Three and Out (42 page)

*   *   *

The locker room mood was a combination of disgust and despair.

In September, this team was the cat that kept landing on its feet. And now it was the cat that kept landing on its head: Michigan State, Iowa, Illinois, Purdue. In each game, they'd had an excellent chance to win—and each time, they'd found a new and creative way to lose.

“We are not gonna give up. That's not gonna happen,” Rodriguez told his team. “Nobody'll expect anything from us the next two weeks. Nothing's gonna break us apart. NOTHING. Nothing. Nothing.”

He started to get choked up.

“We will stick together. And we will come back. We are DAMN close to getting it. Damn close.

“When you talk to the press, give 'em credit. They played hard. We just gotta get better. We just … gotta get better. And we will.

“Don't let the bastards get you. We're gonna have the backs of every man in every way.

“‘All in' on three.”

“ALL IN!”

Rodriguez left the players in silence to meet Rita in the side room, sitting with Raquel and Rhett. She looked taut. She stood up and gave her husband a big hug. He told her what Danny Hope had said, then blurted out, “Bullshit! I gotta get my ass beat by a junior high school, no-class asshole?!”

He picked up a football lying on an end table and kicked it, causing it to ricochet around the tiny space, then picked it up again and threw it in the corner.

“Call him on it!” Rita said. “Why do we have to be so politically correct when no one else is with us?”

Of course, Hope's gesture was adolescent at best. Likewise, Rita could not be blamed for supporting her husband and getting fed up with the endless stream of criticism while they were constantly being told to turn the other cheek. But it was not hard to foresee what would happen if Rodriguez did, in fact, call Coach Hope out in public.

A few minutes later, at the postgame press conference, Rodriguez explained what Hope had done—and, sure enough, that quote eclipsed everything else. While some readers, bloggers, and fans would take Hope to task, it largely backfired on the man making the complaint. If Hope came across as classless, Rodriguez came across as petulant.

It might not have been fair, but it was predictable. And avoidable.

On his way back to his locker room, Rodriguez stopped in the Crisler Arena hallway, as he always did, to see the hospital kids. A reporter who had just asked some pointed questions about his job security stopped him and said, with a big smile, “No hard feelings, Coach. I think you're doing a great job. I'm your biggest backer!”

Rodriguez forced a smile, shook his hand, and said, “Thanks.”

But that was his last good deed for the day. Two overweight autograph seekers, middle-aged men wearing Michigan jerseys, tried to interrupt his time with the young patients to get autographs. He stayed focused on the kids. And when he finished, he walked past the two men into Crisler's wood-paneled hallway, with Rita at his side.

Rodriguez didn't get far, however, before running into Bill Martin. They ducked into the nearest open doorway, which happened to be the boiler room, and talked privately. Rita then walked in, and gave Rich a big hug.

But the door was slightly ajar, allowing the middle-aged autograph seekers to sneak a peek.

One said to the other, “Rich Rod is cryin'!” slapping his friend in his gut—though it wasn't true. “He's fuckin'
bawlin'
!”

“Well, good,” his friend said. “He should be.”

 

28   TRYING TO KEEP TRYING

On Sunday, the grading was finished, but Rodriguez was not. The defense was so bad in this game, Rodriguez concluded, that there was no point giving an award for the Best Defensive Player.

“We better be recruiting our asses off,” he said, looking at recruiting coordinator Chris Singletary. “We need some guys who can get after their man and make a tackle. It's no surprise that everyone who wins the toss takes the ball first. They see what we see.

“Damn it!” he said, the frustration boiling over. “We can't run, we can't tackle, we can't block. We are the worst fundamentals team in America. Embarrassing.”

Later that day, Jon Falk said, “I feel horrible for that guy. Never have I seen such shit. It's the perfect storm—Bo's gone, the AD's gone, all this NCAA crap—and he's got to deal with all of it.

“I try to leave him alone these days.”

