SO AS IT turns out, Rich Rodriguez didn't leave West Virginia for greener pastures. It just happened that the Michigan job was available at the time and provided him with a nice landing pad when he was viciously and inexplicably forced by WVU's administration to give up the job he loved.

Now that I understand the facts, I feel it incumbent upon me to retreat and withdraw every petty thought, written or otherwise, I've entertained regarding West Virginia's former football coach over the past month.

An apology is probably in order, too. After all, until Rodriguez's legal team filed its response to West Virginia's vitriolic and totally unnecessary original action demanding $4 million on the spot, it was difficult to see things from both sides and form a logical and reasoned conclusion.

Now that I've been able to do that, I'm sorry.

I mean, what were these WVU guys thinking, spending almost nine months haggling over lousy little details and finally forcing Rodriguez into signing a contract that committed him, either directly or indirectly, to collecting:

And then these same people have the unmitigated gall, before committing to anything, to want to research and further consider Rodriguez's demand that his players be allowed to keep and resell their text books.

They likewise demand further study on the issue before allowing him to become Dennis Franchione and begin communicating directly to fans and boosters, in this case through his own Web site.

Without so much as considering his request for more, they draw a line in the sand and decree that the only thing that will be added to the assistant coaches' salary pool is a one-time $100,000 bump and the yearly $50,000 increases written into the contract.

And then with a wink and a nod they insist he sign the deal with that ridiculous $4 million buyout still in there, even though he specifically asked that it be reduced or eliminated all together.

Now that I understand the facts, I feel it incumbent upon me to retreat and withdraw every petty thought, written or otherwise, I've entertained regarding West Virginia's former football coach over the past month.

An apology is probably in order, too. After all, until Rodriguez's legal team filed its response to West Virginia's vitriolic and totally unnecessary original action demanding $4 million on the spot, it was difficult to see things from both sides and form a logical and reasoned conclusion.

Now that I've been able to do that, I'm sorry.

I mean, what were these WVU guys thinking, spending almost nine months haggling over lousy little details and finally forcing Rodriguez into signing a contract that committed him, either directly or indirectly, to collecting:

And then these same people have the unmitigated gall, before committing to anything, to want to research and further consider Rodriguez's demand that his players be allowed to keep and resell their text books.

They likewise demand further study on the issue before allowing him to become Dennis Franchione and begin communicating directly to fans and boosters, in this case through his own Web site.

Without so much as considering his request for more, they draw a line in the sand and decree that the only thing that will be added to the assistant coaches' salary pool is a one-time $100,000 bump and the yearly $50,000 increases written into the contract.

And then with a wink and a nod they insist he sign the deal with that ridiculous $4 million buyout still in there, even though he specifically asked that it be reduced or eliminated all together.

I mean, what in the world was the point of WVU even bringing up a buyout in the first place? If Mike Garrison and Ed Pastilong had just shown the tiniest spirit of cooperation and flexibility, this whole situation could have been avoided and Rodriguez would have stayed at West Virginia so long he would have made Joe Paterno look like Bobby Petrino. He'd have had it written it into his will that when he was finally gone he wanted to be stuffed and placed on rails on the home sideline at Mountaineer Field at Rich Rodriguez Stadium, headsets and all.

Buyout, schmyout. Rodriguez wasn't going anywhere.

That is until you guys left him with no choice.

You nit-picked the guy's wish list until he had trouble even getting Rita a pass for game days that allowed her to go pretty much anywhere in the stadium except the men's restrooms. And what about the Jiffy-Lube and Taco Bell signs he wanted to sell and ring around the stadium so that the school could raise more money to, as his agent put it, remain competitive for Rich's services?

And that's not even the worst part of this whole mess. Those were just the precursors. The real blowup came after Rodriguez tearfully left and WVU officials insisted upon mounting a campaign designed to, as his legal response says, "smear the image of [Rodriguez] in a spiteful retaliation for his forced resignation.''

Really, now what is the point of that if not simply being mean and "enraging and inciting certain fans and causing them to make threats upon [Rodriguez], his family and his property?" Specifically, according to the papers filed Friday by Rodriguez's attorneys, it has gone so far that his mailbox was destroyed, "nasty signs" have been placed on a gate outside his home and people have even stooped so low as to call him a "traitor.''  A traitor! There may have been a few more accusations - death threats and other specific incidents of harassment and the like - but apparently there wasn't evidence enough of those for his lawyers to include them in the countersuit. But they happened. Trust me. He said so.

Fortunately for all involved, not everyone is acting immature and wholly childish. Rodriguez has stepped up the plate and put up 37.5 percent ($1.5 million) of the ridiculous $4 million punishment WVU seeks to inflict upon him after the university itself "wrongfully and/or fraudulently induced " him to sign a flawed and incomplete document. By putting up the money it should be obvious to anyone that Rodriguez is committed to not fighting whatever judgment a court might make against him.

And certainly no court in the land will ever even consider holding Rodriguez's feet to a $4 million fire simply because he, armed with a well-schooled team of attorneys and a ruthless agent, signed a contract that had a specific provision in it stating that all of the terms were in writing in that single document. Judges and lawyers know that a handshake is as good as a signature in these types of deals, right?

The most significant lesson to be learned from reading the Rodriguez rebuttal, however, has nothing to do with the wonderful legal points raised, but rather the moral and ethical ones. The fact is Rodriguez was simply treated badly by West Virginia University and no one could reasonably have expected him to suffer in silence.

You see, it wasn't the lure of another job that prompted Rodriguez to leave, it was the way West Virginia forced his hand. Michigan just happened to be a convenient landing point. If Les Miles had taken the job there when it was offered two weeks earlier, Rodriguez probably would have ended up at SMU or Hawaii, which at the time were still in the market for a coach.

By that time, he just had to get out. The working conditions he was forced to endure shouldn't have been inflicted upon anyone, especially someone not even making $2 million a year and having to dodge multi-million-dollar construction projects as he drove his Lexus out of the parking lot each night.

To contact staff writer Dave Hickman, call 348-1734 or send e-mail to dphickm...@aol.com.