Three and Out (43 page)

“That's just gonna lead to more questions and make
me
look guilty!” Rich said that night, ripping into a chicken leg.

“It's like taking the Fifth,” Rita added.

“Here's an idea,” Rich said. “Maybe here at Michigan, we should get off our high horse and
answer some questions.
They're too worried about politics—and not the truth!”

The chicken leg went momentarily forgotten as he openly wondered whom, exactly, the muzzle order was intended to protect.

“Since when is telling the truth a bad idea? Why are we so scared of the regents? Why are we so scared of the NCAA? Why are we so scared of telling the
truth
? For cryin' out loud—we haven't done anything
wrong
!

“They
have
the fucking forms! They're not even
required
!

“And you want to protect them, at my expense? I'm always taking the hit. ‘Oh, he can take it.' Well, I'm reaching my limit. And they seem to forget, I'm Michigan too! On my hat there's a big block ‘M,' and that stands for ‘Michigan!'

“If people want to question my play calling, go right ahead. But my integrity? At some point you've got to defend yourself.”

After Rich left to watch film, Rita admitted her own sense of guilt. “Rich was going to stay at West Virginia, but we were all excited to come to Michigan. An elite school that will treat him right and give him the resources he needs to be among the top, every year. What kills us is we had such
undying
faith in this place—the
integrity
of Michigan.

“This place is special. I know it's special. Even after all this, I
still
believe we were meant to be here. We'll get through this. We want to win
here
!”

Back in his office, after fielding scheduled interview calls from Mitch Albom, Dan Patrick, and other national stars, Rodriguez took a call from President Coleman.

“I wish
I
could be calling
you
just to say congratulations on being named the number-three U.S. college president in
Time
magazine!” he said.

He listened for a bit, then Coleman turned the topic to the business at hand. You didn't need to hear the questions to know what they were.

“I didn't know about this until August of 2009,” he told her, clearly referring to the CARA form situation. “This morning they said, ‘Here's the press release.' I said, ‘This is going to make it look like I'm to blame.' ‘Oh, no it won't.'

“Well, sure enough, today's paper has a picture of me with the headline,
COACHES FAIL TO SUBMIT PAPERS
. I'm tired of eating it. I've been eating it for two years.”

He listened.

“I'm just sitting here trying to get ready for Ohio State, and I'm gonna be asked about it tomorrow and Wednesday. What am I gonna say? I can't discuss it? Then I look guilty, like I'm trying to hide something.

“It makes it look like it's Rich Rodriguez over here and the university over there. It makes me look like the bad guy.”

He listened for a while.

“I know it's a big-boy business, and you have to have thick skin. Well, I've got rhino skin now, but I'm human. And so is Rita. And it's not our fault. We haven't done anything wrong!”

The president was wrapping things up. They managed to generate some small chuckles, then Rodriguez brought it to a close. “All right. I know you've got to get on your plane. Have a safe trip.”

He hung up.

“Same old bullshit.”

*   *   *

Once again, he compartmentalized the distractions to rally for the Senior Walk-Through on Thursday, when he gave lavish announcements of each senior, who then ran out of the field house through a tunnel of teammates.

By Friday evening, he was ready for the pep rally on the Diag before a crowd of about a thousand people. They had not given up. When Rodriguez arrived with the four game captains, the cheer went up: “Rich Rodri-guez!”

“I tell ya, from the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU!

“I love coming to work. I love the people I work with, and I love our fans!”

He introduced the captains, each of whom said a few words before giving the microphone back to Rodriguez. “As coaches, we love to practice—but not too much!” The crowd laughed. “Just enough! So let's practice ‘The VICTORS'! And let's sing it so loud they can hear you in Columbus!”

“Thank you! We love you!”

If you had seen what he had gone through that week, you had to wonder how he did it.

