Football Notebook
December 13, 2004 03:12 PM | General
December 13, 2004
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez believes his football program will receive a recruiting boost by having back to back appearances in the Gator Bowl. And if the Mountaineers can fare well against the renowned Florida State Seminoles on national television, that could be an even bigger bonus.
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| West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez says he's been pleased with the response he's received from recruits.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
“One, it is national TV and two, it’s Florida State,” Rodriguez said Monday morning. “Those guys have recruited some of the best players in the country. If you can compete well against them it captures your attention because recruits know about Florida State.”
Rodriguez says his program has received increased interest from top-rated prospects this fall and his coaching staff last weekend hosted the largest number of recruits for its football banquet since he’s been at WVU.
“We hadn’t planned on bringing that many in before the holidays but this is a year when it seems like a lot of guys are more interested early in taking a peek at us,” Rodriguez said.
The coach wanted to get an early start on visits before possible bad weather in January might force cancellations that could ultimately impact a player’s decision on coming to West Virginia.
“A lot of guys that came in for their visit had a lot of visits set in January so we wanted to at least have a shot at them,” he reasoned. “With us having the banquet this past weekend and if they got here early enough they could watch us Friday practice some and it worked out pretty well. A lot of those guys we’re recruiting have a lot of offers and are visiting a lot of other people in January.”
Rodriguez says recruits are usually amazed at what West Virginia University and Morgantown has to offer. The trick is convincing them that what other recruiters are telling them about West Virginia isn’t necessarily the case.
“There are a lot of people that do negative recruiting which we don’t believe in but we know it happens. They paint a different picture of West Virginia and Morgantown than what it really is,” Rodriguez said. “Once they come here they realize that some of these things other people tell them aren’t quite true.”
During Friday’s banquet as each class was announced to go up to get something to eat, Rodriguez pointed out to some of the recruits that his program has a large number of freshmen and sophomores.
“The sophomore class got up and there were 30-some of them and then the freshmen class got up and there were 40-some of them. I told the recruits, ‘Did you notice how bottom-heavy we are on our squad?’ Those have been our two biggest recruiting classes and this one will probably equal that size,” Rodriguez said. “They can see that we have a lot of good, young talent on our team. We hope our recruiting gets better every year and that’s what it needs to do.
“We’re filling up pretty quickly which is good from our commitment aspect. It was a good weekend and I think our guys enjoyed it.”
Due to NCAA rules Rodriguez is not allowed to identify recruiting prospects by name. The NCAA signing period for football is the first Wednesday of February.
Briefly:
Rodriguez says both Henry and junior cornerback Pac-Man Jones have approached him about filling out the initial paperwork to explore the process of leaving school early for the NFL draft.
“We’ve talked to them about it,” he said. “The NFL has an advisory committee that you fill a form out and you send it to them and they have a committee that evaluates underclassmen. They send a note back that lets them know what their potential is if they came out early.”
Rodriguez says both players have told him that they haven’t made up their mind yet if they are going to pursue professional football next year and both have signed up for classes next semester.
“We try to have open communication with our players and we hope they have the same with us,” he said. “We ask them what their interest is in returning. During the second semester we’ve got to plan for that. Part of our job is to help them and assist them in that aspect. We haven’t had a whole lot of guys in my four years that have been in that situation so it’s not all a bad problem. It’s just a situation you have to deal with as coaches and we’re dealing with it.”
“I think the best method is the plus-one (having an extra game following the bowls to decide the champion),” he said.
The idea of having the smaller bowls host the opening rounds of a 16-team playoff won’t work, according to the coach. “If you have a team that goes through every round would their fans go to every bowl game? Could they afford to go to the Forth Worth Bowl, then the Gator Bowl and then the Orange Bowl? Could they do that three weeks in a row? That’s where some of the bowls may suffer as opposed to fans going to one game and having their holiday around that,” he said.
