MORGANTOWN — It was supposed to be a happy return to the football offices at West Virginia University on Monday.
On Saturday, his West Virginia football team had ended a three-game losing streak with a thrilling 45-42 victory over Cincinnati on a walk-off field goal after coming from behind six times in the game.
He had spent Sunday recovering and in film study and meetings as preparations began for next Saturday’s 11 p.m. (ET) game at TCU. Everything was on schedule.
People don’t call at 5 a.m., he knew, and when he saw the call was from Doug, son of his “second father” and lifelong mentor, Ike Morris, the only thought that ran through his mind was ‘oh, oh.’
Ike Morris, businessman, philanthropist, devoted of supporter of Glenville State University and the surrounding community — where Rodriguez found his first head coaching success with Morris’ support and advice — had died at 88.
It wasn’t a complete shock.
“I talked to him every week and I spoke to him after the game and he said he hadn’t been feeling well last week,” Rodriguez said on Monday night as he opening his weekly radio show and announced the news.
As he paid tribute to Morris on the air, he called him “the greatest West Virginian I’ve ever known”
Morris was there to help him at the start of his career, which saw Rodriguez rise to the brink of a national championship game before being beaten by four-touchdown underdog Pitt at home, which led to him quickly leave to accept the job of head coach at Michigan.
That had to hurt Morris, WVU sideline broadcaster and Rodriguez quarterback from the old days at Glenville State, said.
Miles separated the two but they remained close, through the difficult times at Michigan, through equally difficult times at Arizona and then as he bounced around doing offensive coordinator jobs until the WVU job opened again and Morris was there as one of the university’s biggest fans offering his support, which was said to be large, in bringing him home.
“He was always a champion of Coach Rod’s. Once he’s behind you it’s for keeps,” Dreninng said.”
It was almost as though it was taken right of that song “I’ve been everywhere, man”, written in Australia by Lucky Starr, adapted to make a hit for Hank Snow in 1962 and made a massive hit for Johnny Cash in 1996, leading to several advertising campaigns.
Their relationship started about 1990. Rodriguez had been born in Grant Town in 1963, coal mining community although he lived on a farm and made one trip into the mines and figured out that wasn’t for him. He was a star athlete in three sports, made good grades and had offers elsewhere, but he decided he wanted to stay home, test himself against the best, and walked on at WVU, earning a scholarship as defensive back.
After graduating he became an assistant coach at Salem, that turning into his first head coaching job in 1988 and while his alma mater was playing for a national championship that year, he was going 2-8.
Salem then dropped football.
He returned to WVU in 1989 as an assistant before taking the head coach job at Glenville State and going 1-7-1, That year woud prove to be crucial as it was when he and Morris began their relationship.
The situation was not good there, he and wife Rita, used some of their own money on the program and together pained the large “G” at midfield.
The involvement was total. One spring the football field became flooded and the bridge leading to it had been washed out, leading to the coaches and players, going unsteadily, one by one, across the bridge.
Dusty Rutledge, who remains Rodriguez’s aide de camp in office matters, was with him then.
“Some kid would be scared, and another kid who’s next, he’d be swinging the bridge, scaring them more,” Rutledge remembered in an article written in The Michigan Daily in 2008.
Morris allowed Rodrigeuz to usesome land he owned to practice and and the coaches used hand mowers to clear a field to make practice possible.
Morris had his own business to run, Waco Oil & Gas Co., which he had started in 1975 and built into an important and successful company after moving to West Virginia.
“It started out as a donor, but the thing about Ike was always around, not meddling but helping. Ike used to say I’m going to give you money but you are going to have to earn money. So, for every dollar you make, I’ll double. So every time we raised a dollar, Ike would match it,” Jed Drenning said.
“We had all kinds of spaghetti dinners, car washes, things like. So we worked and he doubled the money. He was always accessible, not just in the program but in the community.”
This is how Rodriguez viewed him.
“There’s nobody who worked harder than Ike Morris. Everyone from West Virginia knows what he’s done,” Rodriguez said on his radio show. “Well, a lot of things he’s done people didn’t know about. I’ve been on several different trips with him that people in different communities had no idea what he’d done there.”
The relationship was so close that some people Morris he had an easier time getting through to Rich Rodriguez than the previous university presidents he’s known, and one senses that’s not a made-up story.
This wasn’t asking for donations talk. This wasn’t public relations talk.
This was friends talking.
“Big heart,” Rodriguez said. “Coach (Rick) Trickett has been friends with him a long time. Everybody in my family has known him a long time. Everybody who has grown up in West Virginia has known about him. You’ll hear a lot of stories about him.”
One came from Jed Drenning.
“When I was coaching for Rich, I was young and flat broke the way most young coaches are. He had his Christmas party and was getting ready to leave for his winter home in Naples, Florida, so he had us out there, me and Rich. We were skeet shooting and doing this that and we getting ready to leave,” Drenning said.
“He bought Rich a Jeep so he walks over says to me, ‘Hey come up here for a minute.’ I go up there and he had $700 in his hand and he said, ‘Go ahead, take it.’ This was the mid-90s and that was a lot of money. I told him I couldn’t take it but he said it was for Christmas. He was laughing, he then gave me another $300.”
He gave close to a thousand dollars to Drenning, but there’s more the story.
“This will show how he is,” Drenning said. “He needed a bunch of hay bailed. I think it was me, Tony Gibson and a couple if other guys were hay farming the better part of that day, and that’s, let’s say, it’s good work. You start early and end late.
After 12 or 14 hours of bailing hay in the hot sun and he wants to get cleared up, so he comes up to pay us. Bear in mind, this same guy that gave me $1,000 for just showing up at his Christmas party, he gave us all $50. But I’ll tell you, I learned a lot that day.
“That was the nature of him. He was very giving, but he also appreciated hard work. His story is such an old school American story. He is the American dream. When you think about it, you’re capable of any measure of success you want to be irrespective of what you do or don’t come from.
“Ike was walking proof of that.”