Mountain man

GRANT TOWN, W.Va. -- Rich Rodriguez wasn't sure what he wanted to be until he was close to graduating from West Virginia University. He knew from an early age what he didn't want to be.

``My dad was a coal miner," said the Mountaineers football coach, who is entering his sixth year at the helm and has a team that could very well be playing for a national championship in January. ``I grew up in a coal-mining town where almost everyone worked in the mines. I didn't want to go to the mines."

But in Grant Town, population 662, that was what you did if you had a job. Rodriguez's father, Vince, worked in the mines, as did his grandfather, Marion, who died of black lung disease.

Rodriguez remembers his father working a shift in the mines, coming home for dinner, then working in the garden until dark ``just to get outside," said Rodriguez. ``It's like a policeman's job. Every day you come home is a good day."

Rodriguez remembers the day when his father took him into the mines. ``It was just a black hole," he said. ``The biggest thing you worry about is losing the light because you get totally disoriented. I said to myself, `This is not where I want to be.' "

So Rodriguez looked for an escape. ``Football, basketball, baseball, you name it," he said. ``I played it."

Rodriguez played well enough to get some offers in football at smaller schools. But he wanted to play at West Virginia.

He went to Morgantown as a walk-on with a promise from his father to support him for one season. If he didn't make it after the first season, they couldn't afford to send him to school.

``I remember that first day," said Rodriguez with a smile. ``My dad let me out at the far end of the stadium and went home. I just took my bag and walked down the hill and around the place."

From that point, Rodriguez grinded, as he has done much of his life. He earned a scholarship, and by his senior year, he had earned some starts.

He also knew he wanted to be a football coach.

Rodriguez also met his wife, Rita, when he was in college. Like Rodriguez, Rita was from a small town in the coal-mining region south of Morgantown. From the start, Rodriguez was impressed.

``She was blonde, dressed well, and we got to talking," said Rodriguez. ``And I asked her what kind of car she drove. She said, `A Vette.' I thought to myself, `Man. I've got it made. Blonde, dresses well, and she drives a Vette. She's probably got some money, too.'

``When I went over to her apartment, I saw that it was a Chevette," said Rodriguez, laughing at the memory. ``And it had a broken stick shift. But her father was pretty handy and he had fashioned a stick from an old furniture leg. When I went to her apartment, I sat down on a couch missing a leg."

From there, Rodriguez and Rita went off together, step by step, through the network of college football in West Virginia. He was hired as a head coach at Salem College at age 24.

``I made $250 a month and was happy as heck," said Rodriguez. ``I bought my first house for $33,000. Bought my first car. Proposed to my wife."

A year after he arrived, a Japanese university bought the school and football was dropped. ``I never saw it coming," said Rodriguez. ``Quite a start."

Rodriguez then got an offer to revive a program at Division 2 Glenville State. ``They had scored something like 20 points the entire previous season," said Rodriguez. ``And didn't win a game. So on the first play of the first game, we got a first down. We got a standing ovation. I told my assistants, `I ain't leaving. The expectations are just right.' We stayed there for seven years."

A sign on US 19 greets visitors to this rural town, which doesn't have a stop sign or a stoplight, and has only a few vacant stores scattered on the hills.

``Welcome to Grant Town," it says. ``Home of West Virginia football coach Rich Rodriguez."

Ten years after Rodriguez left Glenville, the walk-on kid has Mountaineers fans giddy for the Sept. 2 opener against neighboring Marshall.

``Welcome to Grant Town, Home of national champion West Virginia football coach Rich Rodriguez"?

A year ago, the Mountaineers were 11-1 and beat Georgia in the Sugar Bowl (a game moved to Atlanta because of Hurricane Katrina), possibly the biggest win in Mountaineer football history.

This season, West Virginia is ranked fifth in the Associated Press preseason poll.

``I remember going to some Rotary Club meetings in the offseason," said Rodriguez, ``and they'd say to me, `Coach, you went 11-1 last year and you've got a lot of players coming back. You should be better.' I'm thinking to myself, `We went 11-1 last year. I guess we have to win them all.' "

With a favorable schedule and a starry offensive cast led by quarterback Patrick White and running back Steve Slaton , a pair of sophomores who last season provided some unexpected punch, such high expectations do not seem unreasonable.

