Three and Out (13 page)

“Dusty, can you keep a secret?”

“I'm about to go to bed.”

“I've got something to tell you, and you can't repeat this to anyone. I just got off the phone with someone high up at Michigan. What do you know about the place?”

Rutledge, who grew up just over the Ohio border, about an hour from Ann Arbor, was a hard-core Michigan fan. He went to the games, attended the summer camps, met Schembechler once in his office, and knew the team's history and traditions better than just about anyone else. He believed fervently in the Michigan Man and all it stood for. He just didn't believe Rodriguez was serious.

“Well, they've got the most wins of anybody, eleven national titles, three Heismans.”

“No, no. What do you know about the university and the town?”

“Now, don't be messing with me, Rich. This is my mecca you're talking about! Let me just tell you this: Everything about Michigan is first-class.”

*   *   *

With Miles tied up until January, Michigan returned to Rodriguez. As luck would have it, Rodriguez had already scheduled his annual meeting with his financial adviser, Mike Wilcox, in Toledo that Friday, December 14. Wilcox knew Martin, and he helped arrange a meeting with Coleman, Martin, and the Rodriguezes in his office.

Although the two sides knew almost nothing about each other, the meeting went well, and both Rich and Rita developed a good feeling about President Coleman in particular. “She was the key,” he told me. After dealing with Mike Garrison—a lawyer turned president, still in his thirties, who would step down after less than a year when it was discovered that Governor Joe Manchin's daughter received an MBA without doing the necessary work—Rodriguez felt the seasoned Coleman came across as calm, in control, and utterly reliable. (Senator Manchin did not respond to requests for an interview.)

Coleman and Martin got right to it and laid out their offer: a $2.5 million annual salary, about $700,000 more than he was making in West Virginia. But more important, they offered better salaries for his staff, the $226 million renovation to the stadium, the $26 million indoor facility, and the $1 million they promised to put toward revamping the weight room. Michigan not only had the tradition, it was clear they were serious about football and eager to please—echoing the same pitch Charles Baird made to fellow West Virginian Fielding H. Yost 106 years earlier.

Michigan seemed to be offering everything Rodriguez was not getting at West Virginia, including attention and respect. It was music to his ears.

Rodriguez wasn't sure how much football they knew, so he wanted to be certain they were aware of what they would be getting.

“You know the style we play, right?” he asked, referring to his invention, the spread option offense. “It's no-huddle, fast-tempo. It's going to be different than what you're used to.”

That's fine, they said. They were eager for an innovative offense.

“Well, that's good,” Rodriguez said, but added, “Everywhere I've been, it takes a little while for the players to run the system.” He remembered repeating this point several times.

Coleman and Martin seemed excited by the prospect, and wanted Rodriguez to accept the post immediately, without seeing the town, the campus, or the facilities, and without getting to know more about Michigan's history and culture. “We need to know today, right now.”

The Rodriguez tour had to be canceled, in any case, when word of their meeting leaked to the media before they had even finished.

Another glitch arose when Bill Martin requested that Rodriguez keep Carr's assistants to appease his predecessor. But the more experienced President Coleman nixed the idea. “No, Bill, you can't ask him to do that.”

Rodriguez was clearly intrigued, but he made it clear he had to return to Morgantown and let his bosses respond. On that day, Friday, December 14, Rodriguez still did not believe he would be leaving his alma mater for Ann Arbor.

That afternoon, Paul Astorg and Matt Jones were leaving Parkersburg for Morgantown to take a new car up to Rita Rodriguez. They went to practice, then returned to the Rodriguezes' home to discuss the urgent matter at hand. By the end, Jones recalled, “the only one who wasn't sure about going to Michigan was Rich.”

Astorg tried one last time: “'If we want to put all this to bed, what'll it take?” It really all came down to just one thing: money for his assistant coaches.

