Three and Out (16 page)

“I remember feeling that if Bo Schembechler had been sitting in that room,” Hackett told me, “he would have been appalled at the way the former Michigan Men had been so critical [of the new coaches] and missed the point of the event: to pull us together. I had this urge to get up and chastise everybody that this was about
our
responsibility, not Rich's responsibility. But I didn't do it. And I don't have a good answer as to why.”

After the former players finished, it fell to Rodriguez to take the podium. He started out by making a joke—“I haven't been chewed out like that since I was in kindergarten!”—and got a nervous laugh. He gently warned them some change was inevitable, then did his best to span the chasm created that night, but he couldn't finish on the note he had hoped for, and the night's mission had been missed.

“Ultimately, this is a Bill Martin problem,” Hackett said. “There is a casualness [to] Bill through all this—from the search to the setup—that often means he doesn't seize the opportunity. He doesn't plan the event very well. He doesn't set the standard on how it needs to flow. It became a bit of a free-for-all, and by the time Rich gets up there, he probably doesn't know what to do or say.”

The older alums did. Before the week was over, a couple dozen of them—including such legends as Don Lund, Bob Chappuis, and Jim Conley—felt compelled to make their way to Rodriguez's office to apologize in person.

But Martin said nothing. Nor did Eric Mayes or his peers. After that night, few members of Mayes's generation would speak with Rodriguez again.

*   *   *

Rodriguez's mounting problems in Ann Arbor were nothing compared to those still pending in Morgantown, starting with the $4 million buyout clause in his West Virginia contract. Coleman, who had to be shaking her head at the mess she had been dragged into, and Martin, already under severe scrutiny for the sloppy search, still lacked the temerity to tell the regents they had promised Rodriguez that they would pay $2.5 million of it.

This “overlooked” detail proved damaging to all parties, but especially to Rodriguez. First, Coleman and Martin asked Rodriguez to keep their agreement a secret, which made it appear he was fighting West Virginia strictly out of self-interest and not at the request of his new employers.

Of course, if common sense had prevailed among the media and fans, just about everyone would have realized Michigan must have made some kind of arrangement with Rodriguez or he never would have accepted in the first place. Coaching at Michigan may be a great honor, but not quite a $4 million one.

But throughout the transition, common sense was as rare as public relations savvy—the price for trying to sweep a messy search under the rug.

While Michigan was working to keep a lid on potential embarrassments, West Virginia seemed eager to manufacture them. The day after Rodriguez's introductory press conference in Ann Arbor, he had returned to Morgantown to clean out his office. At about the same time, a story leaked that Rodriguez's West Virginia University–owned cell phone showed dozens of calls each day to a mysterious number in Peterstown, West Virginia, which some suggested was something sinister.

The truth was not so exciting. Rodriguez had asked three employees, including Mike Parrish, to shred stacks of old practice schedules and game plans—things no one wanted lying around—but not transcripts or scholarship information, as reported. “The director of operations and Bill Stewart walked by,” Parrish recalled. “We weren't hiding anything.”

As for the cell phone number, Rodriguez was curious about it himself. So he gave the number to Jamie Morris, who took all of five minutes to determine it was the number for a cell tower that retrieves your messages.

“It was so comical,” Rodriguez said, “we just didn't think we had to worry about it.”

But that's not how either story played in the national press.

After promising to help any of his players who wanted to transfer or jump to the NFL, Carr proved true to his word. Shortly after Rodriguez arrived, quarterback Ryan Mallett, following a consultation with Carr, transferred to Arkansas, and receivers Adrian Arrington and Mario Manningham—who never planned to stay for their senior seasons—bolted for the NFL. Carr would also help Justin Boren and Toney Clemons, among others, and encouraged some to leave who hadn't asked him and ultimately stayed. These decisions were almost always preceded by long conversations in Carr's new expanded office at Weidenbach Hall.

No matter what was said in those private “exit interviews,” the players' departures would have caught the press's attention, with some particularly eager to report them. But if Carr was discouraging his former players in these meetings from talking to the
Free Press
, at least a few must have gone out of their way to ignore his advice, with no apparent consequences—which was, at the least, very unlike Schembechler's approach to message control among the Michigan Men.

