Three and Out (18 page)

*   *   *

When it was finally time for warm-ups, Rodriguez got up from his chair, jammed his “M” cap on, and exhaled. “Let's go out there and see if anyone's shown up.”

Dusty Rutledge yelled, “Go through the training room and turn left! Stadium's straight out the tunnel. Can't miss it!”

“Thank God,” Rodriguez muttered, “I brought the smart-ass with me.”

When the coaches and players jogged down to the end of the dark tunnel, they were met with a blinding sun and a packed house, more than an hour before kickoff.

“You hear about it, you see it on TV,” Rodriguez said, gazing up at the stands, “but until you're in the middle of it, you don't quite know.”

Rutledge joined Rodriguez in the corner of the end zone, two old friends going back to their days at tiny Glenville State. They looked around the Big House, taking it all in.

Dusty finally broke their reverie. “Coach, we're a long way from Pioneer Stadium.”

“Yes, we are, Dusty. Yes, we are.”

About an hour later, back in Michigan's locker room, it was time for the real thing. Rodriguez gathered his players around him, his back to the double doors, and gave them his first pregame speech in the Big House.

“Take a knee, men.

“Since we got here, we've heard a whole lot of questions about us, about me. That's fine. That's the price you pay when you come to the greatest program in college football. You're going to get questions, you're going to get critics. Don't like it? Go somewhere they don't care who you are. That'll solve that problem.

“I know the last eight months haven't been easy—the press, the coaches, the workouts. There were a lot of ways you could've gone.

“You could've said, ‘Hey, I don't like to work this hard!'

“You could've said, ‘I don't like getting yelled at! These guys are tough!'

“You could've said, ‘I'm gonna go somewhere else, where it's easier!' But you didn't do that to. You're HERE! You're
here
, and that tells me a lot about you.”

He worked the room, making eye contact with each player. They might have been unsure about him as a coach, maybe even as a person, but at this moment, he had them.

“People always talk about Michigan tradition. I ain't from here. I
chose
to come here. You did, too. But I can tell you, the banner, and the band, and the Big House—those are all great. But when I brought back the guys from Bo's first team, I asked 'em, ‘What is Michigan football?' They talked about their
practices.
Tougher than Woody's! They talked about Bo's intensity and the confidence they felt when they ran out of that tunnel.”

His voice started rising with emotion, warming to his subject, reacting to the response he was getting as the players nodded.

“Now
that
, to me, is Michigan tradition! It's a bunch of guys wearing blue getting after the bad guys wearing white—and making 'em pay!
That
is why everyone's scared to play at the Big House. So when a guy from Utah says that playing in the Big House is not as intimidating as you might think, that's a problem. That's something we need to fix.”

It seemed like a spontaneous speech, but there was a clear structure to it. Start by acknowledging all the obstacles, praise them for fighting through it all, and give a hearty nod to Michigan tradition. Then narrow their focus on the task at hand.

“I'll tell you what Michigan football tradition is to us right now, just a few minutes before our first kickoff: It's about a bunch of tough sons bitches getting after them as soon as they get off the bus and staying after them until the minute they get back on that bus and get outta here. It's the pride and intensity Michigan Men have brought to every snap for years. EVERY SNAP!
That
is Michigan football!”

Watching the pregame speech, the contrast between Rodriguez's public reputation and the private reality was striking. Mark Twain famously said that once a man gets a reputation for hard work, he can sleep in until noon. But the flip side is also true: Once a coach gets a reputation for disregarding tradition or being ethically challenged, after a certain point it barely matters what he's really like. One of Rodriguez's biggest battles at Michigan was being waged between reputation and reality.

If Michigan had videotaped this speech and broadcast it to the fan base, it probably would have lured more than a few folks to Rodriguez's side. You could certainly see the effect his speech was having on his players, many of whom were still on the fence themselves. By the time Rodriguez reached his crescendo, he had taken control—temporarily, at least—of an uncertain, jittery bunch and given them a shot of confidence.

