Three and Out (48 page)

He motioned for them to come closer. “Sixteen's ready,” he whispered, citing Denard's number. “Trust me.”

“Denard bought into the system right away,” Rodriguez said. “He just had to
learn
it. I don't know if I've been around a guy who cares more about the people around him and wants them to feel good. Nothing phony about that guy. Denard is not a good kid. Denard is a
great
kid.”

So when Tate Forcier missed many of these voluntary spring workouts, the seniors felt they needed to do something—and they picked Moundros to do it.

The next time Forcier showed up for a seven-on-seven game, he naturally walked up to the quarterback position to take the snap. That's when Moundros stepped up and said, “No, it's not your turn,” and pointed to the sidelines. Forcier looked befuddled at first but said nothing and walked to the sidelines. Moundros waved in Denard Robinson to take his place.

Forcier then walked back out, but once again Moundros waved him out, sending in true freshman Devin Gardner. Forcier went to the sidelines, then returned again—but for a third time Moundros sent him to the sidelines in favor of Mad Jack Kennedy, who had never missed a workout.

“I think Tate understood what was happening,” Moundros said. “He didn't say anything, and that was that.”

“It's easier to kick a kid off than try to save them,” Rodriguez told his assistants at the retreat, “and I'd rather save them and get them to go our way. But if they show no interest or desire in being part of a team, and accepting what that means, they're not Michigan Men, and they don't belong here.

“No one is indispensable. No one.”

And then a bit of a bombshell. “There may be five or six players that will not be on our team at the end of the first week of practice. I hope not, but that's what I'm predicting right now. Whoever's not all in will be gone.”

He listed a few candidates, including five-star defensive back J. T. Turner and Tate Forcier.

Rodriguez asked Mike Barwis if he could help him design the first day of summer camp so the guys who had been working out would have little trouble—and those who came to camp in bad shape would be in … well,
bad shape
.

“No problem,” Barwis said. He seemed to savor the assignment.

“Jonny, are the wings painted on the helmets?” Rodriguez asked Falk.

“Yes, sir.”

“Can we get helmets without wings? Because I want them to earn their wings. What would that cost?”

“About $25,000,” Falk said. They laughed.

“Hmmm, okay,” Rodriguez said. “What about blue beanies, or tape?”

“Let me work on it.”

Of course, the real business of coaching was coaching, but that would be coming up soon enough.

 

36   BREAKFAST CLUB

One week later, the first day of the 2010 season consisted of two grueling practices in the summer heat and timed runs at the end. As promised, it was a killer, particularly for those who hadn't done the voluntary workouts that spring and summer. For those who had, like supersized nose tackle Mike Martin, “it was nothing. Walk in the park. I felt fine.” Even the offensive linemen, the biggest guys on the team, had no trouble finishing the run in time.

But a few players didn't make it—and looked like death trying.

Off-season workouts were supposed to be voluntary at all NCAA schools, but it was a big enough loophole to drive a bus through. Since the NCAA had started investigating the Wolverines' practices, however, Michigan was probably the only school in the country that could claim its workouts truly were voluntary. But being in shape for the start of summer camp was not optional.

The cast of the damned included Austin White; J. T. Turner; Jeremy Gallon, the diminutive kick returner; and Tate Forcier. Actually, Forcier had finished the run under the time limit by a few seconds, literally diving across the line to beat the clock. But his landlord had called the football office, letting the department know that Forcier and his roommates were behind on their rent. That minor violation of team rules was enough to add his name to the list.

“They were just looking for a reason to make me run,” Forcier said with a wan smile, and he was probably right.

Turner might have thought he'd get a pass, knowing how desperately his coaches needed help in the defensive secondary. His teammates warned him camp would be brutal if he didn't prepare for it, but he repeatedly told them the coaches “can't break me,” that they couldn't make him conform. Word of his boast had gotten back to the strength staff.

