Three and Out (15 page)

Though disappointed for his friend, Rodriguez was relieved to have Magee on board. Ditto Jeff Casteel, who had taken a shaky defense and turned it into one of the nation's ten best in 2007, earning the national Defensive Coordinator of the Year award for his efforts.

Casteel used the 3-3-5—the defensive answer to Rodriguez's spread option offense—which emphasizes speed over size, putting fast, versatile players in space and letting them attack. Like the spread option, the 3-3-5 has its critics, who say it won't work in the Big Ten. But Rodriguez, as usual, wasn't listening to the critics. Besides, he and Casteel worked well together, and their approach to the players was in sync.

Casteel was that rarest of college coaches: content. He cares only about family and football, and in West Virginia he had everything he wanted, including a trailer on a lake where he took his family after home games. He seemed to have no particular desire for wealth, fame, or a bigger stage.

But he knew his next boss could jeopardize his private paradise. Head coaches have strong personalities, and if they don't mesh, you're in for a rough ride. Given the choices, Casteel's best chance to preserve most of what he had was to follow Rodriguez to Michigan—and that's what he decided to do.

“Here's the big thing that most people don't know,” said Rodriguez's eventual director of football operations, Mike Parrish, in 2011. “Casteel already had a Michigan cell phone. He was getting ready to go.”

Rodriguez tried to retain all his assistants, save one: Bill Stewart, whom Rodriguez had inherited as the quarterback coach until Rodriguez brought in Rod Smith in 2007, moving Stewart to tight ends. Perhaps for that reason West Virginia named Stewart the interim coach for the Fiesta Bowl game against third-ranked Oklahoma, the Big 12 champion. After the ninth-ranked Mountaineers pulled off the upset 48–28, West Virginia surprised almost everyone by tapping Stewart to be the permanent head coach. As a result, the West Virginia staff would have to decide: stay with Bill or leave with Rich.

Many fans recall that when Nick Saban left Michigan State for LSU, not one assistant went with him. “That was my greatest fear,” Rodriguez said, “and an even greater fear for Rita. She loved those guys and knew how important they were to our team—and to me.”

So after Rodriguez came to Ann Arbor, he sent a plane back to Morgantown to get his assistants. Who was going to get on? How many?

A couple of hours later, Magee called Rodriguez and said, “We're ready to go. The plane's full, and we've got two cars trailing us filled with the strength coaches.”

Rodriguez let out a sigh of relief—then decided to have a little fun. He called Rita and told her, “Calvin said no one is on the plane but him.”

Rodriguez planned to drag it out, but Rita was so distraught he didn't have the heart to keep the gag going. “Naw, honey, I'm just kidding ya! It's full. Everyone's coming with us.”

“Don't you
ever
do that to me again!”

“Honey, I don't ever want another chance.”

But one coach did not get on that plane: Jeff Casteel.

Stewart made a play for almost all of Rodriguez's assistants, including Rod Smith, who turned him down to accept less money, a smaller role, and no contract to coach the quarterbacks at Michigan—which is exactly what Michigan expects.

However, when Stewart offered Casteel $275,000 and, more important, a two-year contract, it looked pretty good compared to Michigan's offer: $265,000 and no contract at all. Casteel decided to stay put.

“If they don't hire Stewart,” Parrish said in 2011, “Jeff Casteel comes to Michigan.”

And if Casteel had joined Rodriguez's staff?

Parrish didn't hesitate: “It would have been completely different.”

If Rodriguez came close to batting a thousand on hiring, even with one vital miss, he didn't fare as well when it came to firing.

On Thursday, December 20, Rodriguez asked to meet with everyone—from coordinators to clerical workers—in the team room. He explained that, like any new coach, he had autonomy over hiring, and he had people in mind for most of the coaching positions, but he was willing to talk with anyone who wanted to stay. (In the football business, many new coaches simply clean house before they even meet.)

He told them he would be in the commons—which also serves as the team's second-floor dining hall—and would stay for as long as people wanted to talk.