“After sixty minutes,” he barked, “they will
understand
that when you play Michigan, you better put on a little extra tape, you better tie your cleats a little tighter, and you better put a little more air in your helmet—and strap it on!

“NOW LET'S GO!”

“YEAH!”

The coaches and players gathered at the opening of the tunnel, the collection of helmets looking like a swarm of bees from above. That was all it took for the biggest crowd in the country to stand and start cheering. Rodriguez turned back to his new troops and yelled, “Let's go!” sending them storming out toward the banner, their ears pounding with thunderous cheers.

Stages don't come any bigger.

*   *   *

After Michigan's defense recovered a fumble at its own 26-yard line, the offense calmly moved the ball downfield. With first-and-goal from the 10-yard line, Sheridan took the shotgun snap, rolled out, found freshman tailback Michael Shaw open in the flats, and tossed him the ball. From there, Shaw had no trouble zipping into the end zone for the first touchdown of the Rich Rod era, just 3:40 into his first season. 7–0, Michigan.

It's fashionable to say Michigan fans are quieter than most, but not after that play. The place erupted.

On Michigan's following possessions, the offense stalled, and stalled again. Sheridan, with too much new information to sort through on every play, struggled to get his passes off fast enough, and when he did, they were frequently off the mark.

Rodriguez wasn't surprised, or alarmed. He'd been through it four times before, and he expected some bugs with his offense. But he didn't expect the Utes to have such an easy time against Michigan's defense, which boasted nine returning starters. When the Wolverines ran up the tunnel for halftime of Rodriguez's debut game, they were already down 22–10.

Falk met them just inside the door, barking at each player who passed: “Let's go, Blue! Second half, team! Second half, team!”

The players were yelling and whooping, getting pumped up as soon as they got back into the room.

“We've worked too hard for this!”

“This is it, seniors!”

“Everything you've got—now!”

But in the coaches' room, it was all business. They had just seen these players perform in a real game for the first time, and they had a lot of raw data to sift through. They started going over their play sheets and stat sheets and working the dry-erase boards.

“We need to stop their offense, and fast,” Rodriguez said, “because our defense is about to pass out. It's hot as hell out there.” With the temperature in the mid-eighties, it was at least ten degrees hotter on the field, thanks to the black rubber pellets in the FieldTurf.

Rod Smith said, “The Nick we're seeing today isn't the Nick we saw all spring. No rhythm. No confidence. Let's keep him in there for another series and see how he looks. If he hasn't got it, let's put Steve in there.”

Rodriguez nodded grimly, probably the way the
Titanic
captain did when informed of the size of the iceberg they'd just scraped. Like that captain, Rodriguez didn't need his assistant to spell out what the news meant. If you were trying to run the spread option without a confident field general, you were in deep trouble.

Rodriguez looked at the digital clock, which read 8:32. “Let's go.”

The offensive coaches fanned out to talk to their position groups, while Scott Shafer, the new defensive coordinator Rodriguez hired from Stanford, addressed his defense in front of a big whiteboard.

With a few minutes to go, Rodriguez addressed the team again: “They're not doing anything that we can't fix. Nothing special. No gettin' our heads down.

“We play sixty minutes of football here at Michigan. That's what we do. That's why Barwis worked your asses off all year.

“We're going to kick off, we're going to pin their asses back deep in their own territory, and then we're going to get the ball back and score. That's it.

“Sixty minutes of Michigan football. Let's go!”

Michigan kicked off, shut the Utes down, and got the ball back, just like Rodriguez had said they would. Trusting his instincts, he spontaneously decided to put Steve Threet in. But Threet didn't get much traction, either, and on the Utes' next possession they kicked a field goal to go up 25–10. When Michigan finally got a drive going, it ended when tailback Brandon Minor committed Michigan's third fumble of the day.

Rodriguez was trying to be calm and patient with his players—not his strengths, he would be the first to tell you—but he couldn't contain himself. “DAMN IT! We are KILLING ourselves!” he yelled at Minor and the other tailbacks. “Hang on to the ball, high and tight,
every
time!”