Any coaching change evokes the metaphorical cupboard, inspiring heated debate about how full or empty the previous coach left it for the new guy. In Ann Arbor, few seemed to realize that if the cupboard was emptier than it might have been if Carr had remained, in the months leading up to the 2008 season, Carr himself was helping to empty it. It would be Rodriguez, however, who would be blamed for the wave of defections.

In 2011, Mallett's father said Rodriguez made no attempt to keep his son, but Rodriguez maintained he called Ryan three times—and, considering the alternatives, it makes sense that he would. In their third and final conversation, Rodriguez told him, “Listen, we can fit our offense around a thrower,” just as he had with Shaun King at Tulane. But given the switch from Carr's pro-style offense to Rodriguez's spread offense, Mallett made a rational choice. When Mallett's father asked Carr what his son should do, Carr replied, “He needs to leave.” Mallett's decision seems like less a choice than a fait accompli. (Carr did not respond to Mr. Mallett's claim and did not respond to requests for an interview.)

But in the press, the departed were portrayed like rats scurrying off a sinking ship—or, worse, passengers being shoved off a perfectly seaworthy one.

Recruiting didn't play much better in the media. Rodriguez kept most of Carr's incoming class—including its star, Mike Martin—and added a few of his own. But when defensive line coach Bruce Tall traveled to Trotwood, Ohio, to reinforce Michigan commits Michael Shaw and Brandon Moore, he checked up on a receiver named Roy Roundtree, whom they had coveted at West Virginia.

Roundtree had since committed to Purdue, the only major school near his home that wanted him. But the dour engineering-dominated school was a bad fit for the ebullient receiver. When Tall told him Michigan would love to have him, Roundtree visited Ann Arbor and changed his mind, well within the unwritten code of football recruiting. “I had to plan for my future and where I wanted to spend those years,” he said. “I couldn't pass up the Big House, man!”

But that's not how outgoing Purdue head coach Joe Tiller saw it. He claimed that there was a “gentleman's agreement” among Big Ten coaches—which Minnesota's Tim Brewster refuted from the podium at the Big Ten meetings that summer. Then Tiller added, “If we had an early-signing date, you wouldn't have another outfit with a guy in a wizard hat selling snake oil to get a guy at the last minute, but that's what happened.” The line quickly boiled down to “snake oil salesman with a wizard hat,” and it stuck.

If there's one thing Rodriguez struggled with during his introduction to Michigan football, it was Michigan tradition—a train stretching back to 1879, with 129 years of momentum behind it when he arrived. If you're on board, barreling down the tracks is one of the game's greatest rides. But if you're caught on the tracks, you're going to get run over.

Before Rodriguez hit the recruiting trail for his first full Michigan recruiting class that spring, he wisely asked Scott Draper which numbers Michigan had already retired. Draper told him, accurately, that Michigan had retired five: 11 (the three Wistert brothers—Whitey, Ox, and Moose), 47 (Bennie Oosterbaan), 48 (Gerald Ford), 87 (Ron Kramer), and “Ol' 98,” the legendary Tom Harmon's number. Draper did not tell him, however, about Michigan's special relationship with the No. 1 jersey.

It started in 1979, when Bo Schembechler assigned it to a pelican-legged freshman from Florida named Anthony Carter, who went on to break virtually every school receiving record and become Michigan's first three-time All-American since Bennie Oosterbaan.

An icon was born—but not a tradition. Not yet.

After Carter left, No. 1 went untouched for three years, until Greg McMurtry became the second wide receiver so honored. Since then, All-American receivers Derrick Alexander, David Terrell, and Braylon Edwards (plus a few forgettable ones in the middle) have all been awarded No. 1. The jersey was further elevated after Edwards generously endowed it, as one might endow a professor's chair. But no one told Rodriguez about any of this.

