After months of grinding the knowledge and concievable possibilities (which aint too much on my part :) ), I have developed a series of methods, that i am using on a project atm, that allows me to access a property for a WebControl, Control, or specific property for a control through Generics Hierarchy.

Below i will list the core and the supports then the specifics. Regardless of what type it is, they all use the ControlRef core method to get a control instance before access its specific properties or methods.

You can find the snippet at FindControl

Friend Function ControlRef(Of T As Control)(ByVal parent As Control, ByVal cntrlName As String) As T
  Return CType(parent.FindControl(cntrlName), T)
End Function

Some example uses of a higher level generic:

Friend Function GetVisible(Of T As Control)(ByVal parent As Control, ByVal cntrlName As String) As Boolean
  Return ControlRef(Of T)(parent, cntrlName).Visible
End Function
Friend Sub SetVisible(Of T As Control)(ByVal parent As Control, ByVal cntrlName As String, ByVal value As Boolean)
  ControlRef(Of T)(parent, cntrlName).Visible = value
End Sub

An even higher level generic:

Friend Function GetSelected(Of T As DropDownList)(ByVal parent As Control, ByVal cntrlname As String) As ListItem
  Return ControlRef(Of T)(parent, cntrlname).SelectedItem
End Function

Edited (2/26/2010):
Found out that this Snippet i posted above had been deleted, with no response, so here it is in its form and usage.
snippet address was: Here