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MORGANTOWN -- Quick quiz: Who is the last West Virginia University player to play for Rich Rodriguez?
Give up?
It's kind of a trick question for it is redshirt sophomore offensive tackle Xavier Bausley, who transfers in from Jacksonville State and played for Rodriguez last year before getting a chance to return home, having played his high school ball at South Charleston.
Rodriguez is a polarizing figure in West Virginia, dating back to the awful loss to Pitt with a national championship game in sight, and then jumping to Michigan, but you'll hear no bad words toward him from Bausley.
"It was a great time. I love Rich Rod. He's one of the funniest people you'll ever meet," he said, offering up a different view than the one that lingers behind, that of a fiery competitor who let them down. "You see the steam coming out of him, but he's cracking jokes while he's hot.
"I have stories I can tell my grandkids for three hours."
So, we asked for a printable example of the Rich Rod sense of humor that exists even today as he coaches at Jacksonville State after having been at WVU, Michigan and Arizona.
"I was going on my official visit to Jacksonville State. I got a last-minute offer there after Rich Rod got the job. It was like January." he began. "Now my Dad had a signed Rich Rod calendar or something like that (probably a WVU schedule), and when Rich Rod left to go to Michigan my dad threw it in a bonfire."
Needless to say, his dad was a WVU fan at that traumatic time.
"So, we got to Jacksonville and my dad was like, 'I got to tell him. I can't hold this from him,'" Bausley said. "So, I have my one-on-one meeting with Rich Rod, and my dad goes 'Coach, when you left, I burned your signature.'
"Well, Rich Rod looked at him and laughed and said, 'What did you burn?' He said it was a calendar and Rich Rod said, 'As long as it wasn't a couch, we're good.'"
Okay, you had to be there, but that's the way Rich Rod reacted to something some might believe would set him off.
According to Bausley, Rodriguez's coach's flame still burns strong.
"Every bit of it," he said. "From what I've heard - I mean, Noel Devine would come and see us practice and say 'He's still the same old Rich Rod.' You got to be yourself.'"
Bausley understands the situation and says he believes maybe the ill feelings are easing, although you still don't hear many people defending him.
"I think Rich Rod's interview with Pat McAfee helped alleviate a lot of the anger that was felt toward him. I mean, it's tough," Bausley said. "What I would say to people who would grimace when I talked about Rich Rod is 'OK, you're in a job, a smaller job but you can move up, what are you going to do? It's a business.
"He loves West Virginia. He would talk about West Virginia all the time in Jacksonville."
And, Bausley said, he believes those who have believed rumors that Rodriguez "threw" the Pitt game couldn't be more wrong.
"That's crazy," he said. "If I'm not mistaken Pat White got hurt. And that Pitt team, it was with LeSean McCoy, right? The throwing-the-game narrative is crazy."
The Mountaineer Field memories run deep for Bausley and he spoke of them as he sat at a table set behind the end zone in front of the weight room signing autographs for youths as part of a youth football clinic and autograph session run by Country Roads Trust.
The last of the morning group of campers for the offense were gone and Bausley was asked his earliest memory of attending games at the now historic stadium.
He glanced up over his left shoulder, looking toward the back row in Section 222, so high it could be called "almost heaven Heaven."
"I went to one game in my 9th grade year. I believe it was the West Virginia-Oklahoma game. It was a night game," he said, smiling. "I'm in a much better seat now."
Other moments came as flashbacks from other games that he had watched from his home in Charleston.
"I remember Tavon Austin, taking the kickoff for a touchdown against Marshall and everybody in my house was going crazy," he said.
That was opening day, 2011, third quarter, Marshall had moved to within seven points with a field goal when Austin took the ensuing kickoff 100 yards for a score in what wound up a 34-13 victory.
"And I remember on the flip side, we thought we were going to go places that next year and we wound up losing how many straight games?" he said, referring to 2012 when WVU opened beating Marshall, 69-34, then ran off five straight wins only to lose five in a row and finish at 7-6.
Such was the plight of a 6-year-old Mountaineer fan in those days and he was certainly a fan.
Like almost all West Virginia kids, he grew up a WVU fan and the university had become his dream school.
But West Virginia didn't offer.
"Once I got to high school, you have to look at it like a business. It was a dream school. I had five Pat White jerseys, I had Tavon Austin jerseys. I was a West Virginia fan for sure."
He was a big, talented offensive tackle.
Too big.
He now stands 6-foot-4 and tips the scales at 308 pounds. You might call him still a growing young man, except that is more a shrinking young man who once weighed so much that it kept the college scouts from chasing him.
He remembers Rick Trickett, the former WVU assistant now with Rodriguez at Jacksonville State, telling him when he scouted him that he wouldn't be taken by the Power 5 schools at the 340 pounds he was sporting in high school, so he brought his weight down.
Now he's at his dream school, another in-state player making good at WVU under Neal Brown, one who will add depth to what is a strong offensive line this season.
"There's talent in this state," he said. "It isn't on the level of a Georgia or Florida, but there's no reason there should be schools that don't have someone covering West Virginia.
"Coming home," he said, "is unbelievable. Just being able to see my family consistently, it's unbelievable. I have a really big family. At the spring game, I had eight family members there. The only issue was there were so many people at the spring game I couldn't find my Mama."