Three and Out (12 page)

Thanks to Herbstreit's report, the buzz became so deafening so quickly that Miles felt compelled to give an impromptu press conference of his own just hours before the SEC championship game. “There was some misinformation on ESPN and I think it's imperative that I straighten it out,” he said, jaw clenched. “I am the head coach at LSU. I will be the head coach at LSU. I have no interest in talking to anybody else. I've got a championship game to play, and I am excited about the opportunity of my damn strong football team to play in it. That's really all I'd like to say.”

After Miles gave his public denial, Morris's phone started burning up again with calls from insiders who wanted to know where Martin was and why they could not get through to him on his cell phone. Before Martin had left Ann Arbor, he had changed cell phones, and he said he didn't know how to use the new one yet. Which, in effect, meant the Michigan athletic director, in the midst of a search for a new head coach for the winningest program in collegiate football that generated the bulk of his department's revenues, was somewhere near the tip of Florida, unable to communicate when the popular front-runner for the post had been forced to refute ESPN's inaccurate report that he had taken the job in a nationally televised appearance.

“Bill was totally oblivious to everything,” Morris said. “Finally Mary Sue [Coleman] calls Bill after he gets home Sunday night, and she's pissed off. So now he's finally getting it. He finally figures out he's in deep shit.”

The next day, Monday, December 3, with pressure mounting, Martin told the media he had a list of twenty candidates—which seemed like the kind of slate he'd have at the beginning of the search, not in December. The same day Martin flew to New York City under the guise of attending the National Football Foundation's Hall of Fame dinner Tuesday night, when his principal motive was finding a football coach.

Martin met with Rutgers's Greg Schiano, who was a hot commodity after leading the Scarlet Knights from the Big East's basement to a 10–2 regular season record, garnering almost every coaching award available. Rutgers fans hoped Schiano might return the Scarlet Knights to the top of the college football world for the first time since their one glorious week at number one in 1869.

Word quickly got out that Michigan was actively pursuing Schiano, which not only surprised Martin—who had naïvely believed the high-profile search could be kept quiet—but also came as news to the committee members, who had not been told Martin was even considering Schiano.

“It would be hard for anyone on that committee to say they felt respected, or were happy with the process,” Bates said of his piped-in peers. “I am certain that Bill did not understand how people on that committee felt about being on the committee.”

Although Martin was the director of Michigan athletics, he had not been a member of the Michigan football family before taking the post, and he had done little to ingratiate himself with the insiders in the years since. The careless search confirmed for many Michigan Men Martin's permanent status as an outsider of the very organization he was leading.

A few days later, a minor embarrassment became a major one when Schiano, after considering Martin's offer, declined. “I very much liked him,” Martin said, “and it just didn't work out.”

In fewer than three weeks, Martin had lowered his sights from Super Bowl champion Tony Dungy to Rutgers's Greg Schiano—and he still didn't have a coach. The sporting public was stunned to see Michigan, one of the most respected athletic departments in the nation, failing to find a leader.

“The phrase I kept hearing,” Bates recalled from his colleagues around the country, was “the process being ‘so un-Michigan-like.' And
that
was beginning to rise to the highest level of the university as well. Mary Sue was certainly getting the word from outside, and from the regents and donors, that this was falling apart.”

Detroit Free Press
columnist Michael Rosenberg wrote that there were two possibilities: Martin had decided Miles was not his man and intentionally let him slip away, or he was simply asleep at the wheel. Neither interpretation played well with the former Michigan football alums, who flooded President Coleman's office that week with respectfully written letters and e-mails, pointedly not arguing for this candidate or that—though they generally had strong feelings—but simply asking that the process be conducted in a professional manner, and that Michigan Men be treated with respect.

They certainly got Coleman's attention. She summoned Martin to her office and showed him the pile, saying she'd never seen anything like it in her years as president at Iowa or Michigan. The meeting had all the subtlety of a master rubbing her dog's nose in the rug he'd ruined. From that point on, Martin no longer had complete autonomy over the process, and Coleman would be working with him until it was complete.