But it goes beyond expectations. Success in this state is sometimes measured vicariously, and West Virginia football is the main game in town (Marshall is the only other Division 1A school in the state).

Rodriguez understands what it is all about.

``The perceptions of the state outside the state are not always in the best light," said Rodriguez. ``We're on or near the bottom in a lot of bad categories, from unemployment to teenage pregnancy to underage tobacco use. All bad stuff.

``Things are changing here. But it's going to take years to overcome many of those perceptions. People think West Virginia, and they think hillbillies, no shoes, no teeth. The perception is the whole state is like that. It's not.

``Don't get me wrong. There are some very rural areas in this state like that, but there are a lot of states with rural areas like that."

The memory of the morning of Jan. 2, 2006, is etched as permanently in the West Virginia psyche as was the Mountaineers' victory in the Sugar Bowl that night. And, as it always seems to in West Virginia, it involved the mines.

The early shift in the Sago Mine had just begun that fateful Monday morning. Eighteen miners -- fathers, brothers, sons, and grandfathers in communities such as Tallmansville, Sago, Buckhannon, Tennerton and Mount Nebo -- were beginning another workday in a life that Rodriguez and his father, 500 miles away in Atlanta, knew well.

Shortly after 6:30, the alarms that all miners dread sounded. There had been an incident. Five miners immediately scrambled to safety, but 13 were trapped 250 feet below the surface, and the rescue effort began quickly as the word spread.

Across the road from the mine, sitting on a plot of land backed up to a steep hill, is the Sago Baptist Church. The Rev. Wease Day remembers how his church served as the gathering point for the families.

``Just a few at first, with coffee and doughnuts," he said. ``But it kept growing."

By the end of the day, the church was packed with families, friends, media, and curiosity seekers.

In Atlanta, Vince saw the clock ticking and told his son, ``It doesn't look good."

As day turned into night, all anyone could do was wait, hope, and pray. West Virginia governor Joe Manchin III had left Atlanta to return home.

Updates of the game were given to the people keeping vigil at the church. After West Virginia had pulled off a 38-35 upset of the Southeastern Conference champion Bulldogs, Rodriguez received a phone call from Manchin, who was at the church.

``I just told the families that we won," he told Rodriguez, ``and you should have heard the reaction."

``The best call I got all night," said Rodriguez.

Russ Warner, the athletic director at Buckhannon-Upshur High School, had spent much of his life in the area around Buckhannon, and had an appreciation for both life in the mines and for West Virginia football.

``They breathe football around here," said Warner. ``Particularly West Virginia football. And that game was something that took their minds off what was happening for a few hours."

The ordeal continued into Tuesday and early Wednesday. ``I went to sleep at 3 o'clock in the morning feeling good," said Warner. ``And I woke up at 5 and they said they were dead, and I said, `Oh my God.' "

Nearly two days later, it was announced that initial reports of survivors had proved erroneous. Of the 13 men trapped, only one -- 27-year-old Randal McCloy Jr. -- was found alive.

The winter has passed, fall is at the doorstep, and life has moved on at the Sago mine. It is mid-August, and midway through the 7-to-3 shift, the parking lot outside the mine is nearly full. A decal on the back window of a black Dodge 4x4 that says, ``Remember the Miners, 2006," is the only reminder of what happened nearly eight months earlier.

Life has moved on, and 45 miles north in Morgantown, the West Virginia football team is preparing for a season that could indeed top last year's 11-1 campaign.

There is a renewed spirit in the state, and a sense of pride about what might unfold over the next four months.

``After the mine tragedy, people had their heads down," said West Virginia senior linebacker Jay Henry. ``We kind of uplifted them, brought them a little hope. We carry the state banner on our back. As we went around the state and the city, you could see people looking forward to the season. And it gets greater each day."

Rodriguez does not want to put the burden of carrying the state's hopes on his players' shoulders.

``It's still a game," he said. ``But I do tell them, `You represent the state of West Virginia by your actions on and off the field.' "

Right now, all indications are that West Virginia will be represented very well, indeed.

``There's something special about being a Mountaineer, about being a hillbilly, being a coal miner, or a preacher, or a bus driver," said Wease Day. ``It's great to be a West Virginian."