Three and Out (10 page)

The 2006 Mountaineers picked up right where the 2005 Mountaineers left off, zipping through a 10–2 regular season to earn a bid to the Gator Bowl, where they beat Georgia Tech to finish in the top ten once again. And on December 7, 2006, in between the regular season and the bowl, Alabama invited Rodriguez to become its next head coach.

Rodriguez was then making about $1.3 million, while Alabama was offering $12 million over six years. That works out to an additional $700,000 a year, a 50 percent increase, and the honor of leading one of college football's truly legendary programs.

But the next day Rodriguez publicly declined the offer, explaining: “This was my school, my alma mater, my dream.”

The people of West Virginia, whose very identity was tied up with the football team, were ecstatic—and relieved. The leaders of the state, who began to fear Rodriguez's growing influence, were worried, too—but
after
he declined.

“Rich got bigger than the university, and more powerful than the governor,” Jones said. “He could have been the football coach
and
governor at the same time—and I'm not kidding! And when it came down to it, that had become a problem for the politicians.”

While the governor, school president, and athletic director were growing disdainful of Rodriguez's ambition, Rodriguez was growing impatient with their lack of it. On the one hand, you had an athletic director, Eddie Pastilong, who'd been the Mountaineers' second-string quarterback in the '60s, who “comes in at eleven a.m., goes to lunch at one, and never comes back the rest of the day,” said Paul Astorg, a Mercedes dealer who provided cars for some of the coaches. Then you had Rodriguez, who worked fourteen hours a day, every day, “more than Eddie worked all week.”

Pastilong seemed safe, however, because he had been Governor Manchin's roommate at West Virginia. But Rodriguez and Manchin were tight, too, from Rodriguez's days working in Manchin's carpet store to Rodriguez's help campaigning for Manchin in 2004. So Rodriguez figured he was safe, too, and had the go-ahead to do what was necessary to make West Virginia one of the nation's elite programs, year in and year out.

Already at the high end of the Big East pay scale (only Louisville's Bobby Petrino's total package of $1.7 million topped Rich's), Rodriguez was not asking for more money for himself. What he wanted were the same things the best programs in the nation already had, including a better locker room, an academic center for athletes, and access to a private plane for recruiting. But the underlying conflict was simpler: Did his bosses share his ambitious vision? Those were the tectonic plates. The rest were tremors.

Rodriguez had been assured by the governor that, once Manchin installed his business associate Mike Garrison as school president in 2007, all Rodriguez's wishes would be granted, Astorg recalled. In fact, the elevation of Garrison, an attorney still in his thirties with no experience leading an academic institution and no support among the faculty, actually made life far tougher for Rodriguez.

“To [Garrison], a new idea was a threat,” said Dave Alvarez. The football program's success “was intimidating. It'd gotten so big, so fast. Garrison was young, and new, and under scrutiny. Eddie [Pastilong] was near the end of his career and didn't want to rock the boat.

“But Rich wants to go right in the middle of the ocean and see what that ship can do!”

Given this backdrop, you didn't have to be an organizational psychologist to see trouble ahead. The question was, how would management respond to Rodriguez's grand plans?

“One of our alumni said it best,” Alvarez recalled. “You don't tell your best salesman what he needs. You ask him what he wants.”

Instead, Rodriguez had to beg for permission just to raise the money himself for a private jet. He and the top donors put their heads together and came up with something they called the 1100 Club: Everyone put in $1,100, of which $100 went for food and drink for a big night at the Pete Dye course, and the remaining $1,000 went to the plane fund.

“We grew that thing to over $300,000 in just a couple years,” Alvarez said. The campaign also had the beneficial side effect of getting the busy coach out to meet his strongest supporters, who developed a great bond with him.

“Our first 1100 Club meeting,” Jones recalled, “we were up at the clubhouse until two in the morning, everyone having a great time. Man, we had it
going
.
”

They were winning games and having fun. It seemed like the sky was the limit.