There is no easy way to complete such a chore, but it's fair to say that, despite good intentions, Rodriguez didn't make any new friends that day. Rodriguez kept all the trainers, equipment managers, video staffers, and secretaries, plus running backs coach Fred Jackson and, at Carr's urging, operations men Scott Draper and Brad Labadie.

All told, Rodriguez kept far more of Carr's employees than he let go. The assistant coaches knew they would be leaving and simply wanted to get on with their lives with their dignity intact.

But that was not the day's lasting memory. Instead of setting up individual appointments, they ended up lined up outside the commons, with some of them sitting on the floor waiting for hours, which did not go over well with a group of men who had won Big Ten titles as players and coaches. When they finally did see Rodriguez, at least two were unimpressed with his lack of eye contact and sincerity.

“The conversation was hollow,” former assistant coach Steve Szabo said. “I didn't think he was up-front. I don't think he had any intention of keeping any of us. I can understand that—everyone brings in his own guys—but I wish he'd just said that. He was trying to be nice, but I'd rather he'd be flat honest.”

Any labor lawyer can tell you it's not firing employees that generates lawsuits but the way you fire them. And this was not handled well—creating another layer of well-connected insiders who would have no love for Rodriguez, no mixed feelings if he failed, and no hesitation about spreading their views on the matter.

Mike Gittleson, who'd been Michigan's strength and conditioning coach for thirty years, was one of those who felt bitter about the transition, but the fault was not all Rodriguez's.

The coaches were terminated immediately, and lost all benefits except health, which they kept for sixty days—though it is not uncommon elsewhere for even fired coaches and staffers to get benefits and severance pay for much longer.

None of this was communicated directly by Martin, who never met with the staff, but a third party. “They give you a box and say, ‘Clean your offices out,'” Szabo recalled. “It was in some ways shocking. I was offended by the way we were treated.

“As much as we disliked the way Rodriguez talked to us, he had nothing to do with that whatsoever. Bill Martin was ultimately responsible for the mechanics of the way we were treated, the dismissal. There were a lot of quality, hardworking coaches there. We were knocking on the door of a national title in 2006, and came back from a bad start in 2007 to knock off the defending national champions.

“But that's not how we were treated. That didn't sit well with anyone. We all resented the way it was handled. The whole thing was just really sad.”

Strength coach Mike Barwis planned to name the new weight room after Gittleson—until reports started coming in every week of Gittleson bad-mouthing Rodriguez, Barwis, and his staff around town, at clinics around the country, and even to reporters, recruits, and current players. Of all the disaffected former staffers, no one, it seemed, was more eager to castigate the new coaches than Mike Gittleson.

*   *   *

Coach Carr's final season might have started on the worst note in the history of Michigan football, but it ended on one of the best.

In the 2008 Capital One Bowl, played in Orlando on New Year's Day, Las Vegas oddsmakers calculated that the twelfth-ranked returning national champion Florida Gators would beat Carr's unranked 8–4 Wolverines by double digits.

But the Wolverines, healthy for the first time since the opener, upset the Gators 41–35. The most memorable play of the game occurred
after
the game, when the seniors—who hadn't beaten Ohio State or a bowl opponent until that game—lifted their coach onto their shoulders and carried him across the field.

Sure, the Capital One Bowl has all the tradition of … well, a credit card company, but it was the best departure by a Michigan coach since Fritz Crisler's players lifted him up after his 49–0 Rose Bowl victory over USC to cap an undefeated national title season exactly sixty years earlier.

Back in Schembechler Hall, Rodriguez was stumbling out of the gate. On Tuesday, January 8, 2008, the day after his entire staff had moved in, Rodriguez walked into the team room to address the Wolverines for the first time. He said all the right things, and the introduction was well received. “They all stood up and cheered,” Parrish recalls, “
wildly.
I mean,
loud.
”

But a key group was missing: the outgoing seniors. There was a logic to this. Rodriguez would not be coaching them, of course, which is why most coaches excuse the seniors a few minutes into their last team meeting. Rodriguez hadn't coached that senior class, barely knew them, and—while they were not barred from attending the meeting—he made little attempt to connect with them on their way out, thank them for their contributions, or ask for their support.