*   *   *

On November 21, 2009, Michigan entered The Game without three of its most important players—Molk, Minor, and Carlos Brown—making the already long odds even longer. But after Michigan's defense stopped the Buckeyes' first possession at midfield—punctuated by Stevie Brown picking up Brandon Saine and throwing him to the ground like a rag doll—the crowd went crazy, and hope was in the air.

But when the Wolverines faced third-and-8 from their 9-yard line, Forcier rolled out to the right, across the end zone, carrying the ball like a loaf of bread and swinging his arm as he ran—exactly what they'd told him not to do a thousand times. He was carrying the ball so carelessly that he didn't need a defender to knock it loose. He did it himself, bouncing the ball off his right thigh and fumbling it in the end zone. Cameron Heyward recovered it for the easiest touchdown ever recorded—truly, a gift.

Things could have gone south fast, but the Wolverines kept fighting. The offense got the ball to Ohio State's 5-yard line at one point—where they failed to get the touchdown or the field goal.

They were down 14–3 at halftime, and, as usual, it could have been much closer. But the defense was holding up—something no one expected—giving U-M a slight edge in overall yardage.

Brandon Graham, of course, knocked himself out on every play, making those who knew his situation pray that he didn't blow out a knee in what would probably be his last college game.

But if it wasn't? If Michigan found a way to beat Ohio State? What problem did Rodriguez and his team really have that beating the Buckeyes wouldn't solve?

Forcier engineered an impressive drive to start the second half, ending in a touchdown. The defense did its job, limiting the Buckeyes to a single score that half to leave Michigan down only 21–10. The offense was doing its job, too, matching Ohio State yard for yard. But Forcier committed five turnovers—
five
—including three interceptions in the fourth quarter alone. And that was the difference: freshman mistakes.

In the locker room, there wasn't much to say.

“I'm proud of the way we fought today,” Rodriguez told them. “We can beat anyone when we don't beat ourselves.

“Don't embarrass the program tonight. You still have classes this week, and we expect you to be there.

“You seniors, I'm
proud
of you. You played your asses off. You set a foundation for all our future success. This program will be back, ON TOP. And when we win the Big Ten championship next year, we'll give
you
the credit. You deserve it.

“People are trying to divide us, and it ain't gonna work. Nothing and nobody—
nothing and nobody!
—will divide this team, this family.

“Let them cockroaches stay out there. They got nothing to say to us. And we don't have anything to say to them. What we have to say, we'll say in nine months.

“UNDERSTAND THIS! You guys have come a long way and overcome a lot, and if they don't understand that, I don't care. And our ass will be back next year, on the top!”

Graham yelled out, “Let's sing ‘The Victors' one more time!”

They sang it loudly, not with joy but with conviction—exactly what the circumstances warranted. When Forcier hugged each senior, he apologized: “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.” He was crying. Rodriguez interrupted the process to give Forcier a big hug. Before it was over, they were both crying.

At the press conference, Rodriguez was asked if he had gained some humility.

“Got humbled last year. Been humbled before and will be humbled again. In this profession, there's enough humility to go around for everybody … I'm getting tired of being humbled.”

The questions kept coming: “At what point does patience run out?” “Have you been told anything about your job?”

He brushed them aside.

But Rodriguez's fatal flaw flared: saying too much, and saying it artlessly.

While trying to explain how they got to 8–16 after two years, he mentioned his small senior class this year and the next, and having to start a true freshman at quarterback.

A reporter asked, “What have you learned in two years about what you'll need to—”

“It didn't take me two years,” Rodriguez interrupted. “It didn't take me two years to figure out what we needed and what we needed to do. I knew it after a couple of games.”

That's when someone should have pulled him off the stage with a hook. If he had stopped, he might have avoided another national lambasting. But when reporters asked follow-up questions, he eventually offered the following: “The last three Februaries, or four Februaries, have hurt us,” he said, referring to recruiting. In politics, Michael Kinsley has defined a gaffe as being caught telling the truth. This was a gaffe.

