Three and Out (64 page)

And once again, they were done—and they knew it.

In the second half, the Buckeyes scored on their first three possessions to post a 37–7 score, and it would have been worse if Coach Tressel had not shown some mercy in the fourth quarter. The Buckeyes' infamous fans, of course, showed a little less mercy, yelling and screaming profanities throughout the game. In the words of a U-M police officer assigned to guard the players, “If I was given a free pass to shoot Ohio State fans today, I'd have run out of bullets.”

But they were far less hostile than usual, which might have been even more insulting. They knew a beaten team when they saw one.

“Let's don't act like they beat us!” Lewan told his teammates back in the locker room. “They didn't. We beat ourselves. We had 'em! We outplayed 'em!” As crazy as it might have sounded, given the final score, he wasn't far off. They made nineteen first downs, same as Ohio State, and lost the yardage contest 478 to 351. Significant, but not reflective of the score. Michigan just made more mistakes—turnovers, bad penalties—which were as foreign to Michigan fans as Rodriguez's high-flying offense.

“We played
hard
!” Rodriguez told them. “And we know we should have been up three scores in the first half. But that's woulda, coulda, shoulda. We know we can
fix it
! You seniors have nothing to be embarrassed about. I'm proud of you.

“There's a new level of commitment here, and we're gonna build on it. That's tomorrow, that's this winter, this spring, this summer. It's the work you do when no one's watching that makes you great. We got rid of the selfishness, we got rid of the laziness. That's what this year's seniors established, and we're gonna build on that.

“Michigan football's not dead. We're coming back.”

Probably everyone in that roomed believed him. But no one—not even Rodriguez—knew if he'd be around to see it happen.

 

50   THE FINAL BUST

Two days later, Rodriguez was taking calls in his office, wearing a jacket and tie, before heading off to Weber's Inn, a venerable Ann Arbor institution. He was going to give a lunchtime speech to the M-Club, something he had done only a handful of times before.

This is the group Michigan coaches had been addressing every Monday during the season for decades until Rodriguez unwisely broke the chain. Not the big donors or the power players, but a good bunch to have on your side. He was doing so in the swirl of yet another media frenzy, kicked off by still more reports that Stanford coach and ex–Michigan quarterback Jim Harbaugh had all but been anointed his successor.

The speculative circus was made all the racier by rumors that Harbaugh would be attending Michigan's annual Football Bust three days later, as part of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the stellar 1985 squad, which finished second in the nation. Ticket sales and media requests soared. Surprisingly, though, the news barely registered on the Rodriguez scale.

“Just another day,” he said. His threshold for drama had increased considerably since the Saturday night mess at President Garrison's house almost exactly three years earlier.

He drove with Dusty Rutledge to Weber's, where they sat with a dozen assistants and staffers. After Bruce Madej introduced him, the full house of five hundred or so patrons gave him a standing ovation. He talked about his three seasons at Michigan, 2010 in particular, and the Ohio State game. He was warm and funny, confident but humble, exuding none of the edginess or defensiveness he sometimes flashed in press conferences.

“We are closing the gap,” he said. “It may not seem like it, but we are. Right now we're putting out a bunch of freshmen against a bunch of fifth-year seniors. But we're getting better. Trust me. When we've got third- and fourth-year players against their third- and fourth-year players, we'll be right there.

“We're supposed to have five or six guys playing back there who are injured or gone. But we have guys on the scout team starting. The one place we couldn't afford that was the secondary, and that's where we got hit the hardest.”

When he said something like this in press conferences, it sounded like he was making excuses. But with the receptive audience, it came across as an explanation—one arguing for more sympathy for the players, not more criticism—and, no doubt, a pitch for giving him more time.

A patron asked him about recruiting. “We'll be getting more defense, especially in the secondary. And did I mention kickers?” They laughed, but again, he would have been hammered for a similar statement in a press conference. “In practice, they almost never miss, but it's not easy kicking with the wind and all that pressure.”

