to know you on a personal basis but would welcome the opportunity to discuss these issues with you. I have learned a lot over the past three years regarding this matter and have some thoughts that I believe would be beneficial to all concerned.”

The day after

It is Monday and barely 24 hours since Steve Slaton was drafted by the Houston Texans, thus ending one of the most enjoyable careers in the history of a WVU program that has witnessed a lot of enjoyable careers. Slaton’s was different for its own reasons and one couldn’t help but admire his ascent and the way he handled it all.

Remember, this was a kid who starred on an iffy high school team and was often recruited for the wrong position. One school recruited him to play running back, yanked its scholarship offer and then regretted the error before, during and after losses the past two seasons. On rare occasions, Slaton would smirk at that snub and all the others, but he was too happy with who he was to focus on what others thought he’d never be.

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Really? Again? Really?

I’ve never been the one who took much pleasure in saying “I told you so,” but let’s be honest for a moment. What started innocently enough earlier in the season is beyond ridiculous now. WVU’s baseball team is finding new and exciting ways to win games late.

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – One thing is for certain with this year’s West Virginia University baseball team: you have to play all 27 outs to beat the Mountaineers at Hawley Field. For the third time this year West Virginia got a game-winning hit in its final at-bat.

This time it was Austin Markel’s inside-the-park home run that drove in Jedd Gyorko to give West Virginia at 12-11 come-from-behind victory over Connecticut Saturday afternoon. Markel’s two-strike, two-out hit came off of Husky closer David Erickson, who got Tyler Kuhn looking on a backdoor slider to begin the ninth and also got Mountaineer cleanup hitter Vince Belnome to fly out to left.

What do you call that? Is it a run-off home run? Or is it just fate? Seriously, that has to be one of the most exciting finishes — moments? — in Hawley Field history. I’m telling you, put John Denver on the shelf and cue up the Buffalo Springfield. There’s something happening here…

Friday Feedback

Welcome one and all to a special Larry Aschebrook edition of the Friday Feedback — and thank goodness this fell into our laps because this is the slowest time of the year. I’d say I might start making things up soon, but something tells me we’re going to have plenty of ammunition from the courtrooms. This is unlike any story we’ve had in some time now. It’s certainly more interesting and expansive than that ACC raid on the Big East a few summers back. Frankly, I find myself in a constant state of preparedness for the next revelation. I don’t sleep. I wait. We’re good through May, I think. I hope.

Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. No need for the sworn affidavit.

Shannon said:

I would be very careful about making the analogy describing a sports and legal battle to what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. The analogy far misses the point of the tragedy of war and the insignificant – in the light of the world’s real problems – decisions of a coach.

That being said, and before continuing I will admit to placing my ministerial hat on here, but I have to wonder about Rodriguez. What is going on inside him, as a person, that places his own career, his own wealth, his own security, above that of his integrity and the integrity of his friends and co-workers. When one puts himself above others like that, then there is something deeper going on with the individual. That is a selfish, self-centered attitude that falls on the face of what being a leader is about. That, to me, is quite sad that someone with such coaching talent could be such out of whack when it comes to how he handles his life.

It’s quite sad really.

Gloss over the first part as we already addressed that … though it does remind us of Marv Robon’s poorly chosen slavery remark, which itself illustrates what I’m talking about. They keep giving us material with which to work. To Shannon’s point, though, yes, it is sad because Rich has become a completely different person. Well, he’s appeared to the world as a completely different person. And remember, this is a football coach. At Michigan.

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For what it’s worth…

Arizona State finally returned a message left Tuesday in the human resources office and it turns out Larry Aschebrook is employed as a Major Gift Officer for the ASU Foundation. Aschebrook was the director of the WVU Foundation before resigning earlier this month amid other news.

All I’m saying is he was a director for the WVU Foundation and is now a Major Gift Officer at the ASU Foundation. The ASUF is, like the WVUF, an independent 501(c)3 and its books cannot be opened. Aschebrook’s salary and perks are not available for our curious minds, which once wondered if he was encouraged out the door or left for a more lucrative offer. We must take his word, which seems fair enough for a guy who perhaps needs fair treatment.

In other matters of clarity, it turns out the story about the crowd at Saturday’s Gold-Blue Game being the second-largest in school history was a lie.

WVU: Where Schmitt happens

Owen Schmitt is going to be drafted this weekend. It will most likely happen on Sunday, but if the omnipotent authors of everyday life get it right, it’ll happen Saturday. That’s the proper ending to what is, in all honestly, an amazing journey.

It started at Wisconsin-River Falls, a tiny Division III school that was, of course, too small for Schmitt and his talents. He shopped himself around Division I and was famously told by Maryland to stay put and become a three-time All-American.

I’ve always liked that quote, but another, authored by Bill Stewart, is just as meaningful:

“Whatever legend you’ve heard about Owen Schmitt, double it and you’re getting close to the truth.”

Schmitt told me Tuesday there’s about a half-dozen or so teams that he feels good about and he thinks the feeling is mutual. That said, he’s heard he’ll be drafted anywhere from the second round to the sixth. He’s putting his faith in his career in WVU and that it was enough to convince the next level he can play.

That career at WVU? Unlike any other, in his own unique ways, and it cannot be matched in the future. Instead, it can only be appreciated.