The natives were getting restless, manifested in a rare public criticism of the athletic director—something that had been virtually unheard-of in Ann Arbor since Charles Baird first took office in 1898.

When Schiano's rejection was announced on WTKA, many alums, fans, and former players were listening. One of them was Bill Dufek—the son and brother of two Michigan greats, and a former All–Big Ten lineman himself—who was working away in his office when the news hit. Like most listeners, he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

“I didn't think I'd see the day,” he told me, “that a Rutgers coach would turn down the Michigan job.”

Within minutes, John Heuser of
The Ann Arbor News
called Dufek for a reaction. Dufek, who had picked his words carefully for a year on the Sunday morning show I cohost on WTKA, always supporting Carr and the football team even after the losses to Appalachian State and Oregon, spoke his mind.

“Bill Martin might know how to build buildings,” he said in the paper, “but he has no feel for running an athletic department.”

Another first: Dufek and fellow former teammate Mike Leoni publicly called out Coach Carr. Dufek told the
News
he believed “Carr sabotaged the pursuit of Miles because of personal animosity, or ‘petty jealousies.'

“This job is one of the top ten jobs in the country, but frankly for several years we haven't even had a top-25 coaching staff. And people have kept their mouth shut out of respect for Bo, but after this, you're seeing they're not going to keep quiet any more.”

The manifestation of the “deathless loyalty” to Michigan that Fielding Yost had honored so memorably back in 1941 had shifted. Many alums felt that in order to protect the prestige of the program, they needed to do something they had never done before: air their concerns and complaints in public. “Basically all [Carr] ever was,” Dufek went on, “was a steward of Bo's program. And it's Bo's program that lasted that long.”

The response to the article was swift—but mixed. Many agreed, many did not, but every Michigan Man felt passionate about the mismanaged search, which was causing the football family to fracture.

After Schiano's rejection, Martin told the committee they would be postponing the search until after the bowl games—but that's when he kicked the search into high gear.

*   *   *

Months before Michigan's problems became public, the West Virginia Mountaineers were having problems of their own.

They entered their 2007 season ranked third in the country, two spots ahead of Michigan, and started their campaign in fine style, dispatching Western Michigan 62–24. Despite losing to South Florida in the fifth week, on the strength of their 10–1 record and victories over three ranked teams (Rutgers, Cincinnati, and UConn), they had climbed all the way to the top spot in the coaches' poll for the first time in school history.

All the Mountaineers had to do to get a trip back to the national title game was win their last game against the 4–7 Pittsburgh Panthers. Rodriguez had not lost to a team with a losing record in five years.

They seemed safe.

Star quarterback Pat White's thumb injury would keep him out most of the game, but with the Mountaineers 28½-point favorites, it barely seemed worth mentioning.

If Michigan faced its Armageddon on the first Saturday of the season, the Mountaineers faced theirs on the last, December 1, when they played the Backyard Brawl for the one hundredth time. It wasn't supposed to be much of a brawl—but then, on a cold, rainy day, West Virginia missed two chip shots and lost 13–9, in what ESPNU called the “Game of the Year,” temporarily displacing the Horror.

Like the Appalachian State stunner, this upset created unforeseen by-products. It opened the door for Les Miles's LSU team, which beat Tennessee the same day to take West Virginia's spot in the national title game, and it gave Rodriguez more time and incentive to address the growing chasm between him and his bosses.

“They were scared of him,” Matt Jones said. “It was nothing to do with the little things, the list, or any of that. He'd just gotten bigger than them.”

“They pushed him in a corner,” Paul Astorg said, “and they wanted him to know who the boss was.”

Right when it seemed like Rodriguez might be trapped, a door cracked open.

But Michigan's awkward dance with Les Miles wasn't quite done. After Schiano turned Martin down, the Michigan insiders realized Martin's slow search was the sign not of some carefully executed master plan but of an almost complete lack of preparation. They had peeked behind the Wizard's curtain and seen him scrambling. Miles's advocates realized it was time to make their move.