On paper, at least. The problems Rodriguez had at West Virginia ultimately were not about this plane or that assistant. It seemed like the people running the university never believed Rodriguez would leave, and wanted to put him in his place. That naturally rankled the local boy who had made good.

Ike Morris said, “When this thing started festering—and I know the whole thing, and not just from Rich but from the guys on the other side, too—this was all over assistant coaches, about hiring an academic counselor to make sure the players graduate, about [building] a better locker room. Well, hell! That's what he is
supposed
to ask for, isn't it?

“We used to have forty thousand fans, and now we were getting sixty-five thousand—sellouts. His record was unbelievable. We're in the top five every year. He got us there! We were a contender! If he worked for me and he was one of my best salesmen, I think I'd be inclined to listen to him.

“From the governor to the president to the AD—they all took it the wrong way. They thought it was all about Rich, and
Rich
thought it was all about the program he wanted to build.”

“Even that week,” according to Jones, “[Rich] was still telling us, ‘I want to do something that nobody else has ever done, and that's win a national championship here at West Virginia.'”

With Rodriguez's mind not yet made up, the boosters hastily arranged a meeting between Rodriguez and President Garrison the next night, Saturday, December 15. Dusty Rutledge drove Rich to the president's house and ended up, awkwardly, sitting behind a pillar in the same room where the two men met. Rodriguez thought the meeting was Garrison's idea, which would have been a good sign, but he soon realized that the governor or the boosters or both had put the president up to it. Garrison did not seem pleased to have to meet with his football coach.

“Well, I know it's hard for you, but you've got to stay or go,” Garrison told Rodriguez. (Garrison declined to be interviewed.)

Rutledge heard Garrison say at least five times, “You've got a tough decision to make.” In other words: Take it or leave it—which is exactly what he came out and said later in the meeting.

“They weren't budging,” Rutledge told me. “Hell, they didn't want him to stay. That was pretty clear to me, anyway.”

Their conversation lasted only twenty minutes or so. Once Rodriguez realized Garrison didn't want to be there, wasn't going to concede anything, and didn't even seem to want Rodriguez at West Virginia anymore, he knew it was time to leave the meeting—and probably Morgantown, too.

The next morning, President Coleman talked with Les Miles for about ninety minutes—the first time she really got to know him. Despite the good rapport, they had already offered Rodriguez the job and were waiting for his answer. President Coleman wished Miles best of luck in the bowl, telling him to “make Michigan proud” of its alum, and told him they would see how the chips fell. In other words, if Rodriguez declined, they could be talking in January about Miles becoming the next Michigan coach.

Meanwhile, back in Morgantown, President Garrison was telling the press that Coach Rodriguez loved West Virginia and he was never going to leave. But with the dissonant dialogue from the night before still ringing in Rodriguez's ears, he asked his old coach, Don Nehlen, “What do you think I should do?”

“Rich, if you win here in West Virginia, they
think
you walk on water,” he said. “If you win at Michigan, you
walk
on water.”

Such was Rodriguez's faith in his former coach that he decided to take the job before he had ever set foot in Ann Arbor, seen the stadium, or met his predecessor, the players, or the press he would be dealing with—just as Fielding Yost had in 1901. Rodriguez assumed that moving to Michigan would not only rid him of the problems he faced in Morgantown but would not add any of its own.

Later that Sunday, Rich Rodriguez picked up the phone and called Bill Martin to accept his offer.

“People in West Virginia don't want to believe it happened so fast,” Rodriguez said. “They want to think there was some great conspiracy in the works, going back before the season started. Sorry. Not even close. The whole thing started
after
our loss to Pitt and it was a done deal in seven days, start to finish.”

When Rodriguez accepted, President Garrison looked pretty ridiculous, and the Mountaineer fans weren't happy.

West Virginia—the state and the university, which are close to one and the same—already felt burned by losing basketball coach John Beilein to Michigan eight months earlier, but losing Rodriguez cut much deeper. It's a football state, and losing a native son hurt more than losing a transplant from upstate New York. Losing two coaches in eight months to the same school didn't feel too good, either.