The coaches told the five players on the list to meet at the weight room at 6:30 for “Breakfast Club,” something Rodriguez used whenever the players needed a little “reeducation.” “And don't even think about being late.”

At 6:15 on Tuesday, the show was about to begin. Rodriguez dressed for the workout, too, which would start on the StairMasters at level 20, the maximum, for twenty minutes. Hopping on his machine, Rodriguez threw down the gauntlet: “You're not going to let a forty-seven-year-old man beat you, are ya? Start the clock, Mike!”

Although only one strength coach was needed to ensure the safety of the players, who all wore heart monitors, they all attended the Breakfast Club. They were from working-class families and got their chance for a degree—and then a good job—through athletics. With the exception of Dan Mozes, who had been named the nation's best center at West Virginia and played in the NFL before joining Barwis's staff, none of them had won scholarships.

During the three years I watched them work, I had never seen them run out of energy or turn down anyone who asked for help—whether players, former players, or people recovering from serious injuries like Brock Mealer. They never charged anyone, not even the NFL players, a dime. They were not afraid to get in your face, but they always did so with humor, with the expectation you would ultimately be glad you fought through your limitations.

But their goodwill had been stretched to the limit by these five players, who had been given full scholarships and every resource to succeed on the field and in the classroom, yet seemed to appreciate none of it. For the first time since I had met them, their expressions held no warmth, no humor. Their jaws were set, their gazes were cold, their expressions belying their thinly veiled disgust.

Jim Plocki, whose father and grandfather had worked in the steel mills outside Pittsburgh, stared at the five guys flailing on the machines and thought awhile. “Makes me sick,” he finally said. “So soft. Such a waste.”

All of the players heard it from the coaches at some point—“Getting kind of hard, I guess, but Coach Rod looks fine”—but their main target was J. T. Turner, who had the worst attitude of the bunch, as evidenced by his boast, “They can't break me.”

“Can't break ya, huh?”

“Don't look too good to me!”

“Can't break what's already broken!”

After ten minutes, every player was bent over, hanging on to the rails for dear life. A few got shot off the back of the machines. They all had to stop at some point and be coaxed to get back on. Only Rodriguez's legs continued pumping, steady as a metronome.

After the coaches called out the last ten seconds, the players slid off their StairMasters, held on to the rails, and dropped their dripping heads, thinking that—at last—they had survived.

“Ready for Phase Two?” Rodriguez asked. “Plyometrics! Let's go!”

With Rodriguez leading the way, they started with a set of 50 sit-ups on the big exercise balls, then 100 sit-ups, then 150. At 250, Rodriguez was working alone. The rest had slowed down or stopped.

“Are you broken yet, Turner?”

“You don't look too good, J.T. Think I see a crack in there. Maybe two?”

“You know, Concordia College has got a football team this year, right down the road. Think maybe it's more your speed.”

Turner didn't look back at the coaches, because his eyes were pressed closed in pain.

They finished their forty-minute workout a little after seven. Rodriguez looked fine. But none of the players had enough energy left to say a word to the coaches or each other.

At 2:00, J. T. Turner entered Rodriguez's office to ask to transfer to another school. Rodriguez agreed, and wished him well.

When Rodriguez had told his coaches a week earlier that “no one is indispensable,” he meant it. Just as former Glenville receiver Chris George had said, “With Coach Rod, being a star isn't a hall pass.”

Rodriguez had promised his assistants that if any coach, staffer, or player wasn't “all in,” he would be out—and he was backing it, no matter what it cost him or his team.

*   *   *

The night after Turner left, I asked the coaches over dinner in the Commons to name the player they could least afford to lose. One joked, “Don't phrase it that way!” But four out of five agreed: not Forcier, not Denard, but senior cornerback Troy Woolfolk, son of Butch Woolfolk, former Michigan All-American and NFL tailback. He wasn't their best player—he was very good, not yet great—but he was virtually the only experienced defensive back they had left.