Jamie Morris went to work on Andrea Fisher Newman, Michigan's top-ranking Republican regent, while John Wangler, a close friend of Miles's, opened discussions with Larry Deitch, the top-ranking Democrat.

That Friday, December 7, Bill Martin made an early-morning call to an intermediary, who told him Les Miles would not speak to Martin, only to President Coleman, but if Martin wanted to listen in on the conversation, that was fine. They arranged a conference call from Coleman's office at 11:00 a.m. that day, marking the first conversation either Michigan official had had with the alleged leading candidate for the position.

It was a simple, pleasant conversation. Neither side committed to anything more than keeping their conversation confidential and having another conversation before LSU's national championship game. Miles did let them know, however, that, “I would never say no to Michigan.”

But, incredibly, by 1:30 that afternoon word of the conference call had already started popping up on the blogs—and word quickly traveled down to Baton Rouge. Miles was, understandably, upset.

Three days later, on Monday, December 10, 2007, Coleman and Miles talked again. She said she could not hire Miles without meeting him first, and asked Miles to meet her and Martin in Miami, where Miles had already scheduled a recruiting trip. Miles replied that he could not do any face-to-face meeting until after the national title game. Besides, he pointed out, Michigan couldn't keep a conference call confidential for more than a couple hours, and the media was already watching his every move in Baton Rouge. He already had a great job in a great program, poised to play for a national crown, and he was not interested in leaving LSU unless Michigan—and only Michigan—was truly interested. And if they were, he figured, they could wait until January to seal the deal.

But he added, “If you want me, then after the bowl game, I will be your coach—I just can't do anything before that.” Again he added, “I would never say no to Michigan.”

After they hung up with Miles, Coleman and Martin met to discuss their strategy with Deitsch and Newman on the phone. When they agreed they should approach Miles, someone raised the question everyone dreaded: “Who's going to tell Lloyd?”

After a pause, President Coleman said, “I will.”

*   *   *

Dave Brandon and Jim Hackett, former players who went on to great success in business and remained close to their old coach, both recalled Schembechler, contemplating who should succeed Carr. Although Schembechler was very big on Kirk Ferentz, they remembered, he also told them Michigan should consider the young coach at West Virginia, Rich Rodriguez.

But they did not present Rich Rodriguez's name to Bill Martin. And they were not the first Michigan people to reach out to Rodriguez, either.

No, that happened the night of Michigan's Monday conference call with Miles. In what will likely come as a surprise to most Michigan fans, Rodriguez received a call that evening from Michigan head coach Lloyd Carr. Rodriguez recalled they talked for ten or fifteen minutes.

Carr asked Rodriguez, “Would you be interested in coaching here? It's a great school, with great tradition.”

“I've never given it any thought,” Rodriguez said.

“Even if you hadn't thought about it before,” Carr said, “it's something you should think about now.”

“Is there interest in me on Michigan's part?”

“Yeah, they're looking at you.”

“It was a very positive call,” Rodriguez remembered. “He was definitely encouraging me to think about it.”

That next day, according to three sources, including a high-level department administrator and a search committee member, the first person to encourage Bill Martin to think about Rich Rodriguez was none other than Lloyd Carr. (Carr did not respond to requests for an interview.)

That same day, Tuesday, December 11, someone leaked the story of the resurrection of Miles's candidacy to Mark Snyder at the
Free Press
and Bernie Smilovitz at Detroit's NBC affiliate. Naturally, it got picked up in Louisiana—marking the second time the “Miles to Michigan” story had broken, the first being Herbstreit's report ten days earlier. That not only upset Miles, it effectively boxed him in.

That night, Bill Martin—tipped off by Lloyd Carr—called Rodriguez at his home to inquire about his interest in the Michigan job. Both sides were noncommittal but intrigued. Almost exactly a year after Rodriguez had turned down Alabama, he found himself flirting with the Michigan job. Rodriguez called Dusty Rutledge at 11:30 that night.