He pedals on a stationary bike for 45 minutes to an hour at nearly the bike’s highest speed between his players’ workout sessions.

“I could be in probably the best conditioning I ever could be in, and I still probably couldn’t do it,” said Dan Mozes, an All-American center under Rodriguez at West Virginia.

But as hard as it is for many to believe, Rodriguez can slow down.

Mike Smith, an auto dealer in West Virginia, had a distant friend whose kid was in the hospital. Smith asked Rodriguez to go visit the child. Rodriguez took over a signed ball and stayed for longer than an hour.

Smith asked how it went, expecting a brief answer. Rodriguez talked for 45 minutes about how smart the child was.

Once when he was at Tulane, Rodriguez had to take his daughter, Raquel, to the emergency room one night.

After some difficulty getting her looked at, she was examined and everything turned out OK. Rodriguez started thinking about that morning’s practice. He had gotten on Shaun King, his quarterback who would go on to have a six-year NFL career and is now an ESPN analyst, pretty hard and used some harsh language.

“He said that morning when he got to work, he went to Shaun King’s apartment and he woke him up and hugged him, told him he loved him because Shaun King was somebody else’s baby, somebody else’s child,” Davis said. “Whether we like ‘em or not, or whether they do what we want, they’re somebody’s child, and they’re more important to somebody else than they are to us.”

Prodigy/ passed over

In 2000, Northwestern upset Michigan 54-51, using a variation of the spread offense developed by Rodriguez. The Wildcats rolled up 654 yards, including 332 rushing, the most the Wolverines had ever given up on the ground. Rodriguez had a message for then-Northwestern offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson after the game.

"I said, 'Kevin, at least you could have used your own signals and terminology,' " Rodriguez told the Charleston Daily Mail.

Rodriguez developed the offense in his second year at Glenville State with Springston, his offensive coordinator. Springston ran a four-receiver set with a single back the year before at West Virginia Tech. Together, they added the shotgun, and the offense that crushed Wolverine fans eight years ago in Evanston took off.

“If it wasn’t for what we did, I’d probably be selling insurance today,” Springston said.

Although many of the principles remained constant, Rodriguez’s offense looked much different than the run-heavy attack he used at West Virginia. At Glenville, it was an aerial assault.

“I lived like probably a block from the field,” Nottingham said. “I used to go home at halftime and eat dinner because we were going to be there so long. I’d just walk home and eat dinner because I knew if it started at one o’clock, we’d be there till like 5:00, 5:30. … The game took forever.”

With the nation’s top offense, Glenville State reached the 1993 NAIA national championship game. The Pioneers played East Central (Okla.), the nation’s top defense. East Central won 49-35, but then-East Central defensive coordinator Todd Graham was so impressed with Rodriguez’s offense, he copied it when he became a head coach.

“I thought it was one of the most innovate, aggressive, explosive things I’ve ever seen,” Graham said.

Graham coached under Rodriguez at West Virginia. Last year, he led Tulsa to the nation’s best total offense.

The roots of Rodriguez’s trek to the top of college coaching developed early. In about sixth grade, Rodriguez wrote a paper about what he wanted to be when grew up. His first choice was to play professional football, but that dream vanished when he didn’t become a starter at West Virginia.

His second choice was to be a Division-I football coach. When Rodriguez’s offense was taking off, he appeared well on his way to reaching that goal when Bowden left Tulane for Clemson at the end of the 1998 regular season. Sports Illustrated had just named him one of the nation’s top-10 assistants in waiting.

The race for Tulane’s top spot was initially between Rodriguez and then-Louisiana Tech coach Gary Crowton. Chris Scelfo, who was the offensive line coach at Georgia, eventually emerged as a distant third candidate. Crowton dropped out of the race, all but leaving the job to Rodriguez.

“I told Chris, I said, ‘You don’t want this job,’ ” said Frank Scelfo, who was Chris’s brother and already on the Tulane staff.