By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN —
The word started filtering through the press box at Puskar Stadium a couple of hours before the kickoff for the West Virginia-Coastal Carolina opener. Mostly, it was whispered, one person to another, kind of the way you whisper something that’s a bit off color in church.
In a way, this was a church to Patrick White, this place that was Mountaineer Field when White first stepped onto the playing surface.
“Pat White’s been cut,” one guy would say to the person next to him.
“Miami cut Pat White,” that person would say to the man next in the row.
On and on the word was passed, almost like that game where you see how much a story will change when one person tells it to another and so on down the line.
Only this story would not change.
The great experiment in Miami with a WildPat quarterback had ended and so many thoughts began to run through your mind.
First, of course, were the images of him in a Mountaineer uniform coming back to you. There he was, coming on to replace Adam Bednarik against Louisville and, in the first real pairing with Steve Slaton, leading West Virginia past Louisville in an epic come-from-behind triple overtime thriller.
He was running, cutting, wiggling past startled defenders, churning toward more than 4,000 rushing yards. Even now, on this day as you looked out of the press box at the festive crowd that may or may not have gotten the word, you saw so many of them in WVU jerseys, wearing the No. 5 that White had worn.
He was always swimming upstream, not willing to accept that he might best be suited for wide receiver.
Even after Miami used a second-round draft selection on him to the surprise of so many NFL experts with the idea of working him into that WildPat role, even after it became evident that he wasn’t going to make it as a quarterback, his pride got the best of him.
During this past offseason he used his Twitter account to put this message forward for all the world to see:
“#fact: I’m better off going back to baseball than playing WR.”
That got the world to be Twittering back at him, so within 15 minutes he issued another Tweet:
“Lol I guess I need to clear things up ... No no no no to all the questions. It was just what I was feeling at the time so I said it.”
Obviously, he was confused, he was hurt.
Did he, indeed, actually make the wrong choice as a kid out of the Alabama Gulf Coast by turning down the Anaheim Angels when they drafted him in the fourth round of the Major League Baseball Amateur Free Agent draft?
Would he be in the major leagues now? What if he had played a few years and then gone to baseball when he was drafted again, after learning that the pros really didn’t see him as a regular quarterback?
He made his choice and West Virginia certainly was better for it. He came in and played quarterback like no one else ever had, grew into a quality person, a leader and a man ... his own man, at that.
The word made it not only to the press box on Saturday, but down into the locker room, the man who coaches West Virginia, owing that job in no small way to White, who not only led the team past Oklahoma in a stunning Fiesta Bowl upset under interim coach Bill Stewart but then threw his full support behind hiring Stewart as Rich Rodriguez’s replacement.
That endorsement meant more than anything else when it came to making the decision.
“I absolutely love the guy, and I don’t use the word loosely,” Stewart would say Monday on the Big East coaches’ conference call. “He was a great team player.”
Stewart was not going to tell Bill Parcells, a Hall of Fame coach and now the man running the Dolphins, how to do his business, but it was obvious he couldn’t understand how White’s NFL career as a quarterback could be cut so short.
“I don’t understand that business up there,” Stewart said. “It’s not my place to understand it.”
But Stewart knows one thing about Patrick White.
“He makes plays and he’s a winner,” he said.
He doesn’t care that he doesn’t fit the mold they have for NFL quarterbacks, that he isn’t Peyton Manning or Drew Brees or Tom Brady.
“I know there’s a lot of ball left in Patrick,” Stewart continued. “We will talk today. He left me a voice message. I’ll get to him. My heart aches for him. I love him dearly, the people in West Virginia love him dearly and the university loves him dearly.”
White reportedly has cleared NFL waivers. He is, certainly, financially well off at present. He received a $1.538 million option bonus in 2010 and his salary for the year was the minimum of $395,000.
Normally, that would be cheap for a second-round draft pick who became a free agent, but no one jumped on it. Now his options are to try and catch on with a team, play football in the UFL or the Canadian Football League or go back to baseball, a game he hasn’t played in seven or eight years.
Knowing him, his character, his drive and his talent, we know that somewhere in there is a successful professional athlete if he can just open the right door.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
