Former NC State/WVU Player Sean Berton Weighs In On Rich Rodriguez

Sean Berton, who transfered to NC State after Rich Rodriquez was hired at WV, gave his take on Rodriguez in a message board post on Scout.com

Hey all… This is your pal Sean Berton… just dropping in to wish you all good luck in the Fiesta Bowl…This will be the first game that I will be rooting for you guys again since that evil, knieving J-off Rich Rodriguez took over. Yes the argument can be made that he left this program better off than it was and in alot of areas thats certainly true. But now you all know what I knew from the very first meeting I had with the guy… And thats that hes an egomaniacal, selfish D-head thats looking out for one person and one person only’s interests’. He will cheat, lie, steal…anything he has to do to get what Rich Rodriguez wants…Everyone around him is merely a pawn and a means to a happy end for himself. Maybe for some fans, class and character don’t hold much water and a win is a win and thats all that matters. I’ve never lived my life that way and have been taught that treating the people around you with the dignity, respect and honesty they deserve comes before the bottom line. As a player, I made a choice that had nothing to do with the University. I loved playing for WVU’s football team under Don Nehlen and I loved going to school there and still enjoy many great friendships with people I met there inside and outside of the program. I refused to play under a guy who so blatantly lacked a code of ethics and any type of moral integrity. I would never want my son to play/work for a person like that even if it did mean winning a championship. I would have loved to finish a WVU Mountaineer. Now that you guys have flushed this piece of human garbage from your program, you will have a great chance to win and do it the right way. I wish you guys the best of luck in your bowl game and in your coaching search. All the Best… Go EERS!!!

30 Responses to Former NC State/WVU Player Sean Berton Weighs In On Rich Rodriguez

PacknSack 01/03/2008 at 1:24 PM #

I’ll take what SB says with a grain of salt, because he is clearly still very angry. But if RR told him up front there is no place for him in the offense, doesn’t that fly in the face of the whole “lying sack of turd” that SB is spouting?
PacknSack 01/03/2008 at 1:24 PM #

I’ll take what SB says with a grain of salt, because he is clearly still very angry. But if RR told him up front there is no place for him in the offense, doesn’t that fly in the face of the whole “lying sack of turd” that SB is spouting?
Noah 01/03/2008 at 1:53 PM #

I said that Berton was a FB at WVU…my mistake, he was a TE. He got shifted to sort of an H-back when he came here.

When he signed or enrolled or whatever you do when you transfer, he did an interview with one of the State fan sites and said that Rodriguez had told him in their first meeting that Berton had no place the offense he was going to install.

IMO, the “Coach SoAndSo is a liar/cheat/backstabber” stuff only carries so much weight. There are 22 starters and 85 players. Most of the guys on the team were told that they’d be seeing significant playing time when they were being recruited. Every player on a college roster was probably the best player on their high school team, probably the best player in their conference and plenty of them were the best player in the state. They never get used to people being better than them.

When Sheridan was still here, I remember talking to a team manager about a guy who had left the team. He was a def. back and loved to talk. He came to State and suddenly, there were 10 receivers who could run right by him. No matter how hard he worked during his redshirt year, he wasn’t ever going to be able to catch them.

So he quit and went back home.

I have no doubts that when people asked that guy why he quit, he’d tell them that his position coach had lied to him or Sheridan had lied to him or some similar story.

Maybe Berton is right and RR is a total scumbag. But there are so many guys who sing that same song, it’s hard to tell who is being genuine.
GAWolf 01/04/2008 at 11:39 AM #

I represented a certain Pack D-Lineman for a brief time and he told me the reason he couldn’t make the NFL is because they changed him to linebacker. I tried to explain to him he had to make the best of the opportunity that was provided and try to make it work. You could tell in his attitude about the whole situation that it would never happen for him. Great college talent who just moaned and groaned his way out of a shot to make an NFL team.

At least Berton came here and made the best of the situation, whatever that situation might have been. We’ll never really know.
Noah 01/04/2008 at 2:21 PM #

You know what…if you’re a great athlete and you can play football, you will get a shot in the NFL and you can make it happen. Look at Oliver Hoyte. Look at Gary Downs. Look at all those kids from Valdosta Bartending School that end up playing pro ball.

Where’s Patrick Crayton from? The Cowboys had a guy a few years ago that was from some hick school in Oklahoma that didn’t even play on a grass field. When they were doing the “First and 10” series on the Cowboys’s training camp, he said that it was the first time he had ever played on a field that wasn’t littered with rocks.