The Battle lines

Mike Puskar has come out and publicly sided with Pastilong/Parsons in the whole Rodriguez and his booster vs. the athletic department feud.

“It seems the boosters want to run the program,” he began, when reached at his office on Wednesday. “That’s not the way it should be. You should give money if you feel you should and stay out it. It just isn’t good for the boosters to be involved in running things. That’s when you run into trouble. I’ve never seen a program where the boosters got involved where it did not fall apart.”

Governor Manichin appears to have fallen in with the Ps as well.

"If they have concerns, let's sit down and look at them," the governor said. "If you have concerns and input, there should be an avenue for you to be heard. With that being said, you have to trust the people in charge."

These two along with the possibility that Garrison joined up doomed the power play by Rodriguez from the start. Why is Manchin joining with Puskar against his good buddy Rodriguez? Maybe loyalty to the state. Or maybe because his daughter has gone from a data entry clerk to the COO of Mylan in which she banks $500,000/year with a bonus of up to $375,000 and stock option for 100,000 shares. And if that isn't political enough for you check this out, she may have also falsely acquired an MBA from WVU according to the Post-Gazette. Which if it is true means that Manchin and Puskar are controlling a lot more than the athletic department. Let's hope this gets 1/10th of the moral outrage of Rodriguez leaving or his boosters or the athletic department's faults.

Finally, not to make Rodriguez or his side look to clean in anything we should point out that he may have made things even worse than fans thought. According to the Charleston Gazette Rodriguez called WVU recruits before announcing his resignation and talked to them about switching over to Michingan. This is bad enough, but it gets worse. The calls were placed during a "dark period" which is a time when a school can only place one phone call per week to a recruit. Since RR had not made an announcement yet, he was technically calling on behalf of West Virginia University and WVU officials cannot call until next week. This means that WVU recruits heard from Rich Rodriguez last week while he was pressuring them to switch to Michigan and they could not hear from anyone else for a week from WVU to reassure them that WVU still was interested and stable. Ouch.

Oh and Rodriguez was a dick to the Michigan assistants too.