Exchanging Ideas
April 03, 2006 11:27 PM | General
April 4, 2006
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Could you imagine executives from Coca-Cola inviting their counterparts from Pepsi over to the lab for a little soft drink Q and A? How about Bill Gates hosting Apple’s Steve Jobs for coffee and truffles to discuss a new operating system Microsoft is about to launch?
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| More than 800 high school coaches were in Morgantown last weekend to take part in West Virginia's coach's clinic.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
As hard as it is to believe, that’s exactly what college football coaches do each spring. In the fall these ultra competitive combatants try to run each other into the ground. In the winter they assassinate each other’s character in the living rooms of 18 year-olds. But in the spring, well, the flowers are blooming and everything is kumbaya.
This practice of coaches visiting each other and exchanging ideas has been going on for years. When West Virginia wanted to unleash a surprise on South Carolina in the 1969 Peach Bowl, Coach Jim Carlen sent offensive coordinator Bobby Bowden down to Texas to get a first-hand look at how the Longhorns ran their veer offense.
A few years later, West Virginia defensive coaches traveled to Knoxville in the spring to take a peak at Tennessee's 50-defense that ranked first in the nation.
Today, coaches from all over the country are visiting Morgantown observing both Rich Rodriguez’s sophisticated spread offense and Jeff Casteel’s odd-stack defense. Apparently people were watching the Nokia Sugar Bowl.
In fact, the Milan Puskar Center this spring has been more like East Germany during the Cold War: there are spies everywhere. Coaches from Ohio State, Southern Mississippi, Ohio, Memphis and Eastern Michigan have stopped by to watch West Virginia football practices. Alabama has been here, too, along with California head coach Jeff Tedford. Last Saturday, some 800 high school coaches from as far away as Texas and California attended West Virginia’s coach’s clinic which normally draws about 400.
Even some of Penn State’s defensive coaches made it down to Morgantown and for anyone over the age of 35 and having spent most of their lives watching Nittany Lion beatings, that’s about the football equivalent of the Pope asking the guy at the end of the bar for some spiritual advice.
When the Penn State coaches strolled into the Puskar Center a couple of weeks ago, West Virginia’s head man had to rub his eyes to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. Remember, it was during Rich Rodriguez’s senior year in 1984 that the Mountaineers finally ended their long losing streak to the Lions that spanned the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations.
Oh, if only Jack Fleming was still around to see it.
“If we were still playing them I promise you they wouldn’t be here,” Rodriguez chuckled. “The first thing I said when I saw them was, ‘The walls may come crumbling down.’ The rivalry has dissipated for sure when you have them come over and spend some time with you.”
Through the years, Rodriguez has actually struck up a friendship with Penn State coach Joe Paterno. Of course it is football that bridges their generational gap. Joe Pa and Rich Rod are probably not talking about Benny Goodman songs and Burt Lancaster movies on those Nike cruises.
“It’s kind of funny because I always talk to Joe on the Nike trips and we were talking about the evolution of college football,” Rodriguez remarked. “I said, ‘Imagine Penn State going to the spread and running the read zone.’ Who would have thought that?”
Rodriguez admits he’s learned as much from the coaches visiting Morgantown as they’ve taken away from his practices.
“I think we’ve gotten some things out of the guys that have visited … maybe as much as they’ve gotten from us,” he said. “It’s kind of neat. Obviously in recruiting when the high school guys visit that helps you a little bit and when the college coaches visit we trade a lot of ideas and talk about practices.
“There are no patents, unfortunately,” Rodriguez said.
Even though coaches share ideas and concepts, the family jewels are off limits.
“You always have certain things that you probably don’t discuss at length but they can probably figure it out if they watch enough film,” Rodriguez said. “There are always little things that you’ve probably got to be here every day with the staff to know some of the ins and outs of it.”
But for all of the sharing and fellowship that goes on in the spring, football in the end will always be about the Jimmies and Joes: not the Xs and Os.
“It is always going to be about execution more than anything else,” Rodriguez said.
One thing you won’t see, says Rodriguez, are coaches from Pitt or Marshall hanging around football practice. Some things are off limits – even in springtime.
Briefly:
“Overall I thought our quarterbacks made a lot of poor decisions and that doesn’t help us. Our wide receiving crew wasn’t as physical as they need to be.”
“Saturday’s scrimmage coming up is going to be important for a lot of guys and not just on offense. I’ve told the team that we’ve really only got five practices left for some guys to prove themselves. That’s not a whole lot of time,” he said.
“I haven’t gotten a confirmation yet but it looks like he may have tore his ACL so that will put him out for the spring and hopefully we can get him back in August,” Rodriguez said. “But we don’t know the severity of it. It was a weird thing: a non-contact deal. He planted it kind of funny running to the sidelines and it buckled on him.”
Backup quarterback Nate Sowers was also sidelined again today and the coaches are hopeful of getting him back on Wednesday. Ryan Dawson and Brandon Barrett returned to practice on Monday after being shelved with minor ailments.
“(Being out) is not helping them,” Rodriguez said. “If they can stay healthy they’ve got a few more practices to try and prove themselves.”
The team practiced in shorts on Monday and will have Tuesday off.
