Three and Out (65 page)

Fifth-year senior Adam Patterson thanked “Rich Rodriguez and his staff for showing me what it means to be a Michigan Man.”

The most passionate speech, not surprisingly, came from cocaptain Mark Moundros. “Thanks, Coach Rich Rodriguez,” he said. “Your energy, passion, and enthusiasm never wavered no matter what came out. I want to thank the coaching staff. You are uncommon men—who take the criticism from less-than-average men who could not handle the pressure.”

Rodriguez, clearly moved by his captain's speech, said, “Sometimes I get a bit defensive about this class. But it will go down as one of our most important. They hung in there, and they are Michigan Men.”

When Denard Robinson received the team MVP Award, he said, “If it wasn't for Coach Rod, I wouldn't be playing quarterback at the best university in the world.”

It was an almost perfect evening, more than Rodriguez could have hoped for—one that could go a long way toward quieting his critics on several fronts.

Then Rodriguez got up to give his speech.

He started by saluting the 1985 team sitting in the back. “You're all my age,” he said. “So I don't know why you look so much younger than I do!”

He gave a very open and direct account of where he and the program stood, what it had taken out of him, and what they would need to finish the job. “This ‘hot seat' stuff is not any fun,” he said with some humor. He spoke of the program's work ethic and embraced both the foundation he was given and what he and his players, led by his seniors, had accomplished in building on top of it. “The seniors went through a lot of discomfort and turmoil outside the program. And they
stayed.
”

He noted the more than six thousand yards they gained in 2010, a record, and how almost all of those yards would return in 2011. “The worst,” he predicted, “is behind us.” And the future was bright. They were on the cusp of winning big. “We never quit believing in what we were doing,” he assured the crowd, “or who we were doing it with, or where we were doing it, and to this day I am as sure as the day I got hired three years ago that it's going to happen, and happen in a big way.”

He turned to Michigan tradition, its decades of extraordinary success, laying out the request that eras not be compared. That no matter how hallowed an era, it should not be used to tear down another, which by clear inference meant his own. Surely, he suggested, if being a Michigan Man meant anything, it meant being all in for Michigan, and supporting the coaches and the players picked to build and maintain that tradition.

“We all need to be ONE Michigan. One Michigan. Proud of every era. Proud of every young man, every student athlete who went through this program …

“What truly makes a champion?” he asked. “What truly makes a Michigan Man? The first thing you got to do is build a man and a mindset, and then the next thing that comes is winning a championship.”

After giving a nod to Michigan tradition, he was now speaking of what his coaches were doing to turn their players into a team of Michigan Men. Now that he understood Michigan traditions, Michigan needed to extend him the respect he needed to lead the program.

At this point, his speech became increasingly halting. “Seeing these guys grow from high school kids to Michigan Men—that's what I'm most proud of.” And while it is common for coaches to say their greatest reward is making a difference in young men's lives, watching them rise up to become more than they thought they could be, he added that they had done just as much for him. “Thanks,” he said, “for helping raise me up.”

The raw emotion of the speech went up a notch.

“Is this worth it?” Behind that question stood all the personal and professional costs of the past three years. “Is this worth it for your family?” he asked, getting choked up.

The answer wasn't clear-cut. It wasn't a matter of feeling sorry for yourself, he said, though the temptation was always there. It was instead seeing “the pain in the coaches' faces and the worry and anxiety in your kids' faces.” He wasn't speaking just of the losses but also of the personal attacks and the seemingly endless public trial he and his staff and players had been put through.

But, unequivocally, Rodriguez said, the answer was yes. Yes, it was worth it. It was worth it because of the differences made in the lives of everyone attached to the program, he said, and because of his unquestioning faith in the future greatness of his players and team.

The speech had some slightly uncomfortable moments—perhaps unavoidable, if he was going to be honest—but it rang true, and it felt like the crowd was with him. If he had stopped right there, it could have gone down as one of the greats. In fact, it seemed that the entire night was building to this moment, and he was on the verge of pulling off a coach's version of Richard Nixon's “Checkers” speech, which could help save his job. Most people appeared to be leaning forward, apparently poised to give him another standing ovation. Whether Brandon retained him or not, it would be a night to remember.

But then he read lyrics from a song with the same theme, “You Raise Me Up,” popularized by Josh Groban: “I am strong, when I am on your shoulders; You raise me up … To more than I can be.” Many present exchanged uneasy glances—
Please don't do this!
—but he continued. Still, it probably would have been forgotten had he not pointed to the soundman in the back of the room and asked, “Do we have that?”

It looked to some as if he had planned to play the song at the end of the night but got carried away and wanted to play it sooner; either way, the song came over the loudspeakers. Rodriguez grabbed Rita's hand, and before long, everyone at the podium was holding hands, then raising them up—with the notable exception of Dave Brandon, who held hands but kept them conspicuously down, along with his gaze.

The crowd felt compelled to follow—some enthusiastically, some reluctantly. This is Michigan, after all—God's Frozen People—where folks don't normally end banquets this way. It might have been the longest four minutes in the ninety-year history of the Bust.

When the song finished, he gave a great closing line: “My name's Rich Rodriguez. I'm proud to be the head coach of the University of Michigan. And I hope you realize I truly want to be a Michigan Man.”

The Victors came crashing through, the lights went up, and the night was over—as was, in all likelihood, Rodriguez's tenure in Ann Arbor.

Brandon's secretary told Rodriguez, just minutes later, that she cried during the song and admired his honesty. But the men were less impressed. One of his staunchest supporters, walking out, said with a pained grin, “It's over.”

The Internet ignited within minutes, the papers buried him, and even the national sports shows took their shots. Perhaps most embarrassing of all, Josh Groban himself—who makes a towel boy look tough—tweeted the next day, “Coach Rodriguez, I'm very flattered but crying to You Raise Me Up is SO five years ago.”