They needed a break. And with just nine minutes left in the game, still down 25–10, they got it. Walk-on sophomore Mark Moundros—a special teams madman—rushed Utah's punter, blocked the ball, and smothered it deep in Utah territory.

Rodriguez decided to press their advantage immediately, calling for a pass to Junior Hemingway. Threet threw a perfect ball, and Hemingway took it straight in. Utah 25, Michigan 17. Rodriguez, the players, and the crowd were reborn. “Now we got a game!”

On the Utes' next possession, the refreshed defense chased quarterback Brian Johnson around the backfield when sophomore lineman Adam Patterson knocked the ball out of Johnson's hand. A few plays later, freshman tailback Sam McGuffie ran it in.

Utah 25, Michigan 23, with 6:26 left in the game.

Once again, Rodriguez didn't hesitate: “Let's go for two, right now.”

For those who knew their Michigan football history—a group that included just about everyone in the stadium that day—the moment harkened back to Lloyd Carr's 1995 debut. Just three months after he'd been named interim head coach, the Wolverines fell behind 17–0—a greater margin than Michigan had ever overcome—and it looked like Carr's next job title could be former interim coach. But the Wolverines capped the comeback on the last play of the game with a lob to Mercury Hayes in the corner of the end zone. The Wolverines won their next four games, and by the eleventh week Michigan removed Carr's interim status.

Thirteen years later, Threet rolled out, scanned the end zone, and saw Toney Clemons wide open, gliding underneath the goal posts. “He's there!” Rodriguez shouted. “Throw it! THROW IT!”

But unlike the seasoned Scott Dreisbach in 1995, the untested Threet hesitated. He pulled the trigger a beat late and threw off his back foot, causing the ball to float high and behind Clemons. No chance.

Six minutes later, Rodriguez was 0–1 as Michigan's head coach—but the crowd cheered anyway.

In January 2011, offensive tackle Elliott Mealer said, “If we beat Utah that first game—it's hard to put it all on one game—but I think things would have been different.”

It might sound a little crazy, but Mealer knows that in college football, more than perhaps any other sport, momentum breeds momentum, something Utah proved after narrowly escaping the Big House, then running the table that season, capped by beating Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.

Likewise, if Threet had hit the open Clemons in the end zone to tie the game, it's not hard to imagine the Wolverines scoring on their next drive, then pressing on to beat at least Toledo and Purdue, which would have been good enough to keep Michigan's bowl streak alive and most detractors at bay.

But the losing started on day one, and so did the doubting. The factions that wanted the heads of Rodriguez or Martin—or both—all received a small gift that day.

The players jogged up the tunnel to the locker room, where they met Falk standing behind one of the big laundry carts. No motivational messages after a loss.

“Turn your helmets in and keep moving! Get inside! Turn your helmets in and keep moving. Hustle up!”

The only sound in the locker room was that of helmets crashing on helmets in those bins. Rodriguez stepped on a leg machine in the center of the room and told them to take a knee. They weren't happy—there was no chatting or laughing—but they weren't crushed, either. The dominant emotion was uncertainty—about their team, themselves, and their new coaches. Rodriguez sought to dispel some of that.

“That was a tough loss, but you guys didn't quit,” he said. “We just got beat, and that hurts. It's
supposed
to hurt! If it doesn't hurt, you don't belong at Michigan.

“The coaches have got to do a better job of getting you ready, and that starts with me. No one points a finger. No one. We win as a team, we lose as a team. We'll all take the blame today.

“I promise you this: I will not leave your side, or your back.

“You've got to understand something: I've been here before, and I can assure you, we're going to be okay. Got that? No heads down. We'll be okay. See you tomorrow.”

Back in the coaches' room, seven coaches sat in their chairs with their heads down, every one of them. No one said a word.

Dave Ablauf, Michigan's sports information director for football, handed Rodriguez some stat sheets. After a quick glance, Rodriguez whipped them against the wall above his desk. “DAMN IT!” he shouted, then knocked over his metal folding chair.