Concerned that Pastilong and Garrison seemed to be doing nothing to keep their coach, boosters like Alvarez, Astorg, and Ike Morris decided they had to take action.

“Ike and Alvarez get a notepad out,” Matt Jones said, “and they say to Rich, ‘You tell us what it would take for you to stay.' So he did. And then they went over the list to see what we could take care of.”

Rodriguez had told them he wanted the following:

• Better pay for his assistants.

• A new academic center.

• Locker room upgrades.

• Free game passes for high school coaches.

• An all-access pass for Rita.

• Control of sideline passes (“to cut off Eddie's drinking buddies,” one booster said).

• Program allowing the players to sell their books (and keep the money, as they did at other schools), instead of having the school do it for them. It was a small item, but other schools were using it to recruit against West Virginia.

• A professional website, with any profits to go to the assistants.

“I'm looking at this list,” Jones said, “and I'm saying, ‘Shoot, this list is
easy
! Let's get 'er done!'”

Rodriguez was raring to go, the boosters were lining up to help him—but the administration wasn't budging. The 2007 off-season dragged out like a cold war. No talking, little progress, just growing fear, anger, and suspicion. “If all they said was, ‘Rich, we can do everything you want, if
you
raise the money,' he would have done it!” Rutledge said. “Hell, he
did
do it with the 1100 Club!”

But Rodriguez soon learned that the athletic department had taken the money the 1100 Club had raised for the plane and diverted it to expenses like training table meals. Even the small stuff didn't get done. Rodriguez never got the website. The high school coaches still had to pay to get in. And while the assistant coaches did get a little more money, according to Rodriguez's longtime right-hand man, Dusty Rutledge, it was not anywhere near what Rodriguez had wanted for them. In exchange for all that, they insisted on adding a $4 million buyout into the contract, claiming the boosters insisted on it, which was false.

“Do you want to be here?” Garrison asked Rodriguez.

“Yes, of course I do!” Rodriguez recalled responding.

“Trust me, if there ever came a time where you did not want to be here, we would not stand in your way. What we would do is sit down with the attorneys, cut the buyout in half, and you could be on your way.”

“He must have said ‘Trust me' a hundred times,” Rita recalled. (Garrison declined to be interviewed.)

“We're from the same small area—Fairmont is just a few miles from Grant Town—and I believed him. I thought he was all in. How dumb was that?”

Rodriguez would soon find out just how dumb.

But in the meantime, the unusually high buyout allowed Rodriguez's bosses to drag their feet on his wish list, believing he was virtually trapped.

“Rich has his plan,” Astorg said, “and he's working his plan, and the administration is right front and center in the way of his plans.”

Something had to give.

 

5   A STRANGE SEASON

The Wolverines' 32–18 loss to USC in the January 1, 2007, Rose Bowl took some of the sparkle off a season that started with a historic 11–0 winning streak, but not that much. Michigan still finished 11–2, marking Carr's sixth ten-win season and his fifth top-ten finish. Not too shabby. It would have been a good year to call it a career, and some thought he might take the opportunity to step down.

Several Carr confidants told me he planned to do just that, but Martin talked him into staying one more year. Martin already had a search under way for a new men's basketball coach, and he needed more time to line up Carr's successor. Perhaps thinking that coaching one more season would increase his odds of naming his successor, Carr agreed.

Martin, however, insisted that was not true. “Lloyd never said to me at any time that he was thinking of retiring. No. Not until his last year, and only toward the end of the season. Until then, I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd said, ‘Bill, I want to coach another year.' And frankly I was hoping he would.”

What could go wrong?

*   *   *

Since the NCAA split Division I into two subdivisions in 1978, Michigan, Notre Dame, and USC were the only BCS schools that had never scheduled an opponent from the lower tier, then called I-AA and now called the Football Championship Series (FCS). But when the NCAA decreed in 2005 that teams could add a twelfth regular-season game—in what can only be described as a shameless money grab on the backs, knees, and skulls of amateur athletes—Michigan had to scramble to find an opponent before the music ended and everyone else was sitting down.

