File photo WVU running backs coach Chad Scott has accepted the same position with Texas.

MORGANTOWN — In a way, Thursday was a day to say hello and goodbye.

Rich Rodriguez was holding his first press conference at the Mountaineer Stadium team room in the Puskar Center, which is now his new home at a place where the door swings both ways.

In a transitory era of collegiate sports, athletic headquarters are both welcoming centers for new coaches and new players and escape hatches for those who are leaving either because they were asked to do so or because they were wanted elsewhere.

On this very same day, Chad Scott’s departure as running back coach was becoming a reality.

Both of course are relics of WVU’s football past, Rodriguez from the glory days of the early 2000s as he led them to the doorstep of a national championship before being rudely denied by Pitt, an event that morphed into a hasty and ill-conceived exit to Michigan.

Scott was a relic of the Neal Brown years, years that were far less successful, yet he burned through it as someone who could carry over into Rodriguez 2.0. His ability to create running backs that an offense could be built around and who would also be quality students and citizens built a bridge from one administration to the next.

It was what made him the proper selection to serve as interim coach through the bowl game after Brown’s exit, a Bill Stewart-like figure for the 2020s, and which made him eligible to serve as a carryover into the new regime.

And it would have worked, but by this time word of his coaching skills, his recruiting and his true caring about the players who performed on the field for him were spreading through football and when Texas, a villain of the higher magnitude from its Big 12 days, offered up its own running back coach position it was an offer he couldn’t — and shouldn’t — refuse.

What he meant at West Virginia was displayed most vividly by a Tweet — I guess you can still call them that rather than an X-message — from his star holdover Jahiem White.

@CoachChadScott thank you for making me a better person. It’s bigger than football.

That summed up what Scott meant to the West Virginia players, emerging adults who were looked upon by fans and even coaches as O’s in the game of X’s and O’s but who Scott treated more as flesh and bone human beings who did more than carry a football.

To him, they carried a message, a lesson in a way of life and that can be as important as any deed on the football field.

He showed them how to succeed at life, not just football, and White was his prize pupil, a kid who came from York, Pennsylvania, into the program with athletic gifts that screamed out to be developed and honed.

He had to learn how to practice before he could learn how to play and Scott was the perfect tutor for him, a coach who often would be at the stadium by 4 a.m. He approached the game the way he wanted them to and he approached life that way, too.

He was working with the whole athlete. Physically, academically and morally, and nearly each offering up a new message on social media for them to live by. It was always a quote, perhaps something he thought up but also taken from people of all walks of life.

Many of them knew the athletes by their reputation, some they had never heard of until Scott would post a thought from them.

WVU had but 140 or so athletes at a time during his time with the school, his running back room maybe as many as 10, but those messages would reach as many as 28,000 viewers on a given day.

Among the most viewed over just the past couple of months offered up these lessons, the first of which fit perfectly into the situation he now was facing himself:

“Never make a permanent decision based on a temporary emotion.”

This had 28,000 views and fit into his decision to leave for Texas, just as players would often have to decide whether to come to or stay at West Virginia.

That post offered no author with it. Others did and they could be anyone such as Epictetus, a Greek philosopher (and, yes, I had to look this one up as he predated even me by nearly 2,000 years), who said ” It’s now what happens to you, but how you react to it.”

There have been famous athletes such as Kobe Bryant, who was quoted as saying “The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great at whatever they want to do.” to Tiger Woods, who said “No matter how good you get you can always get better, and that’s the exciting part.”

There were lessons on success and failure from people who do not really fit into the framework of football such as “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” (author Herman Melville) to “For success, attitude is equally as important as ability.” (Scottish novelist and poet Walter Scott)

He would speak of self improvement, this being an example: “Treat everyone with politeness and kindness, not because they are nice, but because you are” or “It’s not the load that breaks you down; it’s the way you carry it” from, of all people, the songstress Lena Horne.

In a world where money will probably be thrown at them, Scott would try to philosophically put it in its place, Tweeting “The biggest difference between money and time: You always know how much money you have, but you never know how much time you have.”

And so it is with your dealings with people, as proven on this day as he was leaving for a new adventure, about to influence the thoughts and behavior of a new group of athletes while those he dealt with in West Virginia would carry it with them throughout their lives, wherever they may lead.