When J. T. Floyd, a safety out of South Carolina, asked to have No. 2, Rodriguez told him that number had already been promised to fellow incoming freshman Sam McGuffie. But, Rodriguez said, Floyd could take No. 1 if he wanted it.

It's hard to know what surprised the new Michigan coach more: that this was considered blasphemous to the Michigan faithful, or that it became national news.

Rodriguez arrived in Ann Arbor with several books about Michigan tradition, and he had already read a couple before this recruiting trip. But by the end of his first spring, Michigan tradition had come to represent not a source of support, as it had for Crisler and Schembechler, but a club used to beat the new coach over the head. He learned to blanch instinctively whenever the subject came up.

*   *   *

When Rodriguez wasn't wrestling with tradition, he was dealing with transfers.

Justin Boren is the son of Mike Boren, a great linebacker under Schembechler who became a successful businessman in Columbus. In 2006, Justin started as a freshman, but after each game he'd drive back to Columbus to hang out with his high school friends.

Boren never bonded with his Michigan teammates. When Lloyd Carr sponsored his “Carr Wash” for the children's hospital, the players would show up in their jerseys and raise thousands scrubbing down fans' cars. Notably absent was Boren, until he pulled up in his SUV, hauling a boat behind it. While he waited in the driver's seat, his teammates washed both his car and boat, after which he drove off without leaving a dollar.

Once the new coaches came to town, one former teammate recalls, “Justin never even gave them a chance.” After Boren told Carr he wanted to transfer to Ohio State—something no Michigan player had done since at least World War II—Boren told this teammate that Carr had replied, “That's a good fit for you. That's where you belong. I'll help you.”

“If Bo was still around,” the teammate says, “I don't see how that would even be considered. But [Carr] was doing stuff to try to get people out.” Whatever Mallett and Boren's teammates thought about them and their decisions, they said nothing publicly.

Boren was less restrained. “Michigan football was a family, built on mutual respect and support for each other from Coach Carr on down,” he told the media, making more national news. “We knew it took the entire family, a team effort, and we all worked together. I have great trouble accepting that those family values have eroded in just a few months … That I am unable to perform under these circumstances at the level I expect of myself, and my teammates and Michigan fans deserve, is why I have made the decision to leave.”

A few months later, Rosenberg lent support to Boren's claim: “Rodriguez's staff uses some of the foulest, most degrading language imaginable. I know coaches curse, and I'm no prude, but this goes way beyond a few dirty words. He belittles his players. This is a big part of why offensive lineman Justin Boren left the team. He felt his dignity was at stake.”

It was a strong statement, especially for a reporter who had not attended any of the fifteen practices that spring, all of which Rodriguez opened to the press and the staff's spouses and children—a Michigan first. It was even odder coming from the man who celebrated Schembechler in his book,
War as They Knew It
. In it, Rosenberg describes a practice the week after Michigan lost to Missouri in 1969. Because Missouri had blocked a punt the previous weekend, Schembechler's men would practice punting—and lo and behold, another punt got blocked.

Convinced that Jim Brandstatter let his man through, Schembechler jumped up and landed his left elbow into the top of Brandstatter's chest, then grabbed his face mask and yelled, “You dumb son of a bitch! You'll never play another fucking down for Michigan! Get out of here! I never want to see you again!”

Such outbursts were common during Schembechler's first spring, which is one reason why a few dozen players left the team before the spring game. The tough love behind Bo's tirades, however, also explained why so many of his players became lifelong friends, Brandstatter chief among them.

“Let me just say this,” said Brandstatter, who has covered the Wolverines and Lions for decades, “I've been on a lot of fields with a lot of coaches, and the language is not pretty. Points of emphasis are made with, let's say, extreme prejudice. That's to make sure you get the point across. If you go on a practice field on a collegiate football team and expect a coach to say, ‘You're going the wrong way, sunshine,' you're barking up the wrong tree. That ain't gonna happen.”

A couple years later, it came to light that Boren's real beef with the Wolverines was their failure to offer his little brother, Zach, a scholarship. But that revelation came too late to prevent another dent in Rodriguez's reputation.