The day after the Bust, at the normally scheduled press conference in the Commons, instead of discussing the team awards from the night before and the bowl game ahead, the players had to defend their coach. Again.

“I get upset when people poke fun at Coach Rod, because I know him on a personal level,” Mike Martin said. “I've been at his house with his family, and that man should never be made fun of, because he's nothing but a good person.

“Why would you want to poke fun at a good person? He deserves nothing but the best.”

The players had come to Michigan expecting to work harder in the classroom and the weight room than they would at any other major colleges. They had come expecting to play against big opponents in big games with big stakes. They had come not to be second-rate, but the “Leaders and Best.”

But they had not come to defend their coach every week—to the media, to their classmates, even to some of the alumni players and their former teammates. Even if a lot of it wasn't Rodriguez's doing, the effect was the same. Instead of talking about their team, they were talking about their coach.

As Forcier told me earlier in the season, “Rich Rod never talks about this story or that problem, just about the cockroaches and all that. But when a bad story comes out, you can feel the difference in practice. How can all that shit not get to you?”

After a while, their coach's burden became their burden. His pressure became their pressure.

And as any general can tell you, if you keep your troops on red alert too long, they get tired and start making mistakes.

The rumor mill had Fox Sports offering $50,000 for the film and another outlet $100,000. Dave Brandon—a world-class whiz at damage control, who had handled the NCAA investigation so masterfully—quickly quashed that problem by telling the film crew that if they did so, they'd never work for Michigan again, though he surely didn't savor having to spend his day fielding calls from the media, alums, and former players. Brandon—a self-conscious man who cares deeply about appearances—did not like seeing his office the subject of public amusement and hated having to answer for it.

The contrast with the stoic, tight-lipped Carr could not have been more stark—and benefited Rodriguez not in the least.

It is, of course, absurd to say Rodriguez lost his job to the strains of a Josh Groban cover. It is less absurd to say that, for those select and influential few who would judge his transformation into what they deemed to be a Michigan Man, he lost more of them that night, at a time when he desperately needed to add powerful supporters.

When the dust settled, though, a few things stood out. First, Rodriguez had evolved from an outsider who, when asked at his first Ann Arbor press conference in late 2007 if you had to be a Michigan Man to coach the football team, joked, “I hope not!” Of course, he was criticized for that. At the Victors' Rally, held in February 2010, he closed his speech by saying, “I'm Rich Rodriguez, and I am a Michigan Man.” He'd been criticized for that, too, for being presumptuous.

Finally, with great humility, he told the crowd in December of 2010, “I hope you realize I truly want to be a Michigan Man.” He was even criticized for that, with some saying, “a true Michigan Man would not have to ask,” bringing the silliness of the exercise full circle.

But the changes his three different statements represented were real. He had become more respectful of Michigan tradition and more humble about himself. But, for some, it would never be enough.

*   *   *

The speech and song themselves—looked at independent of the responses—were sincere, heartfelt, and ultimately heartbreaking. It was painful to watch a man so plainly and bravely bare his soul and miss the mark at the same time.

It was gutsy and awkward. He was asking Michigan to meet him in the middle. He knew and deeply respected Michigan tradition. He'd never been far from its influence throughout his coaching career. But he not unreasonably assumed he had been hired for who he was, not what they wished him to be.

But it also revealed that, in other ways, Rodriguez had still not learned everything he needed to know to lead the Michigan family. If he had simply recognized that he needed help addressing the faithful in a crucial speech, and sought it out, plenty of Michigan Men who supported him to the hilt would have come running to help him hit the target. Instead, he decided he knew exactly what he needed to do, he worked alone, and he missed the mark.

Like most of his PR problems, this one started with good intentions, and his relatively minor misjudgments were magnified beyond all reason. But his inability to anticipate the consequences of his public statements and actions remained a constant, resulting in a punishment that did not fit the crime. Whatever people's feelings about Rodriguez's message that night, it was the furthest thing from mean-spirited, which could surely not be said about many of the responses that followed.

In fact, the evening served as a decent summary of Rodriguez's three years coaching the Wolverines. So often his defense pushed an opponent to third-and-long, only to allow a big play. His offense was notorious for producing 75-yard drives ending with a turnover or missed field goal. And his last two teams both started out so strong, only to fall one victory shy of having the breakout season they needed.

On this night, an important banquet that had begun with such great promise—from the standing ovation, to the senior speeches, to Rodriguez introducing himself anew—now lay burning in a heap on Internet messageboards.

 

51   OUT OF GAS AT THE GATOR BOWL

The coaches knew the case against them was building, but they had a job to do, and they were going to do it. Even with the axes dangling over their heads, they hit the recruiting trail as hard as ever—pulling in their best class of commits—knowing they might well be filling the cupboard for someone else.

They also knew that other schools might be interested in them—particularly Maryland—if Rodriguez would just entertain the offers, but he steadfastly refused. That, too, came with a price.

“Keep in mind,” Rodriguez told me at the time, “I have a contract, I have a buyout, but my assistant coaches don't. And instead of calling other schools for jobs, they're going all-out for Michigan. Not one of them has come to me with an offer from somewhere else, and I know they could get them.”

Would beating the twenty-first-ranked Mississippi State Bulldogs in the Gator Bowl save them? Brandon, a shrewd poker player, wasn't tipping his hand either way. But around town one day, one Michigan football stalwart told me, “If Michigan starts winning, that's Brandon's worst nightmare. Then what do you do?”

I had heard others make similar statements. No question, Rich Rodriguez had made some mistakes, and Bill Martin had made more. But no one could ever doubt how badly they wanted the Wolverines to win every game—something not every Michigan Man could say.