Thursday, March 01, 2007
Westphal celebrates commitment with concert
Is he the first Cavalier gridder from Wisconsin?
Doug Doughty
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At the risk of losing a few readers with this comparison, an exchange Wednesday night with Virginia football recruit Tyler Westphal was reminiscent of the Seinfeld spin-off, “Curb Your Enthusian.”
In several episodes, neurotic Seinfeld co-creator and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" star Larry David makes reference to the “cutoff,” the time during the evening when it is no longer polite to call somebody on the phone.
After making several efforts to obtain Westphal’s cell number Wednesday, I called him shortly after 10 p.m. Eastern time and got a recording. I left a message and said I would be “up” for at least another hour in case he could call me back.
I’m frequently awake at midnight and sometimes as late as 2 or 3 a.m., when returning from late assignments in places like Raleigh and Chapel Hill, N.C., but I was in never-never land when the phone rang Thursday morning at 12:40 a.m.
Upon learning it was Westphal, I told him I would call him right back, then proceeded to switch to another phone, cue my tape recorder and call him back on his cellphone, where I got nothing but recordings.
Only after calling the tracer number, *69, did I determine that Westphal had called me from another number, presumably his home phone.
Not knowing whether Wisconsin was in the Central Time Zone or Eastern Time Zone, but realizing it was well past the “cutoff” in either locale, I called the second number at 12:55 a.m.
Westphal quickly picked up this time and shrugged off my concerns that I might have awakened other members of his family. As for what he was doing up at that hour, he said he just made a two-hour drive to his Menasha, Wis., home after going to a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in Milwaukee.
Of course, Milwaukee is known for its concerts. After all, didn’t Wayne and Garth travel from Aurora, Ill., to Milwaukee to see an Alice Cooper concert in the 1992 movie, “Wayne’s World?”
(True story: I once saw Alice Cooper in concert at University Hall, then, nearly 25 years later, got his autograph, Vincent Furnier, outside the souvenir tent at the U.S. Open Golf Championship at Congressional in 1997. It was a present for then co-worker Vince Shaw, now laying out stories by Jeff White and the rest of the Richmond gadflies).
It wasn’t too long ago that the Red Hot Chili Peppers were in Charlottesville, playing in the same John Paul Jones Arena where Westphal watched Virginia beat Georgia Tech in men’s basketball Saturday.
He came to Charlottesville with his father, Brad, who is the head football coach at Menasha. They were overwhelmed.
“We both walked away so impressed,” Brad Westphal said Thursday morning. “I’ve been coaching 25 years and I’m not easily impressed, but you couldn’t ask for a better visit. As far as I’m concerned, Virginia oozed class.”
Westphal (6 foot 5, 220 pounds) is mostly a blocker as the tight end in Menasha’s mid-line option, but he says that Virginia wants him as an outside linebacker. He recently was timed in 4.75 seconds for 40 yards and had 87 tackles this past season as a junior, when he had 11 ½ sacks.
“He’s got a defensive mentality,” said Brad Westphal, who played running back at Wisconsin-Oshkosh but says he was not blessed with his son’s height. “He likes contact.”
At the time of his commitment, Westphal also had offers from Minnesota and Western Michigan. He was to have visited Iowa this weekend, then gone to Minnesota and Wisconsin for upcoming junior days.
“He talked about committing on the way back from Virginia, then said, ‘Maybe I should take my time,’ “ said Brad Westphal, who seven years ago returned to his alma mater, Menasaha, after coaching at two other high schools.
“Yesterday morning, he woke up and said he wanted to commit to Virginia. I told him, ‘Come to my classroom and lunchtime and we’ll see if you feel the same way.’ If anything, he felt even more strongly.
“I was kind of shocked, but I couldn’t be more pleased with his decision as a head football coach and a father.”
It will be interesting to see how what kind of ranking Westphal receives nationally because players who commit early are often underrated because they don’t have as impressive an offer list.
Virginia has had some highly rated early commits, most notably Chris Long and Vic Hall, both of whom committed during the fall of their junior years.
In those cases, Long remained in the spotlight because he was the son of NFL Hall of Famer Howie Long and Hall because of his assault on the state records for passing and total offense.
If nothing else, Westphal seems destined to become the best Virginia football player ever from Wisconsin. In my foggy memory, I can’t remember another one.