Rodriguez spent a few hours that Sunday going over every single play with the defensive coaches. Again, you could feel the tension between him and Greg Robinson, with Rodriguez walking a fine line between respecting Robinson's autonomy over his defense and making his frustration plain.

“We must be insane,” he said at one point, “to do the same things and expect a different result. But I'm just trying to understand. I'm looking for answers.”

By the time he met the players on Monday, November 9, at 3:00, Rodriguez found his message.

“To accept losing is unacceptable,” he said, jaw clenched. His body looked tight, ready to pounce. “I hope you guys understand that. But the nice part is, we're playing a nationally ranked team this weekend, on the road, and no one thinks we've got a chance. This is a game where, if you're not a man, don't show up.”

*   *   *

They showed up.

Built in 1917, Camp Randall Stadium is the oldest in the Big Ten. At the outset of the Civil War, the site had been home to an actual camp built to train Union soldiers. It had long since morphed into one of the toughest, and drunkest, places to play college football.

Michigan fell behind the twentieth-ranked Badgers 7–0, but came right back to tie the game. At the end of the first quarter, Michigan had outgained the Badgers, 108 yards to 50, and could have outscored them if they had not roughed Wisconsin's punter.

Rodriguez's speeches had achieved their goal: Despite the heartbreaking setbacks and long odds, they continued fighting. But they still had no knack for capitalizing on their efforts. If the 2009 Wolverines were a baseball team, they would have led the league in runners left in scoring position.

Michigan held leads of 10–7 and 17–14 before the Badgers scored the last points of the half, going into intermission ahead 21–17.

“Keep striking their ass!” Rodriguez told a jacked-up bunch in the locker room. “They're starting to feel it now. Keep after 'em. Get what we want
now
!”

Wisconsin scored on its first possession of the second half to go up 28–17, but once again, the Wolverines came back: Forcier to Roundtree on the bubble screen, to close the gap to 28–24.

But there they stalled. Michigan's offense couldn't muster any more points, while its defense couldn't generate any more stops, and they fell apart. 45–24.

Long before the clock had run out, the party had started in Madison.

In the coaches' room, Rodriguez said, to no one in particular, “They're running the same goddamn play twenty times in a row and we can't fuckin' stop 'em. Fuck
me
!”

But he was not giving up. He walked out into the locker room. “Everyone STOP what you're doing and get in here—every coach and every player.

“Now, here's the deal. We are going to get ready for the biggest game of the year. Nobody is going out tonight. Nobody. We are getting ready for Ohio State immediately. Immediately!

“We can do it. When we execute like we did in the first half, we can beat anyone. I'll be right there with you, every step of the way.
Every
step.

“Now, ‘all in' for Michigan.”

“Say it like you mean it!” Brandon Graham shouted, and others added, “If you don't, get out!”

“ALL IN!”

Rodriguez retreated to the coaches' room, where he bent over, with his hands on his knees, as though someone had just punched him in the gut—and held the position for well over a minute. He was in physical pain.

But the indignities were not over. Back on the field, with fans filing out, longtime Michigan cameraman Pat McLaughlin looked around and said, “In the old days, if they beat Michigan, they'd be crying, rejoicing. Now they don't care. There's no awe, just disrespect and vulgarity. I don't like it.”

On the bus ride to the airport, the caravan got stuck just a couple of blocks from Camp Randall, among the rows of two-story wooden houses typical of almost every old neighborhood surrounding a Big Ten stadium. This being Madison, the residents were drinking, blasting music, and dancing on the porch roofs.

When a few of them realized Michigan's football players were in those buses, they started yelling, flipping them off, and simulating masturbation. But after a while, even they got tired of all that and crawled back through their second-floor windows.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

 

29   HUMBLED

In the week before the Western Michigan game, the
Detroit Free Press
came out with its sensational story.

In the week before the Michigan State game, the NCAA conducted its interviews and the GPA mess surfaced.

