Rodriguez destroys WVU files on the way out?

[Killian]

If true, a huge dick move and one that will harm Rodriguez's reputation

Football player files missing
Fingers point to Rodriguez
By Dave Hickman
Staff writer
MORGANTOWN — West Virginia officials are wondering if assistant coaches aren’t all that Rich Rodriguez took with him to Michigan. They believe he may also have destroyed all or most of the paperwork files relating to every player on the current Mountaineer roster and virtually all of the activities conducted by the program over the past seven years.
Soon after returning to work after the Fiesta Bowl a little more than a week ago, the staff at the Puskar Center found that most of the files — including all of the player files — that had been stored in Rodriguez’s private office were missing. In addition, all of the players’ strength and conditioning files in the weight room were gone.

“It’s unbelievable. Everything is gone, like it never existed,’’ said a source within the athletic department, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Good, bad or indifferent, we don’t have a record of anything that has happened.’’

According to the source, the files in Rodriguez’s office that are now missing included everything from records regarding summer camps — financial and otherwise — to data on boosters, recruiting and most everything related to activities within the program during Rodriguez’s seven years at WVU.

Most disturbing, though, is the absence of all of the players’ personal files, which included, among other things, contact information, scholarship money awarded, class attendance records and records on personal conduct and community service, be it positive or negative.

“If a player spoke to a school or did public service, we don’t have a record of it,’’ said the source. “If he broke a rule or missed class, we don’t have a record of that, either. We don’t have anything. All the good things these kids have done over the years, there’s nothing — not a picture of somebody speaking to a class, nothing. Why would somebody do that?’’

West Virginia athletic director Ed Pastilong did not return a message seeking comment Monday night. Neither could Rodriguez be reached for comment.

The files went missing sometime between when Rodriguez resigned on Dec. 16 and the time the team and staff returned from the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 3. It could have happened as early as the first days following Rodriguez’s resignation because his old office was largely ignored by the support staff and the coaching staff between the time he left and Dec. 26, when the team and support staff all went to Arizona for the Fiesta Bowl.

According to multiple sources, several people in the Puskar Center reported seeing Rodriguez and at least one member of his inner circle, video coordinator Dusty Rutledge, in Rodriguez’s private office shredding paperwork on Dec. 18. That’s the day he returned to clean out his office after being introduced as the Michigan coach at a press conference in Ann Arbor the day before. At the time, those who say they witnessed it either did not know what was being destroyed or paid it little attention to it until the files were discovered missing more than two weeks later.


While the files in Rodriguez’s office held a wide range of information, those that were discovered missing from the weight room office were more specific. Those included every aspect of strength and conditioning progress made by players under former strength and conditioning coordinator Mike Barwis, who along with most of his immediate staff followed Rodriguez to Michigan after the Fiesta Bowl. Those files included the progression made by each player in every specific area, from bench-press totals to 40-yard dash times. The files even included pictures of the players at different points in their careers.
While a source within the athletic department said the department itself wasn’t launching any type of investigation into the missing files — “Our plate is pretty full right now with trying to put together a staff and everything else,’’ the source said, “and we don’t have time to deal with [stuff] like this right now.’’ — it has apparently drawn the interest of the university’s legal counsel.

WVU lawyers are in the process of trying to recover $4 million from Rodriguez as a condition of breaking his contract with six years remaining to become the coach at Michigan. While Rodriguez has maintained that West Virginia breached the contract by not fulfilling all of its terms — an argument the university denies — the school filed suit in Monongalia County Circuit Court last month detailing what it claims are breaches by Rodriguez above and beyond simply breaking the contract. Those include calling recruits to tell them of his decision to switch schools before he told his own team. It certainly would not help Rodriguez’s case if the school can prove that he also destroyed what WVU officials consider state files on his way out.

[buckeye_in_sc]

is he Urban Meyers long lost brother...holy shit...

[WolverineSteve]

I'll bet Michigan's real proud of their new boy.

Coming from a Saban BSH, doesn't carry much weight.

Like most stories the truth is probably somwhere between the story and the exact opposite. I'll wait before I crucify him.

Being as the dude and his family have endured, among other crap, death threats, it wouldn't suprise me if this is a frame job.

[L45B]

There's three sides to every story. WVU people are obviously bitter about the whole situation. I could see this as true, a frame job, or a combination of both. RichRod might be a completely or partially shady dude. His true character will be revealed in the next few seasons. I'll wait longer to pass judgment on the guy.

[WolverineSteve]

Also worth mentioning....

