Perhaps WVU should have/could have worked harder to make sure Rich Rodriguez was happy at WVU.
But based on the incessant demands on WVU by Rodriguez’s agent, Mike Brown, somebody should have spanked Rodriguez on his bottom like a bad, bad boy and put him in a corner of the Puskar Center to pout.
After reading through some of the e-mails between Brown, WVU President Mike Garrison, Garrison’s Chief of Staff Craig Walker and Rodriguez’s financial advisor Mike Wilcox, it appears that Rodriguez’s wish list came from a bottomless well.
And the wants and desires by Rich and Rita Rodriguez—yes, she was a prominent player in many of the discussions—were presented to WVU by Brown in ways that sounded more like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than a business partner.
Last September, when Rodriguez finally signed his new contract, Brown railed in an e-mail to Chief of Staff Walker “This is a major breach of the trust factor we discussed 2 weeks ago. If this was done w/o your approval that person should be immediately terminated!”
Actually, it was Rodriguez himself who revealed on his weekly radio show on Metronews that he had signed the new contract. WVU was immediately hit with Freedom of Information requests from media and was simply complying with the law.
One e-mail from Brown to Walker on Nov. 14th had a threatening tone. Brown referenced job openings at Texas A-and-M and perhaps at Florida State and wrote that Rodriguez would have to “weigh heavily” those opportunities.
So, the West Virginia native who had made a commitment to his alma mater just months earlier was now being shopped by his agent for other jobs. Or if Rodriguez wasn’t looking, then his agent was using any possible leverage to continue to pressure WVU to go beyond the contract and meet additional demands.
What were those demands? Rodriguez was obsessed with having his own website. He also wanted to, according to an e-mail from Brown, find another vendor for the radio broadcasts. (In the interest of full disclosure, I am a part time employee of MSN, the radio and TV network for WVU)
The coach wanted more graduate assistants, permission for his players to sell their schoolbooks to make money, stadium signage, more money for assistant coaches and more.
In frustration, Walker writes in one e-mail to Wilcox—Rodriguez financial advisor—“What is the number that is needed for the assistant coaches to get them to a point that is competitive in Rich’s eyes?” WVU complained it could get no specific answer from the coach.
Meanwhile, Wilcox comes off as professional and reasonable to Brown’s pit bull approach. The e-mails back and forth involving Wilcox suggest progress in resolving financial issues and a hope for a long-term relationship.
There are e-mails showing Wilcox was trying to keep Brown out of the some of the meetings with the coach and WVU. In a Sept. 12th e-mail from Wilcox to Walker, Wilcox accused Brown of “continual bucket stirring.”
Either Wilcox and Brown were playing “good cop, bad cop” or Brown ended up with more influence than Wilcox in Rodriguez’s decisions.
The first take after the release of the e-mails was that WVU and the Rodriguez camp had been talking/quarreling/negotiating for months to try to reach agreement on the contract and myriad other items.
That version also produced questions about the leadership of WVU and the Athletic Department, and whether there was a level of dysfunction that contributed to the unhappiness of Rich and Rita Rodriguez and their eventual departure.
Fair enough. A top coach leaves just months after signing a new contract and it’s appropriate to ask what role the bosses had in letting the star employee take another job.
However, when you read some of the hundreds of e-mails that went back and forth between WVU and the Rodriguez camp it begins to dawn on you that WVU was being squeezed in a way that would have tried the patience of Job until finally the Rodriguezes gathered up their toys, puffed out their lower lips, and stormed off to find a new playground.