The governor, the university president, and the athletic director had no reason to spare Rodriguez. The moment he committed to Michigan, the calculus for them became very simple: either paint him as the bad guy in every way they could, or gird themselves to receive the full brunt of the wrath of every student, alum, and resident of the state for blowing the chance to keep their beloved son in West Virginia winning title after title for the Mountaineers.

They didn't waste a lot of time deciding.

While Garrison hit the radio waves, Governor Manchin immediately released a statement that said, in part, “I have known Rich for most of his life, from a boy whose only wish was to play football at WVU to a young man whose only wish was to coach at WVU. His dreams came true, and he brought back with him to West Virginia a love and a loyalty for our state that I thought would never change.

“But, unfortunately, over the last two years, I have seen Rich become a victim of a college coaching system driven by high-priced agents that has turned those dreams into just another backroom business deal. Something is wrong with the profession of college coaching today when a leader's word is no longer his bond, and it does not bode well for the student athletes who entrust these coaches with their futures.”

Rodriguez could have said a lot in response. He hadn't asked President Garrison for a dollar more for himself, only better salaries for his assistants and better academic support for his players. When he asked Garrison repeatedly, “Where do you want to take this program?” he'd heard the president reply, “Take it or leave it,” just as many times. But because Michigan's attorneys were worried—correctly, it turned out—that a lawsuit was forthcoming, they urged their new coach to keep quiet until it was settled.

This is the kind of sound legal advice lawyers give their clients who aren't celebrities. It works very well in cases that will be tried months later in a court of law, and very poorly in cases that will be tried instantly in the court of public opinion. Giving Rodriguez a gag order was tantamount to being put in stocks in the village square while the townspeople lined up with tomatoes. The longer he kept his silence, the more emboldened his critics became, and the worse he looked.

West Virginia might have done a poor job retaining their coach, but they were miles ahead of him when it came to controlling the narrative.

 

7   HONEYMOON FROM HELL

Rich and Rita didn't have much time to dwell on the backlash; they had to get to Ann Arbor.

That Sunday, December 16, 2007, the day before Rodriguez's formal introduction as Michigan's new head coach, they signed a legal agreement, faxed it back to Ann Arbor, and got on a plane. Rodriguez trusted Michigan the way he had trusted West Virginia—and both times it proved to be a major mistake.

The most visible elephant in the room was the $4 million buyout clause in his West Virginia contract, which Pastilong had finalized in August 2007 when Rich had first gone to him with his list of requests. While he'd not been able to nail down the items on his list, West Virginia had nailed down the new buyout clause.

President Coleman, Martin, and Rodriguez all felt confident they could get the total buyout reduced. If West Virginia insisted on the full amount, however, Coleman and Martin asked Rodriguez to try to get it knocked down—but, failing that, they promised that Michigan would pay $2.5 million and Rodriguez $1.5. He agreed.

Nothing was made public, and no one told the regents of the arrangement.

“I know this from watching it too many times in business,” said Jim Hackett, who played under Schembechler before rising to CEO of Steelcase Furniture in Grand Rapids. “We want something to happen so badly that, during the early lovefest, we pass over too many of the specifics because the general discussions are going so well, and the details are lost. You don't want to add tension in that moment. ‘We'll get this roughly right and then iron it out later.' That sounds great—but then it becomes incumbent on the people doing the hiring to follow through.”

It didn't help that both sides were reaching their decisions at the eleventh hour.

But that Monday, the day Rodriguez would become the school's tenth head coach in a little more than one hundred years since Fielding Yost arrived in 1901, everyone involved seemed color-blind when the numerous red flags kept popping up.

*   *   *

The Junge Champions Center was packed with five rows of seated reporters, a few more standing by the wall of glass doors, and behind them all, some fifteen TV crews, including ESPN, which carried it live. You could no longer just run up State Street to take the job.