MORGANTOWN - Cleaning out a crowded notebook and a cluttered mind while hoping the next round of depositions released in West Virginia v. Rich Rodriguez comes while I'm vacationing or, at the rate this thing is going, retired:

Oh my God. THEY FIRED DUSTY!

That's still my favorite recollection of all of this, and it didn't even come from a deposition, but rather from Larry Aschebrook's affidavit of a few months ago regarding a conversation he had with Rodriguez.

Well, of course, West Virginia didn't really fire Dusty Rutledge, who was Rodriguez's video coordinator and general confidant. But the recently released deposition of deputy athletic director Mike Parsons did finally put the whole thing into context - namely that it was common knowledge that Rutledge was joined at the hip with the former WVU football coach, and it probably wasn't a good idea to have him hanging around the football offices given the acrimonious nature of Rodriguez's then-fresh departure to Michigan.

"The reason was because we felt that Dusty had a particularly close relationship with Coach Rodriguez,'' Parsons said during his June 10 deposition. "Dusty had a knack for stirring the pot, so to speak, and with the departure of Coach Rodriguez we felt that it was in the best interest in the preparation for the bowl game to not involve [Rutledge].''

 No kidding.

nn

There are a lot of folks involved in West Virginia's football program, of course, who couldn't care less about depositions or the eventual resolution - there will be an eventual resolution, won't there? - of the Rodriguez matter.

Take Jarrett Brown, for instance. He's got enough on his plate still catching up from missing the early part of spring practice and trying to learn the nuances of WVU's reconfigured offense.

So far, so good. But a quarterback, even if you are Pat White's backup, still has a ways to go.

"You can never learn too much about the playbook,'' Brown said. "I want to know it like the back of my hand.''

Brown, though, doesn't regret spending the winter playing basketball for Bob Huggins, even if it meant he was in continuous training and practice for the better part of 11 months - beginning with summer football workouts through the football season, then basketball, then spring football.

"I just thought of it this way: I wasn't going to get a break anyway because the guys were over here working just as hard as I was working in basketball,'' Brown said. "I was just doing a different workout.''

Brown did manage to take a week and a half off after spring drills ended in April.

"I didn't work out at all,'' Brown said. "I sat around and went to class.''

Here's the $64,000 question, though: Is he going to do it again?

MORGANTOWN - Cleaning out a crowded notebook and a cluttered mind while hoping the next round of depositions released in West Virginia v. Rich Rodriguez comes while I'm vacationing or, at the rate this thing is going, retired:

Oh my God. THEY FIRED DUSTY!

That's still my favorite recollection of all of this, and it didn't even come from a deposition, but rather from Larry Aschebrook's affidavit of a few months ago regarding a conversation he had with Rodriguez.

Well, of course, West Virginia didn't really fire Dusty Rutledge, who was Rodriguez's video coordinator and general confidant. But the recently released deposition of deputy athletic director Mike Parsons did finally put the whole thing into context - namely that it was common knowledge that Rutledge was joined at the hip with the former WVU football coach, and it probably wasn't a good idea to have him hanging around the football offices given the acrimonious nature of Rodriguez's then-fresh departure to Michigan.

"The reason was because we felt that Dusty had a particularly close relationship with Coach Rodriguez,'' Parsons said during his June 10 deposition. "Dusty had a knack for stirring the pot, so to speak, and with the departure of Coach Rodriguez we felt that it was in the best interest in the preparation for the bowl game to not involve [Rutledge].''

 No kidding.

nn

There are a lot of folks involved in West Virginia's football program, of course, who couldn't care less about depositions or the eventual resolution - there will be an eventual resolution, won't there? - of the Rodriguez matter.

Take Jarrett Brown, for instance. He's got enough on his plate still catching up from missing the early part of spring practice and trying to learn the nuances of WVU's reconfigured offense.

So far, so good. But a quarterback, even if you are Pat White's backup, still has a ways to go.

"You can never learn too much about the playbook,'' Brown said. "I want to know it like the back of my hand.''

Brown, though, doesn't regret spending the winter playing basketball for Bob Huggins, even if it meant he was in continuous training and practice for the better part of 11 months - beginning with summer football workouts through the football season, then basketball, then spring football.

"I just thought of it this way: I wasn't going to get a break anyway because the guys were over here working just as hard as I was working in basketball,'' Brown said. "I was just doing a different workout.''

Brown did manage to take a week and a half off after spring drills ended in April.

"I didn't work out at all,'' Brown said. "I sat around and went to class.''

Here's the $64,000 question, though: Is he going to do it again?

"I don't know,'' Brown said. "It's something I have to think about the pros and the cons.''

Well, the cons are that if all goes as expected, when White finishes his career at the end of the coming football season, Brown becomes the heir apparent at quarterback and will have just one season in which to cram a career. That's a con only from the basketball side of things. Can he really afford to step away from football at just the time he will finally get his opportunity?

The pro to playing basketball is that he loves it. He had a blast doing it for three months and Huggins - provided he has a spot open on the roster - would no doubt like to have him back.

That having been said, it seems a no-brainer. Brown will have worked for four years to finally get a chance to become a starting quarterback, and messing around with basketball just doesn't seem in his best interests. But he insists he just doesn't know what he'll do yet.

"I just don't know,'' Brown said. "It's going to be my senior year and I've been patiently waiting.''

Exactly.

nn

Anyway, back to the depositions.

The best part of WVU president Mike Garrison's testimony - aside from "Product Rodriguez" and "I don't think this place is so [expletive] special'' - was the image of Rodriguez sitting in on the whole 10-hour affair and taking notes.

And then just as the session was ending, WVU attorney Tom Flaherty all but asked Rodriguez to hand over his legal pad.

OK, so he didn't really ask for the notes, but he did demand that Rodriguez's attorneys save them because West Virginia might want to try and see them at some point.

"It's a recorded recollection that may well become discoverable,'' Flaherty said.

"You're assuming that it's a recorded recollection,'' said Rodriguez attorney Sean McGinley. "And that's not necessarily true.''

Indeed, Rodriguez could have been drawing up plays to replace the ones he shredded during his last appearance at the Puskar Center.

Reach staff writer Dave Hickman at 348-1734 or dphickm...@aol.com.