“I always wanted to schedule opponents that Lloyd would approve,” Martin said. “If he said absolutely no, I wouldn't schedule them. He knew our football program. He knew our goals. He knew how important it was to win every single game.”

Hawaii was initially at the top of Martin's list. But after June Jones—who refined Mouse Davis's run-and shoot offense, an older cousin of Rodriguez's spread option—and Heisman candidate Colt Brennan, who would break Shaun King's record for passing efficiency, led the Rainbow Warriors to an 11–3 overall record the year before, the Warriors were scratched off.

“I never would have picked up the phone and found Appalachian State,” Martin said. Scott Draper, the assistant AD for football and one of Carr's most trusted lieutenants, came up with the idea. “It didn't excite me—I didn't want to play the I-AA schools, but everyone was doing it.”

When Appalachian State agreed to the game in February 2007 for a flat fee of $400,000, the few discussions it generated focused on why Michigan had scheduled them and where the heck
is
that school? Their fight song didn't make a very strong argument, either: “Hi-hi-yike-us. Nobody like us. We are the Mountaineers! Always a-winning. Always a-grinning. Always a-feeling fine. You bet, hey. Go Apps!”

“The Victors” it was not.

No ranked I-A team had ever lost to an I-AA team. With most of Michigan's key starters returning, including a stellar trio of Chad Henne, Mike Hart, and Jake Long, they entered the 2007 season ranked fifth.

They seemed safe.

The point spread was set at 27, though some Las Vegas sports books would not even take that bet. Not since 1891, when the Wolverines started the season against the teenagers at Ann Arbor High School, dispatching them 61–0, did the home opener seem like such a complete mismatch.

The Big Ten Network had debuted just two days prior to the September 1 contest. Because the better Big Ten games had already been snapped up by ABC, ESPN, and ESPN-2, the BTN had this one all to itself. Of course, not many homes got the BTN in its first week, and the few that did weren't expected to tune in to this massacre.

Nobody gave the Mountaineers much thought at the time—but they should have. Appalachian State had won the previous two FCS national titles and would win a third straight that year. They weren't big, but they were fast, well-conditioned, and well coached. They had mastered the spread offense, which they learned directly from a visit to Rodriguez in Morgantown, and they ran it very, very well.

The Mountaineers had been studying Michigan since the game had been announced. They knew the Wolverines had a national-title-caliber team, but they also knew their defense had a horrible time against the spread offense.

If the Wolverines weren't ready for the Mountaineers, the Mountaineers were ready for Michigan. On their third play of the game, Armanti Edwards hit Dexter Jackson on a slant route, sending him 68 yards to the end zone. It wasn't a fluke. They poured on three more touchdowns that half and headed to the locker room leading 28–17.

In the second half, despite a slew of turnovers, bad penalties, and a pair of failed two-point conversion attempts, Michigan regained the lead 32–31.

But with 1:37 left and no time-outs, the Mountaineers needed just seventy-one seconds to move the ball from their 24-yard line to Michigan's 7, where they kicked the go-ahead field goal: 34–32.

Chad Henne responded with a 46-yard pass play to Mario Manningham to set up a 37-yard field goal attempt, with 6 seconds left. As crazy as the day had been, the Wolverines were surely about to escape, learn their lesson, and come back stronger the next week against Oregon.

But it wasn't meant to be: A Mountaineer speedster ran straight through Michigan's line and smothered the kick in his stomach.

The Giants win the pennant!

Down goes Frazier!

Do you believe in miracles?

The announcer from Appalachian State made all those famous calls sound about as exciting as a Burger King worker repeating your order at the drive-through speaker. ESPN still plays it.

There was no joy in Arborville.

Mighty Michigan had struck out.

It took a while for the whole thing to sink in: The fifth-ranked Michigan Wolverines had actually lost to the Mountaineers of Appalachian State, a team not even eligible to be ranked.

In the Michigan locker room, no one yelled. No one screamed. No one threw his helmet. They slumped down in their stalls, heads on hands, and stared off into space, dazed. They could not comprehend it.