Another asked Rodriguez about dropped balls in the Ohio State game, particularly a few by Roy Roundtree. “Roy is one of our most reliable receivers. He makes almost all of the hard ones but dropped two or three of the easier ones. He's young, and he'll get better.”

Boubacar Cissoko? “He didn't do what he was supposed to do,” he said, and left it at that.

The next question sounded like the sort of nonquestion they plant in political rallies: too good to be true: “I felt when you were announced, and before you ever stepped on campus, ‘We got the best coach in America,' and nothing since then changes that.” A big cheer went up. “But right now you've got fours, fives, and sixes going against kings and aces.”

“I appreciate that,” Rodriguez said. “We feel lucky to be here. We've had some obstacles. The NCAA investigation threw us for a loop. I don't want to say it's a victory—whenever you get investigated, it isn't fun—but the truth came out in the end. It made us better. We got better at our procedures and our communication. And I hope you understand that no one in or out of the department was trying to cheat.

“I know you all have a great love and pride about what the school's about, what the team's about, and what the attitude is about. It's still there. I'd even say, more than ever. If you saw my seniors, before and after the Ohio State game, you'd understand how they feel, how deep their passion is.

“I'm not used to this, either, folks! I've been to BCS bowls, been ranked in the Top Ten. I didn't win a lottery ticket to work here!

“I can tell you this: There's not been a day we
ever
cheated the University of Michigan out of an hour of work. You'll get our very best. We have as much pride, intensity, and passion as any staff in America. Because it's Michigan!”

The attendees jumped to their feet and gave Rodriguez a rousing ovation. The emcee returned to the podium and told the club secretaries: “If you write something [for the newsletter], make it nice, because we just
love
him!”

You had to wonder why Rodriguez didn't run down to Weber's Inn every Monday just for a shot in the arm. No one could say the fans were not supportive. They were, as a group, the first to jump on his bandwagon and the last to leave.

If you could break down his backers and detractors into voting blocs—a popular exercise at the time—you'd probably find his biggest critics among the local media and Carr's former players and assistants, and his greatest support among the average fans and the current players, who had bought in and defended him often. There were plenty of exceptions and shades of gray, naturally, but those were the basic building blocks of both sides.

The problem for Rodriguez was simple: Even if those in favor of keeping him outnumbered the naysayers, as polls typically showed, those against him had more power.

Ultimately, however, only one vote mattered: Dave Brandon's. And where that vote was leaning would be the source of much speculation in the days and weeks ahead.

*   *   *

When the Monday myopia wore off—the same phenomenon that had fans thinking Michigan was going undefeated after beating Notre Dame and never winning another game after losing to Penn State—perspective returned, and by Thursday, the arguments for retaining Rodriguez were resurfacing. The arguments for firing him, of course, weren't going away, either, and that set up an even more popular parlor game: What was the tipping point?

The range of opinions about the final straw spanned virtually from the day Rodriguez was hired to the day he was fired. But the candidates most commonly cited include: his initial PR problems with the buyout, West Virginia, the wave of departed players, and the bad press that followed before he had even coached his first game; his streak-breaking 3–9 debut; the
Free Press
feature and subsequent NCAA investigation; the string of four losses in the middle of the 2009 season when they needed just one more win to secure a bowl bid; the transition from Bill Martin to Dave Brandon; the rash of defensive backs lost in the 2010 off-season to the NFL, other schools, and injuries; and the losses in 2010 to Michigan State, Iowa, and Penn State. Take your pick.

Every one of the moments above added to the avalanche that ultimately caused the roof to cave in, but even after seeing all of these events at close range, I'm still not sure it's possible to determine exactly which pile of snow broke the beam. To me, Rodriguez's reign was fatally damaged by two main causes: the harm done by detractors inside and outside the football family, and his own missed opportunities—from PR problems to those four match points in 2009 and the three in 2010, any one of which would probably have been enough to overcome those seeking to sabotage his efforts and deliver him to a new era when he could focus on coaching football.

