Football: Rodriguez Coach of the Year Finalist
December 06, 2007 02:15 PM | General
December 6, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - West Virginia University Head Football Coach Rich Rodriguez as been named a finalist for the 2007 Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year Award, which honors the college football coaches who best exemplify responsibility and excellence on and off the field of play. Fans can cast a vote for Coach Rodriguez to win for Division 1-A by December 15 at www.coachoftheyear.com. The winner will be announced on December 29 during an ABC/ESPN special.
“More than a half-million fan votes were cast for 597 college football coaches this season, a tremendous and passionate outpouring of support from college football fans across the nation,” said Greg Gordon, Liberty Mutual vice president, Consumer Marketing. “Each finalist embodies what makes this award different than any other: responsibility – not only to his own team and players, but also to his school and his community.”
Rodriguez led the Mountaineers to a 10-2 regular-season mark, including a 5-2 mark in the BIG EAST Conference. The No. 9/11 WVU squad won its fourth BIG EAST Conference championship under Rodriguez in the past five years and earned a bowl bid for the sixth-straight year. WVU will be making its fourth-straight New Year’s Day Bowl appearance, making them one of two schools in the nation (USC) to accomplish this feat.
The NCAA I-A finalists are:
Each winner receives $50,000 from Liberty Mutual to support his civic and charitable activities, $20,000 in scholarship to his school’s alumni association, and is recognized in the permanent Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year display at the National Football Foundation’s College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Ind.
During the initial fan-voting phase at www.coachoftheyear.com (September 6 – November 27), the top 25 vote getters in each division qualified to be evaluated by an objective model designed exclusively for the Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year Award and reviewed and endorsed by the College Football Hall of Fame. The model arrived at the finalists by scoring each of these qualifying coaches in four areas: coaching excellence, sportsmanship and integrity, academic excellence, and community commitment.
Fan votes in this second phase account for 20 percent of each coach’s final score, with a voting committee of college football media (25 percent) and College Football Hall of Fame coaches and players (55 percent) contributing the remainder.
The winners will be announced December 29, 2007, on an ABC special presentation hosted by Hall of Fame Sportscaster Keith Jackson and Analyst Kirk Herbstreit at 5:30 p.m. (ET). The special award presentation will re-air January 8, 2008, on ESPN2 at 2:00 p.m. (ET).
