Making His Mark
December 17, 2006 08:43 PM | General
December 17, 2006
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Jeremy Sheffey is part of a West Virginia University senior class Coach Rich Rodriguez once referred to as “The Land of the Misfits.” It’s a 25-member group stitched together with glue, duct tape and sheer determination. There is not a single prima donna among them.
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| Jeremy Sheffey is a member of the most successful senior class in Mountaineer football history.
Pete Emerson photo |
It also happens to be the most prolific senior class in school history, having been involved in a school-record 37 victories in five years, a program-defining Sugar Bowl triumph over Georgia in 2006, and four-straight New Year’s Day bowl appearances.
Not too bad for a bunch of misfits.
“None of us were real highly recruited,” said all-conference guard Jeremy Sheffey of his senior classmates. “None of us are overly talented. It’s neat and a lot of it is the friendships and the bonding we’ve done. Our coaches coach us really hard here. It’s one of the hardest coaching staffs you will come up against but that is what brings us all together and makes us the family that we are.”
Jeremy Sheffey is a good example of how Rich Rodriguez and his resourceful coaches sold a dream and got their players to buy into it. Boyd County, Kentucky’s Mikhail Baryshnikov turned down the tradition and allure of the United State Marines Corps to play football for the Mountaineers.
It was Rick Trickett over the Halls of Montezuma in a landslide.
There were plenty of others just like Sheffey. Dan Mozes, this year’s Rimington Award winner as college football’s top center, got a late sniff from Wake Forest after he had already committed to West Virginia.
For wide receiver Ray Bolden, the decision came down to West Virginia and Toledo.
For Akeem Jackson it was Minnesota, Connecticut or West Virginia. Warren Young was considering Alabama-Birmingham and some other smaller schools in the south.
Linebacker Boo McLee had some interest from Michigan State but nearby Pitt didn’t recruit him. Jason Colson could have gone to Syracuse if he was willing to play defensive back. Wide receiver Brandon Myles showed us the important lesson that it’s not where you start but where you finish that is most valuable when it comes to academics. If not for Rich Rodriguez and West Virginia University giving him the opportunity, Myles might not today be a college graduate.
There were others that either never made it to school or transferred to places like Alabama-Birmingham, Towson or Stephen F. Austin.
“It wasn’t like we beat out a lot of people for a lot of them,” WVU recruiting coordinator Herb Hand recalled. “But that was the recruiting class after we were 3-8 and those guys had to take a leap of faith. We were telling them, ‘Yeah, we went 3-8 but we were building the foundation for the future.’”
Sheffey was the first WVU player to graduate high school a semester early and enroll in January. There were also the greyshirts that delayed their enrollment a semester in order to have the benefit of an extra spring practice. Back then no stone was left unturned.
Sheffey recalled recently his first impression of Mountaineer football.
“I remember going into the Puskar Center and I was scared to death,” he laughed. “I was 17 years old and I’m coming for my first team meeting and I know no one. I know one person in the whole school – he was from my high school – and that’s it. The next memory was when we were lifting weights and I realized that I was in a real program because I was the smallest and weakest guy on the team.”
It didn’t get any better once practice began.
“They threw me in there as really a senior in high school in spring ball and I got the crap beat out of me,” Sheffey laughed. “I had to work up from there.”
And work he did. Sheffey developed himself into one of the best offensive guards in the Big East Conference, blocking for two of the most exciting runners in the country in All-American Steve Slaton and Big East player of the Year Patrick White.
“These guys stuck with it and were very persistent,” Hand said of WVU’s senior class. “There is not a lazy guy in the group; these guys will work.”
Sheffey says hard work is only one part of the equation. This group also genuinely likes each other.
“(Abraham) Jones and I are good friends,” Sheffey said. “I grew up in a neighborhood where there were hardly any African-Americans and now all of the sudden I’ve got best friends that are African-Americans. The cultural mix that is here and the different lifestyles that people live … we’re still very close and I think that’s what makes us the team that we are.”
It’s a team that will go down in the history books as one of West Virginia’s most successful ever – one that has opened new doors and exciting possibilities for future recruiting classes.
“The last week or so I’ve been looking back on my career and Dan (Mozes) and I were talking the other day and we feel like we’ve done a good job of laying a foundation that other people can follow,” Sheffey said. “We feel like we’ve made our mark at West Virginia. I’m happy with that.”
He should be.