More questions drew more answers. “There's a faction—and certainly I wouldn't accuse any of you-all—of creating a negative type of environment that wants to see drama, and wants to see people pointing fingers.” As usual, it was all true. And as usual, it would boomerang on Rodriguez himself, who felt compelled to go to Carr's office to apologize.

These answers gave the writers what they needed, perhaps best captured by
CBSSports.com
columnist Gregg Doyel. In a column titled
RODRIGUEZ SPOILS IMAGE WITH SPOILED DISPLAY IN DEFEAT
, he wrote: “After the loss Saturday to Ohio State, Rodriguez knew exactly where the blame should go.

“At Lloyd Carr.

“And at the media.”

He concluded: “Longtime football coach and athletic director Bo Schembechler never specified what he meant in 1989 when he made his famous ‘Michigan Man' proclamation.

“But he didn't mean someone like Rich Rodriguez.”

As was usually the case when it came to Rich Rodriguez, however, there was a gap between the mainstream media and the bloggers, and an even bigger gap between the fans, who generally supported Rodriguez.

In a poll taken by
Annarbor.com
(which had replaced
The Ann Arbor News
) hours after Michigan's seventh loss, a surprising 72 percent of respondents said Rodriguez deserved more time, something most pundits would never have guessed.

At the end of Rodriguez's second year, two things were certain: He wasn't giving up, and time was running out.

 

30   MEET THE NEW BOSS

After Bill Martin announced on October 21, 2009, that he would be stepping down effective September 4, 2010—coinciding with the season opener and the debut of his luxury suites—the search for his successor was on.

Three strong candidates immediately surfaced who were all Division I athletic directors with close Michigan ties: Buffalo's Warde Manuel, Oregon State's Bob De Carolis, and Miami of Ohio's Brad Bates. It speaks to the strength of the program Canham and Schembechler built that Michigan had no trouble finding three alums with such pedigrees. Any of them would have been a good selection.

But there was a fourth, less conventional candidate, who seemed to have the inside track. Schembechler often stated that he hoped one day Brad Bates, one of his former players, would be the university's athletic director and Dave Brandon, another former player, the state's governor. While Brandon was building a world-class business résumé—which culminated in an eleven-year run as the CEO of Domino's Pizza and enough wealth to start his own charitable foundation—he had also been deeply involved in Republican politics. Many considered his election to Michigan's board of regents in 1998 the first step toward bigger things, including a run for either governor or the U.S. Senate. But his failed reelection bid for regent in 2006, in the wake of a Democratic landslide, showed him just how vulnerable any campaign could be to forces beyond the candidate's control.

Although Brandon had never ruled out running for public office in the future, he shifted his attention to Michigan's athletic department. Brandon had never coached or worked in college athletics, but that was also true of the four ADs who followed Bo Schembechler. Thanks to Brandon's eight years as a regent, he had much closer ties to President Coleman—to whom he often lent the Domino's corporate jet—and the regents than any of the other candidates, all working in different states.

When the search officially started, Michigan interviewed Manuel, De Carolis, and Bates, but often at inconvenient times, just one indication that the job was Brandon's if he wanted it—and he did. And that is how Michigan would end up hiring its fifth straight athletic director with no experience leading college athletics.

Some criticized the selection as simply another manifestation of Michigan presidents giving more weight to their comfort level than the candidates' credentials, a list that includes the Duderstadt-Roberson duo and the Bollinger-Martin pairing, too. (James B. Angell, at least, would understand.)

While there was something to it, Brandon was not Bill Martin. The campus and accounts Martin left will serve Michigan athletics for decades to come. In fact, you could argue that because Bill Martin had done such a good job being Bill Martin, Michigan did not need another one, allowing Michigan to focus on other needs, including public relations, marketing, and unifying the fractured Michigan family. Running a private company with a staff he could count on one hand had not prepared Martin for managing 250 employees, especially coaches, in the fishbowl that is Michigan athletics.