Later that week, on a routine play, five-foot-seven slot receiver Tay Odoms bumped shoulders with Woolfolk. Troy stumbled and landed awkwardly on his left foot and crumpled to the ground, holding his ankle. It was dislocated, and Woolfolk would be out for the season.

A few weeks later, near the end of summer camp, safety Jared Van Slyke, son of former major-league baseball player Andy, bumped shoulders with tight end Kevin Koger at the end of another routine play. Nothing.

But at dinner, the trainers told Rodriguez that Van Slyke had broken his clavicle and would be out for the season, too. For the first time in months, Rodriguez's resilience, which had shored him up after Woolfolk's injury three weeks earlier, appeared to fail him. He looked somber, barely talking to Rita, or anyone else.

Michigan's defensive backs were dropping like flies. The list was growing so long that a reader of MGoBlog created a page, “Never Forget!” featuring the faces of the fallen, transferred, or rejected defensive backs. It was already approaching double digits.

“It hurts us, and it's horrible for him,” defensive coordinator Greg Robinson said. “But we can't think about it too long. No point. This is football—this happens.

“We'll be all right.”

It was hard to tell if he truly believed it. But then again, he had to.

A few days later, Rodriguez admitted, “If there ever was a year you'd want an easy opener, this is it.”

 

37   GRAND REOPENING

Easy or not, the season opener against Connecticut was coming their way. Some pundits called it a do-or-die game for Rodriguez. Normally, that would seem a little extreme for a season opener, but in Rodriguez's case, they might have been right.

He had lost big his first year and lost close his second. He was hungry for the third bite of the apple, winning close—and if they were lucky, maybe winning big a few times.

At the Campus Inn on Friday, September 3, 2010, the night before the game, Rodriguez closed his talk with a simple question: “Guess what time it is?”

“GAME WEEK!”

“Stand up and say it!”

The players went crazy—so much so that even the coaches were surprised, sharing wide-eyed looks.

“You've busted your ass the last nine months for this moment. You've seen the countdown clock in the weight room ticking down to this game. Well, this is it!”

If they needed more reasons to get up for the game, Rodriguez listed them. ABC would be covering it as the major regional game. It marked the rededication of the Big House, complete with military flyover. And Brock Mealer would be leading them out to touch the banner.

There wasn't a man on that team who didn't know Brock Mealer. They had seen him working out, sweating as much as they did, every day in the weight room, before he made his way out to the field to watch them practice.

When the players left practice that day for the showers and then the buses to the Campus Inn, Brock stayed behind to sit on the practice field, bask in the sun, and recount his journey. He told me the whole story, laughing about the ways Barwis and Parker Whiteman motivated him, and getting choked up when he talked about what they meant to him.

At one point he digressed to ponder Justin Boren's comments that Rodriguez's regime lacked “family values.” “I guess I don't know what kind of family values he was talking about,” Brock said in an even voice. “I've thought about that. I wonder—maybe to some people family values are basically just spoon-feeding you your whole life, and carrying you all the time instead of pushing you. But I've always just kind of laughed. This big athlete was partly, I guess, driven away from here by the amount of work he had to do, and that's just what drew me here from Columbus. He's running from adversity, and I'm going towards it.”

After our conversation, Brock Mealer showered and drove home.

But, like Rodriguez and his brother, he would barely sleep that night.

*   *   *

“When you look at UConn's schedule—Texas Southern, Temple, Buffalo—you can see who they're focused on,” Rodriguez told his team. “They finished 8–5 last year, with a bowl victory over South Carolina. Randy Edsall's been there about ten years, he's a good coach and a good guy. They've got eighteen starters back, the most in the Big East, among the top ten in the country.

“Trust me when I tell you: They're going to be ready for us.”

He let that sink in.

“Well, that's fine. We're gonna be ready for them!

“Everyone's always asking me, ‘How're you going to do?' The fact is, until we play a game, you can't tell. But I can tell you this: We are closer than ever, and we are better than ever—individually and as a team.”