I was foaming at the mouth yesterday when I saw that they had released Pastilongs deposition from the Rich Rod case. I couldn’t wait to read Eddies testimony and maybe find out what really happened.

When I opened the PDF transcript of the questioning, I saw that it was about 200 pages long. I knew immediately my attention span was going to fail me on this one. I made it about 10 pages into it and just didn’t have the time to read the whole thing. What I did get from those 10 pages is that Mr. Robon (one of RR’s lawyers) was way out of his league when dealing with our AD. In the first few pages you could tell Eddie was going to school him big time.

So after realizing there was no way in hell I was going to read all of the deposition I decided to wait for a paid reporter to do my work for me. Ahhh… bloggin’ at it’s greatest…

You have to read this article by Mike Casazza over at the Daily Mail. He made it through the whole document and does a great job of explaining what took place during the questioning.

In one exchange about the validity of a liquidated damages clause, Robon asked Pastilong if his contract has a buyout. Pastilong said it does not and Robon wondered, “If you left the university, wouldn’t it be difficult to replace you, a person of your stature, running the place for 33 years, putting it on the map?”

Pastilong fired back: “Well, I would think that as in this particular contract, where I would give sufficient notice, in this particular case, two years, so that the president and those people in position to reappoint another athletic director, if they had sufficient time, I think that they would certainly do that quite adequately.”

Translation: Touche.

later:

They would later discuss the items Rodriguez requested be addressed, among them a team Web site that would generate income for assistant coaches. Pastilong said he resisted the idea after researching a Virginia Tech model. He also noted a scandal involving a similar Web site that happened at Texas A&M and was, as Pastilong said, “destructive to their athletic department, and to their head coach.”

“You mean Bobby Knight?” Robon said.

No, that’d be Dennis Franchione, who coached the Aggies for five years before he resigned at the end of the past season.

and then:

Later, Robon tried again to diminish the athletic department by asking, “Do people blame Mike Parsons for Bobby Huggins leaving?”

This drew a pair of stunned objections from WVU’s attorneys, Tom Flaherty and Jeff Wakefield. Reminded Huggins was still the coach, Robon shifted his angle.

“Attempts to leave?” he asked.

Pastilong diplomatically dismissed that idea, as well.

Awesome good work Eddie! I can’t wait to read more (or let Mike read more for me) about this case. I have a feeling it will give us all a lot to laugh about in the coming months and hopefully more stuff like this quote in reference to a line of questioning about former President Hardesty and current President Garrison:

“So we got two presidents in a row that are lawyers. Okay,” Robon said. “I think I want to move down here. I might get a job.”

“I,” Flaherty said, “wouldn’t count on that.”