Mid-Week Rundown: Pat White, Playboy; Scandals & Depositions

Pat White was named to the pre-season Playboy All-American team this week. I’m sure this incident had nothing to do in the lure of White to Playboy.

White was the only quarterback named to the team. Just a few names to throw out there who were not named to the Playboy team. How about Heisman trophy winner Tim Tebow? Definitely a playboy of internet lore, but I really think the whole circumcising Filipino kids angle really hurt his chances.

Playboy is probably considered expert material in many subject matters, but I don’t know if I consider college football to be one of them. Nonetheless, it’s a feather in White’s hat for the upcoming season and hopefully he lives up to the honor better than, say, Steve Slaton. Just sayin. We still love you, Steve.

On to things that I really never wanted to talk about them, but have become the white elephant of West Virginia the past few weeks. The faculty at-large held an assembly yesterday and voted by an overwhelming margin of 565-39 to oust President Garrison. Yet Garrison and his cronies continue to occupy Stewart Hall. The faculty’s decision is non-binding anyway, and also did not meet a 900-vote quorum needed for anyone to take it seriously (never mind the fact that 565 is well over 50% of 900.) Garrison lives on and the Board of Governors keep him in power. School’s out for summer and by the time fall semester comes around, everyone forgets about Heathergate and Bill Stewart leads the whole WVU community in “Kum Bah Ya.”

Meanwhile, depositions were released from Ed Pastilong and Rich Rodriguez in Rodriguez’s lawsuit against WVU. Full-length versions are available of both mens’ testimonies, which you can read in their entirety like I did. And I’m not even that interested in the case. After reading both depositions though, I can honestly say Ed Pastilong is a very ineffective athletic director, while Rodriguez seems to play the stupid card throughout. The thing that strikes me is even if you believe most of Rodriguez’s testimony, which I actually do, there is still absolutely no reason for me to believe he owes WVU one cent less than 4 million dollars.

Rodriguez sites a late-night meeting with Mike Garrison on the night before he accepted the Michigan job. Apparently Rich drove over to Garrison’s house and got him out of bed, expecting Garrison to plead with Rodriguez to stay. But apparently Garrison and Co. did not say what Rich wanted to hear and now he’s in Ann Arbor. It seems like the issues that Rodriguez wanted worked out were very simple things, and it’s terrible to lose a coach over those things, but it’s also pretty clear that Rich was going to keep pushing the envelope until he was basically handed the keys so to speak, and WVU had heard enough from him and especially agent Mike Brown and drew the line in the sand.

So there’s my first and hopefully last rant on Rodriguez-gate. Although a lot more news will probably banter about this off-season and I’ll be drawn back like moth to flame. I’m anxious to see how much more testimony is brought forth. I’d like to see Rita Rodriguez’s testimony, because she probably makes Rich look like a rocket scientist.