Let the Healing Begin
January 02, 2008 10:23 AM | General
January 2, 2008
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – A palpable silence had overtaken the room once Rich Rodriguez had informed the team that he was leaving for the University of Michigan. After finishing his short speech Rodriguez turned abruptly and walked out of the room, avoided the reporters staking out the Milan Puskar Center, and sped off toward his future.
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| Bill Stewart leads West Virginia against Oklahoma in the 2008 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl tonight against No. 3-ranked Oklahoma.
AP photo |
It was up to Bill Stewart to tend to Rich Rodriguez’s past.
The timing couldn’t have been more difficult for those Rodriguez left behind. It was a week before Christmas and three weeks before West Virginia’s game against Oklahoma in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. Assistant coaches and team personnel that had put down roots in West Virginia now had uncertain futures and 18, 19, 20 and 21-year-olds that had pledged their allegiances to their coach were without their coach.
Coaches have left before and coaches will leave again, but it is hard to ever imagine anyone departing WVU quite the way Rich Rodriguez did.
Jim Carlen knew he was leaving West Virginia for Texas Tech when he led the Mountaineers to a 14-3 victory over South Carolina in the 1969 Peach Bowl. A day after the game he was on an airplane headed for Lubbock, Texas.
Bobby Bowden was leaning toward a return to Florida State when he led West Virginia to a 13-10 victory over North Carolina State in the 1975 Peach Bowl. And a week later he was gone.
John Beilein’s name was mentioned for every job available by the time he had led the basketball team to the NIT title last March. It was a surprise to no one when he accepted Michigan’s job offer just three days after West Virginia’s victory over Clemson.
Rodriguez, just barely a year removed from his flirtation with Alabama, stunned all by resigning two days after everyone was still trying to figure out whether or not he had really met with the Michigan president and AD in Toledo, Ohio.
Why now? Why Michigan, they asked?
The irony in all of this, of course, is that Rodriguez had achieved more in seven years at West Virginia University than Carlen, Bowden and Beilein combined, yet he chose to leave after suffering one of the worst losses in school history to 28-point underdog that just happened to be WVU’s biggest rival in a game that would have propelled the Mountaineers into the national championship.
That loss and his rapid-fire departure must now be added to Rich Rodriguez’s West Virginia University legacy that also includes three-straight Top 10 rankings, 60 victories, and Sugar and Gator Bowl triumphs.
So it was the man the players call Coach Stew who was assigned the task of being the team’s interim coach and guiding a proud Mountaineer football program through a trying month.
It was Bill Stewart who jumped up and told the players to get up on the practice field and go back to work after Rodriguez told them he was leaving. No need worrying about things you can’t control, Stewart said.
It was Stewart who reached back into West Virginia’s past by bringing Hall of Fame coach Don Nehlen to practice and having him impart a lifetime’s worth of wisdom on a team searching for direction. Part of Nehlen’s message: no one person is bigger than our University. Gov. Joe Manchin was also asked to come in and boost the team’s spirits.
It was Stewart’s soothing words a day after he was named interim coach that started the healing process for Mountaineer fans near and far. Stewart reminded us that Rodriguez’s decision to leave West Virginia was not a tragedy. It wasn’t a passing of a life.
Stewart called it a “life-altering situation.” He explained so eloquently that jobs were changing and men were moving. That’s all.
Stewart has proudly talked about his West Virginia heritage; he mentioned his father working in the Ben’s Run cornfields and the value of hard work. He recalled learning how to highlight important things that he had read at old Central Grade School in downtown New Martinsville. He talked about the meaning of something as simple as a handshake.
He referenced his old high school team the Magnolia Blue Eagles and how folks in New Martinsville aren’t afraid to play anyone, anywhere, anytime. He explained to us that the kids most impacted by the present circumstances are a lot tougher emotionally than we are. He admitted that 35 years ago when he was their age something like this would have been the end of the world to him. Thirty three years worth of experiences in the coaching profession have since taught him otherwise.
There were times, too, when he referenced himself in the third person proclaiming, “When things get too rough then they’re just about right for Billy Stewart.”
Tonight, things may get rough for the Mountaineers and Bill Stewart when they take on the No. 3-ranked Oklahoma Sooners in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.
If anything else, Bill Stewart has proved the last two weeks through words and actions that he is willing to take on the challenge.
