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It’s time to let go and give Rodriguez another chance

MORGANTOWN — By now, perhaps, you have tired somewhat by reading about Rich Rodriguez’s return to West Virginia and no one would blame you.

You have learned, no doubt, not only his football beliefs and philosophies but everything from how many hairs remain on his 61-year-old head to what brand of deodorant he prefers to use.

You need a break and so we offer up a story not about Rich Rodriguez but instead about you.

Yes, you there, sitting at your computer or holding your phone in your hand. This is especially about you if you are one of those unwilling to forgive and forget the sins of Rodriguez’s past and we know there are many of you out there because we scour social media and see the many posts from those of you who refuse to let go of Rodriguez’s loss to Pitt back in 2007 and his hasty exit to Michigan.

We want you to know that, like it or not, Rodriguez is the coach of your home state team and not pulling for his success, while understandable, doesn’t in any way make any of Rodriguez’s perceived misdeeds unforgivable.

Don’t take it from here, though. Take it from John Wooden, a man of unchallenged dignity and knowledge, a gentleman coach who cemented his legacy in 10 NCAA championships, seven of them in a row.

And he did it, yes, first on the kind of talent you get from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton, but also on principle and just recently we all were reminded of it when there was a social media post of Wooden speaking about how yesterday is gone and must be forgotten and tomorrow has yet to arrive.

Today, he said, was the only day that mattered and he offered up poetic proof from the poet Vivian Laramore:

“Don’t live in the past, you can’t do anything about the past,” Wooden would tell his players. “It will never change whether it’s yesterday or last year. The future is yet to be determined and can be influenced by what you do today. Today is the only day that really matters. That’s what I tried to teach.”

He would then have them read Vivian Laramore’s poem “Today”:

I have shut the door on yesterday,

Its sorrows and mistakes.

I have locked within its gloomy walls

Past failures and mistakes.

And now I throw the key away,

And seek another room.

And furnish it with hope and smiles,

And every spring-time bloom.

No thought shall enter this abode

That has a taint of pain.

And envy, malice, and distrust

Shall never entrance gain.

I have shut the door on yesterday

And thrown the key away.

Tomorrow holds no fear for me,

Since I have found today.

Today is the only day you can do anything about.

This was not exactly a poem for the age in which Wooden existed. It was written by Laramore in October, 1919. World War I had just become a part of history, a fixed World Series was in the midst of being played but the poem seemed to be an introduction to the Roarin’ Twenties, an era where today was all that mattered.

Oddly, Wooden’s greatest success began in a completely different time. John F. Kennedy had just been assassinated, the Vietnam War was heating up, youths were beginning to rebel openly. In their own way, the Beatles offered the opposite advice as spokesmen for the generation.

Paul McCartney wrote the song “Yesterday” in May of 1965, just a year after Wooden and UCLA completed their first undefeated season at 30-0 and just two months after they finished off their second consecutive NCAA championship with a record of 28-2.

The undefeated NCAA championship team was led on the floor by Walt Hazard and Gail Goodrich and the 28-2 champs had seen Hazard graduate but Goodrich led the way averaging 24.8 points. That team was routed in its opener, 110-83, at Illinois, ran off 12 in a row before losing at home to Iowa, then finished by winning 91-80 in the final over No. 1 Michigan, 91-80.

The song “Yesterday” is the most covered song of all-time, more than 2,200 covers of it and it urges a belief not in today but in “Yesterday.”

It begins:

Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away.

Now it looks as though they’re here to stay.

Oh, I believe in yesterday.

Try, though, as Paul McCartney might, he cannot change yesterday. It is gone and nothing more than a page that must turn into a personal history book.

And so it goes with Rich Rodriguez and West Virginia fans. He brought unmatched joy while he was the coach until the final day.

He is back to try and recapture that joy. If you are to take a part of yesterday — Rich Rodriguez’s yesterday — to latch hold of, why not the way he built the program? Why not remember the games won, not the games lost? Why not remember that the last 15 or so years of WVU football were far less fun than they should have been because fans held onto yesterday as their guide to what was right, what was wrong.

It’s time to let go and give Rodriguez another chance, a chance he has paid the price to receive.

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