The Exorcism of Rich Rodriguez, The Canonization of Owen Schmidt, and Other Year-End Notes

Any 20-point West Virginia win over a heavily-favored iconic college football team in the pressure cooker of a BCS bowl game makes me think happy thoughts:

• I think Rich is finally gone, or at least irrelevant. Not having responsibility for the athletic budget, I don't even care about the $4 million. Let Jim Tressel and Ohio State extract the pain from him year after year. And, let Rich sell his view to anyone who will interview him, from now until his head coaching demise. I don't care. I also don't think he could have beaten Oklahoma. We'll never know, of course, but Rich's offense I call the "hammer spread" (he hammers and hammers until Pitt wins) doesn't have nearly the imagination of Bill Stewart's version. Bill knew he had to throw downfield to loosen up the run, so he put the ball in Pat White's hands and told him to wing it. By the second half, it worked, and the rest is history.
• I watched most of the Fiesta Bowl at the Charleston Civic Center, West Virginia's biggest tailgate party. When Owen Schmidt bounced off the tacklers and raced (I mean raced) down the sideline for his touchdown, the crowd hit such a sustained roar I thought the hall was coming down. Owen ranks in Mountaineer football folklore right up there with Sam Huff, Jeff Hostetler, Darryl Talley, and Major Harris. He displayed uncommon footspeed for a 250 pounder, and also showed he doesn't sacrifice girth for the afterburners with his ability to absolutely bury linebackers, as he did during both of Noel Devine's touchdowns. I was at a table with one guy who has seen a few WVU games. He called Owen's dash "a million dollar run," alluding to the fact that the National Football League stood up and took notice. I'm sure Mel Kiper, Jr. liked what he saw.
• Counter to the fervor, I ask: why was our kicking game so bad? When a foot hit the ball, I had no idea what was going to happen and was afraid to watch and find out. I mean, scary bad. If we would have been typically solid in our special teams, Jimmy Johnson would have had looked even more stupid than he is.
• Speaking of the kicking game, gambles look terrible when they don't work, but I still cannot figure out why Bob Stoops chose to try the onsides kick. West Virginia was stopping the Sooners, even in the red zone. I fail to see what he was going to gain by getting the ball back on his forty, yet risk giving Pat White a short field to work with.
• Speaking of gambles, and for all the indifference I have about Rich, I must say the fake punt in the 2006 Sugar Bowl was a gutsy call. However, he had no choice, considering Georgia's ability to score from anywhere at anytime at that stage of the ga...for God's sake, why am I even talking about Mr. Irrelevant?
• According to a friend at my table, West Virginia's defense transformed Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford into the redshirt freshman he is. Sam has an unusually strong arm but he played as if no one had ever hit him. He had "happy feet," taking off at the first hint of the nearly constant pressure. Only when his receivers started to get open in the third quarter did he seem to settle in, but after the failed, foolish onsides kick even his legendary status as a 20 year old wunderkind couldn't pull Stoops' Troops back into it.
• Just when the blocking schemes worked and worked well, Steve Slaton went down with a bum hamstring. That's the run of bad luck and challenges our number 10 has faced since 2006 Louisville. Possibly unfairly, I have concentrated on Steve's need for an efficiently operating line. You know, Pat and Noel need a sliver, Steve needs a door, and all that. Finally, I have accepted the fact that opponents are keying on Steve and letting Pat run. You can't stop them both, the defensive coaches say, so they stop the one who has done the most damage with 55 TDs and the Sugar Bowl rushing record. Therefore, I predict: Noel and Steve will work hard in the off-season and come back to run with a team that will pass to loosen things up. Now who do you key on?
• We know we are fast, but our speed looks incredible on the national stage. Pat Haden couldn't believe it, and that comes from a guy who had Anthony Davis in his Southern Cal backfield in 1972 through 1974. Terry Donahue coached against all those West Coast burners, and he was definitely impressed.
• Fox knows how to line up the experts, but their play-by-play kid left a lot to be desired. The network stalwarts haven't been the same since Kiran Chetry went to CNN, but that statement is not quite as irrelevant as Rich. One thing Fox does well in their bowl coverage: they give a lot of time to the marching bands, especially by allowing us in the Civic Center to see the Aaron Copeland "Appalachian Spring" pregame. Eyes were not dry.
• Other eyes that were not dry: Oklahoma defensive lineman and linebackers caught in Pat White's vortex. Buddy Ryan said that you can't play if you can't see through the tears. Pat led the toughest running game in the nation. When you consider Owen, the o-line, Noel, Steve while he was there, and the skinny Pat White laying it out every play, it does not get any better than that.
• And finally...those conducting job interviews sometime submit their recruits to role play scenerios to get a feel for how the recruits will conduct themselves. Based on that, consider Bill Stewart hired. Ignore the attitude of the guy from the Arizona Diamondbacks. West Virginia football has had several great victories; '82 Oklahoma, '84 Boston College, '93 Miami, '06 Georgia, but, with due regard to everything important to a team - honor and respect - '08 Oklahoma is the most significant, and Bill Stewart showed the way.