Not reaching out to them generated unnecessary ill will among a powerful class that included four-year starting quarterback Chad Henne, Michigan all-time leading rusher Mike Hart, and future number one NFL draft pick Jake Long. Tough guys, good guys, great leaders, and soon-to-be graduates—the very embodiment of the Michigan ideal. They were not the kind of people to spend their time and energy bad-mouthing the new coach. But they could have been the kind of true-blue Michigan Men Rodriguez sorely needed to be ambassadors to the former players and the public. Instead, Rodriguez lost them from the start.

In those testy early months, Rodriguez got some things right. When they finished up their first recruiting class, Rodriguez invited the celebrated '69 team, Schembechler's first, back to speak to the team on Tuesday, February 5, about Michigan tradition and transition.

The event was well organized and well executed. About thirty players showed up, with Jim Brandstatter emceeing the event, and Dick Caldarazzo, Jim Mandich, Reggie McKenzie, and Dan Dierdorf all giving funny but fiery speeches to the team. A few pointed out the parallels between their transition from the gentlemanly Bump Elliott and the bombastic Bo Schembechler to what the current players were going through. Their message was a familiar one: It's not going to be easy, but those who stay …

Dierdorf went beyond that, pointing out that, in their era, teams that dared enter the Big House were already half-beaten before kickoff. During warm-ups, Schembechler would walk in front of his players, like a general inspecting his troops, then point to the visitors at the other end of the field. “They're scared, men. You know why? Because you're
Michigan
!”

“Well, they're not scared anymore,” Dierdorf told them. “Appalachian State wasn't scared. You need to bring that back.”

It was a rare admission from within the Michigan family that Rodriguez wasn't just bringing in a new system but also was restoring the one he had inherited.

The event was a smash hit, with everyone—the coaches, the players, and the alums—doing their part to bridge the gap between the old and the new. “I want everyone who played here to know he is welcomed back anytime,” Rodriguez told
USA Today
about the reunion. “Hopefully, this will be one of the first steps toward getting that message out.”

It went so well that Martin decided to invite all the former players back on February 16, 2008, to welcome the new coaches and teach them about Michigan tradition.

Of course, Michigan football had held many reunions over the years. They were great successes, cementing the bond not only among teammates who had entered middle age but also across eras. With few exceptions, you met good husbands, good fathers, and good community leaders. To a person, they will tell you Michigan football made them better men. But this was the first such event without their father figure, Bo Schembechler, in attendance—and it showed.

Reports on the evening vary widely, but almost everyone agrees the intentions were better than the execution. About 250 football alums returned for the event, held at the Junge Champions Center, and “95 percent of them were just first-class, great,” Parrish recalled. “They really made us feel welcome.”

But things took a turn when the speeches started. “Some of you guys come in here wearing sweatshirts, looking like shit,” said the always urbane Stan Edwards with a grin. “Well, fuck you guys!” He then tore off his own tie, and the room erupted.

A steady stream of profanity spewed from the podium, eventually from Bill Martin himself. A lot of the japing got laughs, but, as Jim Hackett said, “there was a cheapness to it I wasn't used to. Each one of the talks was less about the virtues that made us great, the values that built this program, and more about reminiscing—unconnected to what we were there to do: build the bridge that would ensure Michigan's success in the next phase of our evolution.”

By almost all accounts, the night hit a low point when Eric Mayes took the podium. A walk-on who rose to become a cocaptain of the 1997 squad, he was sidelined by a knee injury in the fourth game but continued to lead during his team's national title run. He went on to earn a Ph.D., but his teammates knew he had a mercurial side. No one was quite sure what he was going to say.

They found out soon enough. Mayes delivered a stern lecture to the new coaches. The message was simple: They were interlopers among proven Michigan Men, who still owned the program, not the newcomers. “I better not see
any
of your friends from
West Virginia
on
our
sidelines!” Mayes declared.