The lawyers on both sides are negotiating the buyout of RR's contract. WVU could be posturing in hopes of getting the full 4 mil. There's a laundry list of reasons RR left WVU. Mostly the unkept promises of improvements to the program and facilities. RR would have stayed at WVU for life. He was lied to, and eventually offered one of the best jobs in his field. Any of you fucksticks would have done the same thing.

Funny to me how the guy had an impecable reputation, then he came to UM, now he's a scumbag. Haters unite!

[Killian]

Don't kid yourself. His reputation was tarnished last year when he had his little flirtation with Alabama.

[WolverineSteve]

And all we heard was that he was leveraging his position to get facility upgrades, and a handsome raise. I call that shrewd business. When the school failed to deliver on their promises, he jetted. Nothing earth shattering here, this type of thing is common in all realms of business. Big time college athletics are a business after all.

[Killian]

Telling your future employer that you are coming and then backing out isn't shrewd business. In the real world, that would lead to you getting your ass fired and the other offer pulled off the table.

[WolverineSteve]

If you had an agreement with your employer and they fail to deliver on their promises, why not seek another gig? You could continue to stay on one job and keep getting fucked over, would that be loyalty or subserviant? It depends on what's important to you. When RR renegotiated his deal with WVU he put the pieces in place to make it a top tier program from a facilities standpoint. Certain things failed to pan out, he left for a better circumstance for himself and his family. Again, most here would do the same.

To the point of the files issue...I really doubt he took the time to remove files and destroy them. Why would he care to mess with kids scholorship info etc.? It seems like more sour grapes to me. Look, WVU got a new coach at a fraction of RR's cost. They will get up to 4 mil in the buy out deal. The program is light years ahead of where it was 7 years ago. Whatever happened to thanking a guy for a job well done and wishing him well?

[Adelpiero]

how do you know WVU didnt fullfill its promises?


sounds like your drinking some of RR's nutsack koolaid.


Boy, for a guy who said there are 2 sides of a story, you sure find RR's side against wvu to be pretty 100% truthful

flip flop much?

[WolverineSteve]

how do you know WVU didnt fullfill its promises?

for starters...
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07352/842541-144.stm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

an excerpt from a Detroit Free Press article...

A week ago Saturday, Rodriguez spent hours on the phone with his friends and family discussing the offer U-M had made to take over its program. He was, by all accounts, an emotional wreck, conflicted, confused, fighting back tears.

No one wanted him to take the job. But few were telling him that. They knew that he had been battling with some in the administration at West Virginia. The issues were more personality clashes than anything else. After all, he had received a $1-million raise after turning down Alabama, bumping his annual salary to $1.8 million, which was $300,000 more than Carr made.

Rodriguez met with West Virginia's president, Mike Garrison, last Saturday night. It didn't go well.

"You had a young president and a young football coach backing each other into a corner," said Bray Cary, president of West Virginia Media, a state communications giant headquartered in Charleston.

Cary, a West Virginia alum and booster, talked with representatives from both sides after the meeting. "They started kicking sand at each other," Cary said, "like two kids at a sandbox."

He said neither side would compromise and each side shared the blame for Rodriguez's departure.

Michigan's new coach has built successful programs in part because of the cult of his personality. But he can be abrasive and blunt.

"A wild man," said his father, "that's what he was when he was younger. Throwing clipboards. Stomping around."

His parents and friends and fellow coaches say he has matured and calmed down considerably. But the drive remains.

"He's the only coach I've ever had that hated losing more than me," said Pat White, West Virginia's star quarterback.

Rodriguez said in an interview Friday night at a Morgantown hotel that that was why he was constantly pushing the school to upgrade its facilities, to find more money for football operations, to budget more to pay his assistants.

He thought the school was missing the big picture. Some in the school thought he was ungrateful.

"An easy fix," his friend Alvarez said. "It would've been an easy fix."

Full article
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti ... 048/Sports" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

per the harrassment in Morgantown...
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/ ... mily_N.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

the boosters blaming the university and not RR...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22315041/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


If you need any more, let me know. There's a ton of material out there.

[Adelpiero]

what the fuck? message deleted.

None of those articles have factual info on what he was promised and didnt received



but what i did see was WVU built him or was building several of the things promised.


And because idiot boosters are upset means nothing, they are tards who believe they own the program and sound like bitter girls.

[WolverineSteve]

Still looking for the articles I read about the school not holding up their end of the bargain. I'll link that shit up if/when I find it. Heading out for the night, perhaps tommorrow.

