Coming Out Party
September 19, 2007 03:47 PM | General
September 19, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia football coach Rich Rodriguez was walking toward the locker room after his team’s 31-14 victory at Maryland last Thursday night when Dave Brown, ESPN’s vice president for programming, came up to him and popped the cork off the bottle.
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| Freshman Noel Devine leads the country averaging 15.1 yards per carry.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
“Well, it was a coming out party for Noel Devine,” Brown told Rodriguez.
The first thought that went through Rodriguez’s mind was that ESPN was planning a big blowout on his freshman running back that had just finished off Maryland with 137 second-half yards on only five carries.
“I’m thinking, OK, when my wife Rita goes home and watches the game they’re probably going to have a big thing on Noel,” Rodriguez said.
It is Brown who essentially determines which games get on television for the world’s biggest and most powerful sports network. Much like a well-known Hollywood casting agent that has a knack for matching the right actors with the right roles, it is Brown’s job to deliver football-starved fans the best possible games and its most exciting players.
And no freshman out there is creating a bigger buzz than Noel Devine, who leads the nation with a 15.1 yards-per-carry average.
“I think it’s neat for him but for any guy you’ve got to make sure they keep it in perspective,” Rodriguez said. “He’s a type of guy like Steve (Slaton) and Pat (White) that you really don’t worry about because you see his temperament in practice and the way he works. (Celebrity) is not going to affect him.”
Actually, celebrity has never fazed Devine. The most hyped player ever to come to West Virginia (yes, even more hyped than that other big-city high school running back of a few years ago) has been a success because he’s never really paid that much attention to the attention, preferring instead to just blend in with his teammates and classmates.
“There has been so much hype about him anyway and he was a guy that was never really into the hype,” Rodriguez said. “I can see people coming up to him and saying they saw him in this and they saw him in that and he’d say, ‘I’d rather talk about something else.’”
Much like his well-known teammates Slaton and White, Devine gives similar soft-spoken, one-word answers to reporters getting paid to search for new angles. On Tuesday one unsuccessfully tried to get Devine to talk about how he would like to be used.
Devine wouldn’t take the bait.
“It’s not me calling the plays,” he said politely. “It’s the coaches and how they feel and how comfortable they feel with me. If they feel comfortable with me running the zone they’re going to run the zone. If they’re comfortable with me running the belly they’ll run the belly.”
The words Devine uses are chosen carefully because he’s been burned in the past, and that will provide a formidable obstacle for the big boys that have been calling this week trying to set up interviews.
USA Today’s Jack Carey was in town Tuesday night to talk to Devine and his teammates for a team profile the paper plans to run next week. Sports Illustrated’s Austin Murphy is in town today. Others are certain to follow.
Rodriguez was asked Tuesday afternoon during his televised press conference if he thought the attention Devine was receiving might in some way turn off established stars like Slaton and White. After all, Slaton is the first football player to ever make the cover of Sports Illustrated wearing a West Virginia uniform and not laying on his back (apologies of course to the members of the 1989 Fiesta Bowl team).
“In a way it’s probably a welcomed respite for (Steve),” Rodriguez said. “It’s almost like, ‘OK, I’ve got somebody else to deflect all of this.’”
Common everyday things we take for granted living in a small college town like going to the grocery store is not a normal function for players like Slaton, White and now Noel Devine. There is as much game-planning going on buying a gallon of milk as there is for this week’s opponent East Carolina.
“You’re a football guy in a small town and a small state and believe it or not when you’re a college student and you’re in that atmosphere sometimes that can be a little bit of a burden when you can’t go to the grocery store without being hammered for autographs,” Rodriguez said.
“They ought to be grateful that people want them, but at the same time it can be tough when people don’t understand that they are in a hurry and they want them to stand there and sign things for an hour and a half and they’ve got to be some place,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez has often said that he will step in and shut down the publicity if he ever detects it becoming a burden on his players.
“I’m glad the guys are getting the attention but it goes back to what I’ve said many times: if it changes who they are or how they work then I’ll step in,” he said.
