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2006 Sugar Bowl: Pat White
July 31, 2015 03:09 PM | Football
Those of us who were around here in 2005 when Pat White was a redshirt freshman quarterback weren’t really sure what the Mountaineers had.
Sure, he was fast and athletic, but every time he lined up behind the center to trigger West Virginia’s attack, it never seemed like he could consistently move the offense. White would run the option and as soon as he turned the corner the coaches’ whistle would blow.
And whenever he dropped back to pass, once a pass rusher came within reach of him the whistle blew again and soon the next group of players would run onto the field.
Can this guy really play, some of us thought?
What we didn’t realize (or understand) was that Pat White’s magic on the football field happened when the whistle wasn’t blown.
The guys who played with him could see right away that White was on a different level from the rest of the players on the team back then.
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“The year we redshirted we used to scrimmage a lot and I can remember he hit, I think it was (wide receiver) Tito Gonzales, on a scramble drill for a deep ball and before that he had a couple of big runs and I thought, ‘That’s something different that we didn’t have,’” recalled teammate Brandon Myles, now an assistant strength coach on Butch Jones’ Tennessee football staff. “I got a glimpse of that one play and I thought, ‘Man, he could be really good.’”
“We knew Pat was something special, but he had a lot of developing to do,” said center Dan Mozes, the Rimington Award winner in 2006.
Added running back Steve Slaton, “The one thing I can say about Pat is when you are around talent you recognize talent and the things he could do in practice from an athletic standpoint, it got to where athletic quarterbacks were taking over (the college game),” he said.
Which is exactly what happened at West Virginia with White, who came of age in the Mountaineers’ triple-overtime victory over Louisville in 2005. Adam Bednarik and White were sharing the quarterbacking duties up to that point until White led WVU back from 17 points down in the fourth quarter to eventually win the game – and the starting job.
With White now at the controls full-time, the Mountaineers ran the table to win the Big East outright with a 7-0 league record, and then he led West Virginia to an amazing, unforgettable 38-35 victory over Georgia in the 2006 Nokia Sugar Bowl.
That was the win that truly put West Virginia University football on the map, and it happened with a 19-year-old redshirt freshman quarterback behind center.
“It was a big game for the program on a national level,” admitted White. “It recognized West Virginia after that.”
It also recognized Pat White as one of college football’s most dynamic quarterbacks.
“The thing with Pat is he’s a guy with extreme self-confidence,” said teammate Garin Justice, now head football coach at Division II Concord. “He was one of those guys where if no one knew anything about anyone and he walked in a room he just has a certain energy about him that others don’t possess. Everyone’s like, ‘That’s our quarterback – that’s our leader.’ Pat had that.”
Even the defensive guys came to appreciate all of the things White brought to the team, including his incredible toughness, which is often overlooked when taking an inventory of his immense football talents.
Linebacker Jay Henry recalled a game against Connecticut when White completely emasculated a Husky defender who was attempting to tackle running back Steve Slaton.
“Probably one of my favorite scenes was when we were playing UConn at night and Steve kind of cut back across the field and he was running toward the hospital and Pat put a crack-back on somebody that was just incredible,” said Henry. “You never saw quarterbacks doing that, but that’s just how much Pat wanted to win.”
For White, the block was simply a product of his football upbringing, dating back to his pee-wee days growing up in Daphne, Alabama.
“My first experience in football that I remember they took me and a cousin of mine across from each other face-to-face and they just told us to keep blocking each other until they blew the whistle,” White said.
Unlike his college coaches at WVU, his pee-wee coaches refused to blow the whistle. They wanted to see who the tough kids were.
“We grabbed ahold of each other’s shoulder pads and kept holding each other and I had a helmet that was passed down from generations we dubbed ‘the headache helmet’ – anytime you got hit you got a headache,” said White. “Well, I’m this little kid and I’m banging helmets with my cousin and I started crying but the whistle hadn’t blown so I couldn’t stop.”
And he never did after that.
As he got older, and bigger, White began doling out the pain.
“I probably told some of the guys over the years and it probably went in one ear and out the other but growing up as a six-year-old, my teams would be beating the other team 70-0 and we’d have at least 10 crack-back (blocks) a game,” he said. “There would be these little kids getting laid out all over the field. We grew up doing that.”
By the time White’s career at West Virginia was finished in 2008 he established 19 school, conference and NCAA records during his brilliant four-year career. He became the first player in Big East history to amass more than 10,000 yards of total offense and his 4,480 yards rushing were the most in NCAA history for a quarterback when he graduated.
However, White’s most important statistic was the 34-8 record the Mountaineers had when he was their starting quarterback. Among those 34 wins were victories against Georgia in the 2006 Sugar Bowl, Georgia Tech in the 2007 Gator Bowl, Oklahoma in the 2008 Fiesta Bowl and North Carolina in the 2008 Meineke Car Care Bowl – the first time in NCAA history a quarterback had led his team to four consecutive bowl wins.
“He was special – he still is,” said teammate Ryan Stanchek, now an assistant coach at Alcorn State. “Being around him and Steve Slaton on a football field we were spoiled as offensive linemen. There were plays when we would be blocking and you’d tell yourself never to do this, but you’d catch yourself kind of feel the air of them going by you and you knew it was over – they were gone!”
Gone, but certainly not forgotten.
Today, White is senior vice president of marketing and product performance for the sports performance drink Rehydrate, a no-sugar, no-caffeine, no-calorie product.
“We are a premium product priced competitively,” noted White.
According to White, their product is in “about 600 stores and growing” as of earlier this summer, with the goal of getting it in more of the bigger chain stores throughout the region.
“I’ve been pretty busy,” White said.
If Rehydrate can come close to matching White’s enormous success on the playing field then you’re looking at another big winner, that’s for sure!
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