But per the thread topic, Mgoblog posed some interesting questions about shredgate.
>Why would Rodriguez shred all this stuff?
>Why would WVU let Michigan's head coach in the building?
>Why would "several" people notice Rodriguez, already announced as Michigan's head coach, shredding documents and make no effort to stop him?
>Why would all of these important documents exist only in single hard copy formats?
>Do they have computers in West Virginia?

Bottom line to me is... Rodriquez loved being at WVU. Something soured the relationship. He's at Michigan now, and I like it. Whatever went wrong helped to bring RR to Ann Arbor, whomever's to blame doesn't matter because he's a Wolverine now.

If he shredded doc's belonging to the University, I will lose some respect for him. If he only took what belonged to him, no problem. Time will tell.

[Adelpiero]

im not saying he did, but like you said earlier, there are 2 sides, and Michigan fan would be best to sit and wait.

casting stones at WVU and trying to accuse them of doing it to get leverage in the lawsuit, ends up making it al lworse than it is.

[M Club]

im not saying he did, but like you said earlier, there are 2 sides, and Michigan fan would be best to sit and wait.

casting stones at WVU and trying to accuse them of doing it to get leverage in the lawsuit, ends up making it al lworse than it is.

Being as the dude and his family have endured, among other crap, death threats, it wouldn't suprise me if this is a frame job.

WVU could be posturing in hopes of getting the full 4 mil.

"if" and "could" are occasionally used to express conditional circumstances or possibility. just thought you should know.

[MgoBlue-LightSpecial]

There seems to be multiples sides to this story. Why is RR shredding anything unless he's got something to hide? Furthermore, how the hell is it that the head coach was the only one with access to some of these "state documents?"

Dear WVU,

There are these really neat things out now called "computers." Look into them.

[PSUFAN]

There's three sides to every story. WVU people are obviously bitter about the whole situation. I could see this as true, a frame job, or a combination of both. RichRod might be a completely or partially shady dude. His true character will be revealed in the next few seasons. I'll wait longer to pass judgment on the guy.

What he said.

And he works the :rts:

[WolverineSteve]

RR's agent on the files thingy...

http://www.mlive.com/wolverines/index.s ... _to_d.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[WolverineSteve]

RR's agent on the files thingy...

http://www.mlive.com/wolverines/index.s ... _to_d.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It's probably a lot of BS from disgruntled WVU folks...

BUT...why should anyone believe a guy's agent?

Yep, agents are a bunch of sleezebags. But I think RR isn't commenting at this time because there is a lawsuit pending. It'll all come out eventually. I think if the buyout goes for the full 4 mil. we won't here much more about it.

[WolverineSteve]

Cue Neil Sedaka.....

Breaking up is hard to do!

Most relationships end badly, otherwise they wouldn't end.

[MuchoBulls]

Talk about burning your bridges. This shit has gotten really ugly.

I'd be real interested to know what he might have been hiding.

[M Club]

Talk about burning your bridges. This shit has gotten really ugly.

I'd be real interested to know what he might have been hiding.

i'm sure he was shredding all those internal memos on recruiting violations and handouts to players. probably want to keep that shit on file so no one blames you for lack of institutional control. it's perfectly well-reasoned to assume a coaching staff opens up an excel document when they begin recruiting a new player so they have record of how much they cheat.

[WolverineSteve]

Article published Thursday, January 17, 2008
EXCLUSIVE
Rodriguez says 'lies' need to end
UM coach refutes West Virginia reports

By MATT MARKEY
BLADE SPORTS WRITER

Since leaving his native West Virginia a month ago to become the football coach at the University of Michigan, Rich Rodriguez has gone from a favorite son of the Mountaineer State to a reviled expatriate.

Rodriguez, who led West Virginia to four Big East Conference championships in his seven seasons as coach, has had his property vandalized, his relatives harassed and threatened, and his reputation sullied by a bevy of still unsubstantiated charges.

Last night, the 44-year-old Rodriguez ended his self-imposed silence on the matter, saying the "lies" need to end in an exclusive interview with The Blade.

"The things they are saying are not true," Rodriguez said. "It's a lie. How can you put out lies and think it's OK? They don't care what the truth is, they just want to smear Rich Rodriguez."

Rodriguez has been sued by his alma mater, where he was a three-year letterman as a defensive back (1982-84), and most recently has been the target of an anonymous source within the WVU athletic department who reportedly told a West Virginia newspaper that Rodriguez had shredded university documents and removed all the personnel files of his former players from the football offices.

"It's very frustrating," Rodriguez said. "I knew there'd be some emotions involved when I left, but I wanted to take the high road. I've chosen to move on, but it's almost like it's something new every day, and it's totally ridiculous."