For Brandon's part, he has been utterly inscrutable in revealing when, exactly, he had made up his mind. He claimed at the press conference announcing Rodriguez's departure that he was still tossing the question over that very morning. For someone who appears to be such a calculating man, that seems very unlikely. I suspect he had made his decision long before that day, but wanted to maintain the appearance of open-mindedness while gaining the opinion-bending benefits of three straight blowouts. But I'm merely guessing. Only he and his closest confidants know for sure.

But if I had to give an answer, and pick one moment as the last straw, I would say this: The moment I thought Rodriguez's tenure was finally coming to an end, fairly or not, occurred on Thursday, December 2, 2010—not on the field of battle, but at a banquet to honor his team. That's when he faced a critical mass of powerful fans, followers, and alums who would judge him primarily on his ability to transform himself from outsider to Michigan Man—and he lost them for good.

*   *   *

After Harbaugh decided not to attend the ninetieth annual Michigan Football Bust, the national media backed out of the event, but most of those fans who had bought tickets to see Harbaugh decided to come honor the seniors and the 1985 Wolverines anyway. The thousand-plus people who packed Laurel Manor in Livonia, about thirty minutes from Ann Arbor, were hoping to see something memorable.

After receiving a generous introduction from longtime play-by-play man and emcee Frank Beckmann, Rodriguez went to the podium. The crowd gave him a standing ovation.

“Thank you!” he said. “I had to stretch my legs, too, so I appreciate that!” The crowd seemed almost as receptive as the M-Club had been just three days earlier.

The senior speeches are usually the highlight of the evening, and the 2010 class didn't disappoint—perhaps the best I'd heard in the half dozen or so Busts I'd attended.

On the lighter side, at least four gave a shout-out to Twin City socks, the “best socks in the world.”

All seniors made it a point to thank Coach Carr, who did not attend, even though most had played for him only one or two years. But most of the seniors also seemed to go out of their way to praise their current coach.

Four of them were graduating from the engineering school, and Zac Ciullo, Rodriguez announced, had just been admitted to Michigan's law school.

“I told him, ‘You're too late! I already used all the attorneys I need. I hope I never need ya!'” The line got a good laugh and seemed to show that Rodriguez could comfortably joke about the off-field troubles he'd just been through, and that the problems were “in the past.”

“Coach Carr,” Ciullo said, “you were a hero to me growing up. I'm proud to say I played for you. Coach Rod, thanks for being an unbelievable coach for the last three years. You made me a better man and inspired me to do more than I thought I could.”

He turned his attention to the audience, which included a few tables of reporters, and made a strong and stirring case that the defendant, his coach, was, in fact, a Michigan Man.

Ciullo closed by saying, “We received the harshest criticism of any Michigan team. All the fire and turmoil has only made us stronger. My friends say, ‘One day, Michigan will be great again.' But in my opinion, Michigan never stopped being great. Michigan was, is, and always will be great!”

The crowd cheered.

“He's good!” Rodriguez said. “Wish I could've used you. Where have you been?”

Many of the remaining seniors sounded like character witnesses following up on Ciullo's testimony. Doug Rogan said, “Coach Rod treated us like his own as soon as he got here,” and later added, “I finished one run facedown. But, as a disclaimer, it was all done voluntarily.”

“We didn't give up,” Renaldo Sagasse said. “The class before, a lot gave up, but we didn't. Thank you, Coach Rod. Thank you for helping us become better men.

“And thank you for making our summers … terrible! We couldn't sleep Sunday nights because we knew we were running the next day.”

Jon Bills, whose doctors said he would have likely been paralyzed in a car accident that spring if not for his unusually strong neck, also thanked Rodriguez. “When the head coach of the winningest program in college history visits you nearly every day, that speaks volumes.” He also thanked Barwis. “Without you and your staff, I would not be standing here.”