FanHouse Joe Manchin

Prop Bets for the College Football Junkie is a weekly post that cares not for your silly point spreads. If you have the money and the gumption, we'll lay down a weekly gauntlet of propositions that'll take you from the penthouse to the outhouse faster than you can guess the number of times Lee Corso will say "not so fast my friend." As always, this is for entertainment purposes only.

-Predictions are already out that there will be a funeral when Georgia plays Alabama. Who's exactly is still up for debate. But everyone will be wearing black and if I know SEC fans, there will most certainly be coffins to fill. With beer, Maker's Mark, likenesses of Nick Saban and John Parker Wilson, etc. So we'll put the over/under for coffins in the tailgate area at 100. Because if you can carry something in it, Georgia fans will.

-Syracuse hosts Pitt this weekend, and in case you haven't heard things are not going well for the Orange. Pitt does not traditionally travel well. But that's neither hear nor there, because Syracuse fans are not traveling well to home games this year. So, we're betting that there will actually be more Pitt fans in the Carrier Dome this weekend than Orange fans. It'll be close, so we'll go with +/-50.

Now that the depositions are underway in the WVU vs. Rich Rodriguez case, we are finally starting to learn a few things that weren't apparent. For instance, we didn't know how little Rodriguez's attorney, Marv Robon knows about sports. More to the point, how little he knows about who is coaching where.

At one point Pastilong testified that Texas A&M had a problem when its football coach was given his own Web site, leading to his dismissal. "You mean Bobby Knight?" Robon asked. Bobby Knight? He was a basketball coach. Latest stop at Texas Tech, not A&M. And he was fired at Indiana.

Not satisfied that people knew the depth of his lack of fandom, Robon continued.

"Do people blame Mike Parsons for Bobby Huggins leaving?" When he was corrected and told that Huggins was the current coach, Robon dug himself in deeper. "Attempt to leave?" he asked.

Once again, real life proves itself far funnier than anything I could ever make up. I'm sure he meant former West Virginia basketball coach John Beilein. And being a West Virginia fan, I heard a lot of things about assistant AD, Mike Parsons and the loss of Beilein. His name was also mentioned quite a bit during the Alabama-Rodriguez fiasco. Keep in mind that what I just said is 100% rumor. But the rumor goes that while both Rodriguez and Beilein were at West Virginia, they went to Ed Pastilong on more than one occasion to complain about Parsons. Most likely about facility issues and Parsons lack of concern.

It hardly seems important at this point, as Pastilong and Rodriguez made only sparse contact over his last eight months.

In Rodriguez's final eight months, Pastilong seldom had contact with the coach other than in social settings and was not involved in negotiations, which were done through Team Rodriguez's agent, lawyers and financial experts while the WVU legal team and President Garrison and Walker handled the Mountaineer side.

Just when you thought it was safe to say the word football in West Virginia without attaching Rich Rodriguez to the conversation, "Shred Rich Rodriguez Night" is announced. The Wheeling Nailers, the AA minor league hockey team in Wheeling, WV, will offer fans discounts for bringing a picture or newspaper article of the former West Virginia coach to shred.

The Nailers are offering discounted tickets to any fan that brings in a newspaper article or picture of the former West Virginia University football coach to contribute to the industrial sized paper shredder that will be stationed in the concourse. Additionally any fan who wears WVU apparel to the game will receive $2 off their ticket price. Ohio State fans will also receive the discount by wearing their gear to the game to demonstrate their mutual distaste for Michigan. Any fan caught wearing University of Michigan apparel will be charged double in order to help Rodriguez pay his $4 million buyout to WVU.

Oh boy. Even though I'm a West Virginia fan, I've tried to stay away from a lot of this stuff. There was a two week period right after Rodriguez announced he was leaving when it was understandable and accepted that there would be some blow back from the decision. But the constant flow of youtube videos burning Rodriguez in effigy and the like has given the state and fans a bad name.

Happy New Year! As West Virginia's coaching search crawls on, I just have to ask why is the governor of this state so involved in the coaching search? It's a somewhat rhetorical question, because he is a politician and if you want some face time in the West Virginia press right now all you have to do is talk about the coaching search. And it goes deeper than that when you consider that he played for and graduated from West Virginia University. And deeper still when you take into account his personal relationship with Rich Rodriguez and the efforts he made to keep Rodriguez at West Virginia last year.

It would be all too easy for me to say that there are other things in West Virginia that should concern the governor more than football. Poverty, education, infrastructure, just to name a few. But those are all things that were issues in West Virginia long before Manchin was born. So let's just push them to the side for a bit.

There is other news of his involvement with the university that smells of old boy network. At any other time, that would probably send most politicians running for the hills. But somehow, it has only received token attention from the West Virginia media. At least in comparison to the coaching search.

But back to the question of why. Maybe I don't pay attention as closely when other schools search for a coach. But I can't remember a governor of another state being so involved in a university. West Virginia is unique in that there isn't another game in this state than West Virginia University. Sorry Marshall. But when I stop to think about the governor's relationship with the university president, Rodriguez, the Bowden family, and yes even Nick Saban, my only thought is that this whole thing just stinks!

A WVU team source also said Gov. Joe Manchin is intent on putting a big-name coach in place and has interest in Alabama coach and Marion County native Nick Saban.