Rodriguez said the charges that he came back to his office in Morgantown in the days after taking the Michigan job and destroyed documents and removed files were made to cast him in the worst possible light.

"The implication to me is slanderous," Rodriguez said. "What they are implying, to me, attacks my integrity, and that's why I'm so upset. This has gone too far.

"It's bad enough that they throw things out there, and my family gets harassed, my relatives get threatened, and they try and attack my credibility right in the middle of recruiting. And then to throw something out like this, with anonymous sources ...

"And how it becomes a story, and why it's become big news, to me, is just baffling."

Rodriguez said that when he returned to West Virginia to clean out his office, he did so with staff around, and visited with a number of his former players at the same time.

"The day that's in question, when they said I was doing all this stuff in the office, I probably had 25 or 30 players that came over and wished me well," Rodriguez said. "We talked and we hugged - obviously they wanted us to stay - but they understood and they were great about it."

He said the files and documents he removed were his records and personal papers, and any attempt to make it seem like it was anything but a normal exercise for an employee moving from one job to another was not accurate.

"They are making up half truths and lies, because this was done on a regular work day, with people all around, and those were all files that were in my office," Rodriguez said. "It was information that was in a closet with no lock on it, and some of it had been in there for years."

Rodriguez said he spoke with several individuals inside the West Virginia athletic department, after these latest charges were leveled, and they said the news accounts of his actions were incorrect. He said his former secretary said all she knew about the alleged incident "was what she read in the paper."

"Every coach got a file when a kid missed a class. The academic people got it, and the athletic director got it. All this stuff about not having contact information or academic information on the kids, it's a lie, it's all a lie," Rodriguez said.

"They're painting a picture like I'm the only one that had those files, and I threw them all away. That's not the truth. They're painting a picture like I erased all the kids' files, and that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. And anyone with any common sense that's in a Division I athletic department or football program knows the same thing."

Rodriguez said he encouraged his coaches to remain at West Virginia long enough to fully focus on the Mountaineers' bowl game, and he thinks the attention now should be on the new coach at WVU and his players - not on the former coach.

"Who does all of this help? It's not helping the West Virginia football program a bit," Rodriguez said. "The bottom line is, everybody wants to be treated fairly, and there has to be an issue of fairness and honesty. And with this stuff, they know they are lying."

Contact Matt Markey at: mmarkey@theblade.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Dinsdale]

Ya'know, to me, this was all just off-season drama to pass the time, and it was just a matter of time before this non-incident faded away to nothingness...


Until...

"The things they are saying are not true," Rodriguez said. "It's a lie. How can you put out lies and think it's OK? They don't care what the truth is, they just want to smear Rich Rodriguez."

UH-OHHHHH!


Dude referred to himself in the third-person.

He's guilty.

[Mikey]

Ya'know, to me, this was all just off-season drama to pass the time, and it was just a matter of time before this non-incident faded away to nothingness...
Until...

"The things they are saying are not true," Rodriguez said. "It's a lie. How can you put out lies and think it's OK? They don't care what the truth is, they just want to smear Rich Rodriguez."

UH-OHHHHH!
Dude referred to himself in the third-person.

He's guilty.

I hate to say it, but that was my first thought, too.

Either that or they interviewed an imposter.

[WolverineSteve]

A call for WVU fans to call off the dogs.....

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/w ... index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

audio of a radio interview where RR defends the claims against him.

http://blog.mlive.com/hugeblog/2008/01/ ... w_i_d.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Youtube vid of heart broken inbred....check out other similar vids on the page as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojrMTBeuOw0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Shoalzie]

Oh look, another claim against RichRod...

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/story?id=3205142" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Okay West Virginia, we get it...you're bitter. This is especially funny with these racial claims considering who they just gave the head coaching job to.

What's left to accuse Rodriguez of...did he steal some office supplies? Grab a secretary's ass? Burn down an orphanage?

[MuchoBulls]

Oh look, another claim against RichRod...

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/story?id=3205142" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Okay West Virginia, we get it...you're bitter. This is especially funny with these racial claims considering who they just gave the head coaching job to.

What's left to accuse Rodriguez of...did he steal some office supplies? Grab a secretary's ass? Burn down an orphanage?

This is just something to take the attention away from Rodriguez. I've know Magee from his coaching days here and he is a stand up guy and a good coach. This story comes as a big surprise to me because I was told by someone who keeps in contact with one of our old coaches who was on WVU's staff last season that Magee was indeed a candidate and likely the #1 candidate until he decided to join Rodriguez at Michigan.