When the University of Michigan added Head Coach Rich Rodriguez to the payroll two years ago, Michigan football fans thought they had found a coach that knew how to win. However, after a second losing season (with a worst second half record than the first), seven straight losses in the Big Ten and tied for last in the conference at the end of the season, fans are beginning to question Coach Rodriguez’s ability to win games and lead a program. Finally, someone will listen to me when I groan about (hopefully ex) Coach Rodriguez.
“It’s really no big deal that we have lost these two seasons; it’s going to take time to build up a program; they’re all freshmen and sophomores running around out there; all the talent left.” This was the response of about half of the Michigan football fans after the loss to OSU on Saturday. Well, here’s why: it’s all freshmen and sophomores running around and all the talented upper classmen left — Rodriguez is a bad leader. How many times have we seen interviews where the reporters ask for the player’s opinion on Rodriguez and the only answer they get is “no comment”? Let me interpret this for you — the players don’t like him. If they had something nice to say, they would say it. Fortunately for Rodriguez, most of Michigan’s players listened to their mammas when they told them, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.”
Even if Rodriguez could win, I still would not want to build a program around him. It appears his moral values align more with the Wall Street CEOs that ran banks into the ground. The economy is foreshadowing the future of Michigan Football if we do not change directions. Here is how it’s going to look: the University of Michigan builds a winning program for over a hundred years; Rodriguez is appointed head coach and spends more time focusing on his paycheck than football and runs Michigan Football and the young men in it into a burning heap like Wall Street. In a fair light, Rodriguez showed us he was all about the money in the fashion he came to the U of M. He abandoned his players, fellow coaches and the athletic administration at West Virginia without second thoughts for a bigger paycheck.
To be fair, I think his understanding of football is more than competent to coach at all levels including the pros. However, Michigan Football is not the pros, and the players are not millionaires. The energy they put forth works to make money for nearly everyone but themselves. As a football coach at the high school and college level, you need to be more of a super father than a strategical genius. As the college players graduate and some go on to the pros, looking at multi-million dollar contracts, the guidance they received from the coach should influence them similarly to the advice given from clergy rather than a CEO a trying to make a quick buck.
As a Michigan Football fan, I am never happy to see Michigan lose, but if that’s what it takes to get a new coaching staff in power before all the traditions of excellence and morality are destroyed in Michigan Football, I will keep my complaining to a minimum. At least now, after becoming accustomed to so many winning seasons, two bad years in a row will make victory taste that much sweeter.