In the week before the Illinois game, Rodriguez learned that David Molk would be out for the rest of the season, and the NCAA sent its Notice of Inquiry.

Those were all pretty bad weeks, but the week before the Ohio State game was right up there.

On Sunday night, Rodriguez's attorney called to let him know the university was going to send out a press release Monday. The
Free Press
's FOIA request for the CARA forms audit was expiring, and by law, the university had to deliver the goods. The documents they were forking over to the
Free Press
would show that football staffers had failed to submit the internal documents charting the hours athletes spent on football for the entire 2008–2009 school year.

This, in turn, forced Michigan to respond to the stories it assumed would follow, from the
Free Press
in particular. The people on the Hill promised Rodriguez he would get a chance to revise their press release before they sent it out.

At eleven o'clock Monday morning, however, Rodriguez discovered that a press release had already been sent out. It stated, in part, “The audit does not identify where the system broke down,” even though the university knew exactly where it had broken down: among Labadie, Draper, and Van Horn.

The release did not point out that: the CARA forms were unique to Michigan; they were not required by the NCAA; and the communication problems had nothing to do with the coaching staff. The forms had also not been lost or shredded. In fact, it said, they had been “misplaced,” which sounds shady and was true only if by “misplaced” they meant “Labadie had them in his office the entire time.”

Thanks to the lack of clarity, however, the
Free Press
could lead with this: “University of Michigan football coaches failed to file required forms to school compliance officers that document the hours put in by its players for the entire 2008–09 school year, U-M announced today,” even though the coaches had had nothing to do with it—by design.

Rodriguez went “ballistic,” according to the people in Schembechler Hall: talking so loudly in his office that people outside his door—closed for once—could hear everything, and occasionally stomping down the hallway to see this person or that. The outburst marked the maddest he had ever been at Michigan.

Remarkably, he managed to calm down before he met with his team that afternoon, belying none of the fury he had been feeling just a few hours earlier. In front of his team, I cannot recall him saying anything egregious. He usually blamed himself while extolling Michigan tradition—all things he was accused of not doing at the press conferences.

He knew that whatever he was facing, more distractions were the last thing his team needed before trying to upset Ohio State in a last-gasp attempt to save a bowl bid, and the season.

“This week, we will give Ohio State our undivided attention. This is all you'll be thinking about this week, except for classes—and as you know, we expect you to attend.” The last bit was a reference to Carr's policy of letting the players skip class during rivalry weeks. By Rodriguez's second year, they knew not to ask him anymore about that.

“There is no game on our schedule that is bigger than Ohio State,” he said from the podium. “Never will be, never can be—until we play for the National Championship. And that will happen, sooner than you think.

“If you want to be remembered for years and years and years, you play well in this game.”

With that, Phil Bromley started a special DVD he made of some of the greatest moments in the rivalry—from Michigan's perspective, of course: Tom Harmon, Desmond Howard, Charles Woodson. The big plays, the big wins.

Rodriguez then spoke about the seniors—how proud he was of them, and how much this game meant to them. Then he turned the room over to the seniors so they could address the team without the coaches present.

“We don't ask for much,” Mark Ortmann said. “I'm just asking you all to give all you can. None of us have ever beaten Ohio State. So let's start a new streak.”

“We haven't had the kind of season we worked for,” Brandon Graham said. “Winning this game would cancel out all that. Everyone's thinking they're gonna blow us out by fifty-something. They're just slapping us in the face and saying we're weak as fuck. We ain't weak as fuck! We've been in every game we've played. So let's get out there and embarrass those boys.”

*   *   *

At the team dinner, Rich and Rita couldn't ignore the events of the day.

The people on the Hill told Rodriguez they didn't want to give out more information than necessary, fearing it would lead to more questions about the investigations and more FOIA requests. The concerns were real, but their solution—be as vague as possible—made things worse, especially for Rodriguez. Further, they told him they didn't want him to comment on it, instructing him not to answer any questions.