A Week in Paradise
January 19, 2007 03:30 PM | General
January 19, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Rich Rodriguez wasn’t allowed to take the spread offense with him to Hawaii, so instead he chose to draw up a few of his favorite plays in the dirt. And one of them wound up winning the 2007 Hula Bowl.
 |
||
| Rich Rodriguez and his family applaud the Mountaineer football team as they were announced during Wednesday night's game against South Florida at the WVU Coliseum.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
“It’s the least amount I’ve done in a week of preparation,” Rodriguez said Wednesday. “We had really less than 2 ½ practices so I didn’t have time to install anything. The rules are such that really what we do in our offense we couldn’t do over there so I’m thinking, what the heck am I doing here?”
For one thing, he was having some fun. ESPN put a microphone on him and the game turned out to be a 3 ½-hour infomercial for Mountaineer football.
“I told them I hope they had a five-second delay,” Rodriguez laughed. “I wasn’t going to curse anyway but at the same time you didn’t want to say something and have it go over on national TV. I told them they may have to use that delay a few times and I hope they put us in a good light.”
Rodriguez certainly put himself and West Virginia University in a good light. His personality and command of the sidelines was impressive to watch, especially to impressionable 18-year-old high school football players looking for a place to play next year.
“I had heard that in all-star games the kids sometimes don’t play as hard but really the two times that we practiced they got after it and they played really hard in the game,” Rodriguez said.
The Hula Bowl, according to the coach, was essentially a job interview for the players. Still, that didn’t keep them from getting excited when they finally took the lead late in the game.
“By the end of the game they weren’t thinking about themselves,” Rodriguez said. “They were thinking about the East team trying to win. I told them, ‘You are here as individuals but you’ll probably come together as a team at some point.’ I saw that happening with our guys.”
Trailing 10-3, the Aina team finally got into the end zone on a Reggie Merriweather 1-yard run to make the score 10-9.
“You don’t go 14 hours to Hawaii for an all-star game and come back with a tie,” said Rodriguez.
So the coach called timeout, politely brushed off some high-priced advice he was receiving on the sidelines, and drew up one of his old plays from his Glenville State days.
“It didn’t happen like we drew it up,” Rodriguez laughed. “We had two kids make a great play, especially the (Bret) Smith kid from Tennessee who made a great catch. When I saw the kids storming the field I’m thinking ‘man, they really want this thing.’”
Rodriguez, who spent most of the week dealing with a stomach virus, said he had a lot of excuses to use if his team lost.
“I could have blamed (Georgia coach) Mark Richt, I could have blamed the rules, I could have blamed the time change – my stomach flu,” he laughed. “I could have had all kinds of reasons.”
The game was essentially an exhibition, but once the ball was kicked off Rodriguez’s competitive juices began flowing.
“Any time you keep score you want to win but the experience was good,” he said.
The experience was also a valuable one for the two West Virginia players Rodriguez brought along for the game: offensive guard Jeremy Sheffey and linebacker Jay Henry.
“They both had a great time,” Rodriguez said. “It takes a little while when you come from the east to adjust to the five-hour difference but they did well in their workouts. They enjoyed their experience and I think they made some friends with guys from both teams.”
