Rodriguez on sellout: 'It's like the Yankees'

[BULLfreak]

Here's a parallel sure to strike a nerve with fans in the Tampa Bay area: West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez is taking at least some credit for USF's first-ever sellout, comparing the following for his No. 5 Mountaineers to another team with a strong following on the road in Tampa.

"We're highly ranked (No. 5) and when you go somewhere, they're going to sell out the stadium," he told the Charleston Daily Mail of West Virginia. " I think it's like the Yankees. Every game they get a big crowd."

Well, sort of. West Virginia played a similar weeknight game at Maryland two weeks ago, drawing a crowd of 53,107, which was the fifth-largest crowd ever at Byrd Stadium. Just the same, Maryland's home opener -- against I-AA Villanova -- drew 50,389 in the same stadium, so a I-AA team was drawing within 3,000 fans of what the Mountaineers pulled in.

West Virginia was allotted 4,000 tickets for the game initially and sold all those tickets, then requested another 250 earlier this month, which USF granted. The Mountaineers returned 150 of those on Monday, however, which were quickly sold on the USF end.

The same Daily Mail story quotes Rodriguez as saying Ray-Jay will be a "hotdog environment" -- I can only assume he said "hostile" and the reporter heard wrong. Otherwise, I'm not sure what a hotdog environment is.

When West Virginia came to USF two years ago, they were 9-1 and ranked 12th and drew 45,274 fans against a USF team that was 6-4 and hoping for an upset. That crowd is still the record for most ever to see the Bulls at Raymond James Stadium. The same stadium will have 20,000 more fans on Friday night, so my question is this: how many of those 65,000 fans do you think will be cheering for West Virginia? And for that matter, how many will be wearing Yankees jerseys?

Posted by Greg Auman at 10:53:58 AM on September 26, 2007 |

http://blogs.tampabay.com/usf/2007/09/rodriguez-on-se.html#comments

:ROFLMAO

[cal]

Haha what an arrogant sunnuvabitch

[Rocky Style]

I think it is a hotdog environment.  The hot dogs are pretty good.

[Economics_Nerd82]

WARNING, SIGN IDEA, WARNING:

"hotdog environment"

[bull2saintleo]

I think Rodriguez is a bit confused, this has nothing to do with people wanting to see WVU.  In this case it has more to do with seeing the successful Bulls in what could be, if not already our biggest home game.  This game has long-term aspirations down the line pending on how the season goes.

[Velcro]

Its the #5 and #18 ranking that draws the big crowd... not WVU in general.

If we were playing #5 Boise State, we'd still get a huge crowd.  I'm sure we wouldn't have the extra 5-10 k boise fans, but we'd still have quite a crowd.

[Guest JulmisteForPrez]

WARNING, SIGN IDEA, WARNING:

"hotdog environment"

I like it!

It definitely needs a HUGE photo of Rodriguez' head with a speech bubble saying that, though.

Otherwise, it might be lost on a lot of people.

[Rocky Style]

Also it is a big deal that USF is ranked because all the lamers in Tampa are hopping on board and buying up tickets.

[Brad]

Hopefully his team, which we defeated just last year, shows the same amount of arrogance. 

[MikeG]

I think it is a hotdog environment.  The hot dogs are pretty good.

had we been playing LSU at home, it would have been a CORNDOG environment