MORGANTOWN —
The NCAA has decided to credit Michigan’s Denard Robinson with yardage gained while playing running back in the Outback Bowl loss to South Carolina as part of his quarterback yardage, allowing him to break West Virginia University’s Pat White’s all-time record of rushing yards by a quarterback.
White, playing for Rich Rodriguez and Bill Stewart at West Virginia, set the major-college record for rushing yards by a quarterback by gaining 4,480 on 684 carries from 2005 through 2008.
Rodriguez took his offense to Michigan and installed Robinson at quarterback, and he was as proficient a runner at White, but Rodriguez left to coach Arizona after three years as Michigan coach.
Robinson was bearing down on White’s record before suffering an injury that limited his QB play the last three games, taking almost all of his snaps as a running back. In the final game, he gained 100 yards to finish with 15 more yards than White had accumulated, 4,495 to 4,480.
But in that last game, Michigan was actually playing with someone else at quarterback and Robinson as a position player.
WVU challenged the ruling.
“How can you give a man yardage at a position that is being played by someone else?” football information director Mike Montoro asked.
The NCAA is going to put something similar to an asterisk with the record, noting that White gained all his yardage solely at quarterback, but the record will belong to Robinson.
“Obviously, I think Pat’s snaps were almost exclusively from the quarterback position during his unbelievable career, and I think it’s a little bit unfair,” athletic director Oliver Luck said. “Let’s put it this way; whatever the NCAA decides will have no effect on the minds of West Virginians who put Pat White up there as the best quarterback who ever played there.”
o o o o o o
West Virginia has posted a job for a strength and conditioning coach on its website, and coming in the expected shakeup of the football staff following a 7-6 season that ended with a disheartening loss to Syracuse in the Pinstripe Bowl, there was some immediate speculation that Fairmont’s Mike Joseph was about to be replaced in that position.
The university, however, clarified that Joseph still has the job, and the opening was created when Mark Smith left to take the lead strength and conditioning position at Southern Mississippi before the Pinstripe Bowl.
However, with the football team meeting over the next week in an effort to straighten out all aspects of the program, the strength and conditioning program will come under heavy scrutiny along with everything else.
Email Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com or follow him on Twitter @bhertzel.
WVU Sports
NCAA sides with Robinson on mark
- WVU Sports
-
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Jarrod West treasures time with his family
It came along too late to do me any good, but today I want to offer a very warm thank you to Jarrod West, the one-time West Virginia University basketball hero.
-
WVU in eight-team Cancun Challenge field
West Virginia University’s basketball team will be in a field with seven other teams in the 2013 Men’s Cancun Challenge, played at the all-inclusive Aventura Palace resort near Playa del Carmen, Mexico.
-
Kansas pitcher Taylor shuts down Mountaineers
In its first game of pool play against Kansas at the Phillips 66 Big 12 Baseball Championship, the West Virginia University baseball team was defeated, 7-2.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Big 12 baseball tournament is about America
All of a sudden the Big 12’s annual baseball tournament is more about America and the American way than it is about baseball.
And that makes it a wonderful thing. -
Musgrave to pitch WVU’s second game
West Virginia University baseball coach Randy Mazey believes that the change in format of the Big 12 Tournament will benefit his Mountaineers because it allows him to hold conference Pitcher of the Year Harrison Musgrave until the key second game of the tournament.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Bill Stewart is missed, remembered
It was Monday, the first anniversary of Bill Stewart’s sudden death while playing the 16th hole of a charity golf tournament with West Virginia University’s former athletic director and his former boss, Ed Pastilong.
-
Miles granted release from WVU
Junior forward Keaton Miles, who suffered through a disappointing sophomore season as West Virginia fell below .500, has been granted a release and will seek a transfer, according to published reports.
-
WVU baseball team helps those in tornado’s path
In so many ways it was a day that called for celebration.
Randy Mazey’s West Virginia baseball team, the team that was supposed to finish last in its first Big 12 season, was sitting in third place on what should have been the eve of the conference tournament. -
FURFARI COLUMN: WVU should reinstate men’s track — not golf
West Virginia University has not had a men’s golf team since 1982 in its sports program.
But Oliver Luck, who’s been the school’s athletic director going on three years, reportedly is talking about bringing back that sport “because it’s cheap.” -
HERTZEL COLUMN- Catastrophes make you stop and think
The scenes have been gruesome, devastation everywhere, words flowing from the mouths of reporters that are as difficult to comprehend as are the images on the eyes.
- More WVU Sports Headlines
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Jarrod West treasures time with his family
