The necessity of weed-pulling

By John Antonik, WVU Sports

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Late last week, Rich Rodriguez felt the need to discuss weed pulling after a so-so practice up on the Steve Antoline Family Practice Field.

Specifically, he wasn’t happy with his team’s effort and focus, so he spent some extra time driving home that point to his West Virginia players. Afterward, he told the rest of us a story about growing up in a coal miner’s house living in the Fairmont suburb of Grant Town, West Virginia.

“My dad had one week off a year. He’d work all day in the coal mines, and he’d come home with stuff all over him,” Rodriguez recalled. “Then, he’d go work in the garden for four hours. When I was a little kid, we worked in the garden a little bit. The older I got, the more gardening I did, and the bigger the garden got.”

Unpleasant and thankless, weed pulling is nonetheless important so the beans and vegetables can grow properly.

A quick AI search of weed pulling reveals that timing is key. Younger weeds are much easier to pull because their roots are less developed. When pulling, according to AI, grasp the weed at its base, close to the soil line, and pull upwards with a gentle twisting motion to try and remove the entire root system. If the root breaks, use a tool like a hand fork to pry out the remaining piece.

The job is never-ending because once weeds become too large and deeply rooted, they are next to impossible to remove.

Talk about fun!

“I hated pulling weeds,” he said. “I’d rather do anything than pull weeds. You ever pull weeds in a garden next to those beans? It was absolutely miserable. I would have played any sport. We didn’t have lacrosse, but if we did, I would have gone and played lacrosse just to get out of pulling weeds. I played every sport to get out of gardening.”

Metaphorically speaking, there is a lot of weed-pulling required to become a successful college football player. Today was one of those days when Rodriguez thought it was important to remind his guys of this.

“The people in this state, how they work, it’s not always easy,” he explained. “Have you been through this building? Have you seen how we eat? Have you seen all the services we have? They’ve got it pretty good. 

“They live in a fantasy world – coaches too, because we get these benefits,” he continued. “We want for nothing. If you want food, if you want medical help, job help, financial help …? We’ve got cold tubs and hot tubs, and we even got an ice cream machine. We just got it yesterday. This is top-level stuff. They’ve got it pretty good, and a lot of them are getting paid, too.”

Two days into preseason camp, the message Rodriguez wants to get across to his football team, made up mostly of new players, is to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

It’s a learned trait.

“It’s not like you ever truly get comfortable and you’re going to get tired, but you hope the other team does too. That’s the world we’ve got to live in,” he said.

Rodriguez believes it applies on a much broader level as well.

“I’m giving an opinion, and I’m not going on a political rant, but I think generally we’re softer as a society,” he noted. “We’re softer as athletes. I don’t necessarily blame anybody because everything around them is, ‘How do we make it easier for them?’ instead of making things harder for them so they learn how to go through hard times, and that’s what hard-edge is. 

“It’s not a magical word that you are going to wake up and have it,” Rodriguez explained. “There is not a person sitting in here that hasn’t had some adversity or won’t have adversity in your life. Hopefully, you have the mental hard-edge or toughness to get through it or have the people around you to do that.

“I think that’s part of my responsibility to teach our guys, and they’ve all got long, successful lives ahead of them. It’s not always going to be strawberries, sunshine, roses and flowers,” he added.

Or a hill of beans, for the matter!

So, how do you get college football players to pull weeds these days?

“You throw them out in the garden, and you don’t let them leave until they pull it,” Rodriguez observed. “That’s it, or you can’t eat any beans.”

Defensive coordinator Zac Alley agrees.

“One, you’ve got to be on them,” he said. “There is a standard of how we play, and this is how you’ve got to do it. There is one standard of how we do things and you either achieve that standard or you don’t every single play. We’re straining to get to that consistency all the time, every time. On and off the field, you want to elevate when it’s done well and show it and criticize when it’s done poorly. 

“I don’t want a guy to go through practice (without knowing),” Alley continued. “I believe in telling them the truth. If it’s bad, I’m going to tell you it’s bad, and I’m going to call you out in front of everybody. If it’s good, I’m going to tell you it’s good, and everybody is going to know it. There is only one way to win.”

It’s about accountability and accepting the consequences of when you fall short. Today, Rodriguez believed his team took a step backward but tomorrow is a new day.

“I thought, as a head coach, I failed today to have our best practice, and so did the rest of the staff,” he said. “This was the same practice as yesterday, so it should be faster and more efficient, and when it’s not that tells me, mentally, we’re not taking the step that we can take.

“If I see it, I’ll say it, and if I don’t see it, I will say it later,” he said. “That’s what coaching is. If we correct the mistakes tomorrow that we made today, then we’ve taken a step.”

Therefore, if you happen to have a plate full of beans in front of you tonight at the dinner table, think about the effort it took to make sure those beans developed properly. 

They were probably once sitting next to some weeds that needed to be pulled.

“If you ever run into my mom, ask her what Rich hates to do. Top of the list, ‘He hated pulling weeds!’ But I did it because I had to do it,” he sighed. 

“And I don’t even like beans! I like them raw. (His wife) Miss Rita likes them cooked. Maybe that’s why I don’t like them because every time I eat a bean, I think about pulling weeds!”

Preseason camp continues Friday morning.