Three and Out (23 page)

“I didn't
want
to talk to them,” Elliott told me in 2011. “That was Bo's team now. There was no reason for me to be involved in that.” As a result, not many made their way to his door. And once they learned where he stood, they stopped completely. Whatever problems Schembechler had in 1969—and he had plenty—Bump Elliott was not one of them. And that is why, when Michigan beat Ohio State that first year, Schembechler gave the game ball to Elliott—and there was not a dry eye in the room.

Thirty-nine years later the situation was quite different. When Carr's former players came to his new office to complain about the Rodriguez regime, Carr was reportedly happy to listen as long as they wanted to talk. But when Rodriguez walked to Carr's office, which he did at least eight times by his count, to personally invite Carr to speak to the team or just visit practice, Carr declined every time.

There were rational reasons for Carr to avoid Schembechler Hall, such as ensuring that his successor had the space to do his job without worrying about Carr looking over his shoulder. But declining Rodriguez's eight personal requests suggests a deeper stubbornness on the subject.

Likewise, there were plausible explanations why Carr refused to comment publicly on Rodriguez and his staff, including Carr's naturally private personality and his desire to avoid making any comment that would invariably be scrutinized, parsed, and twisted out of context. But as the months rolled on, during a rocky transition, Carr's silence became deafening and stood in stark contrast to Schembechler's repeated public and unequivocal statements in support of Lloyd Carr. Exacerbating matters, most of the players from the Carr era—including a few famous faces—followed his lead.

Of course, if Rodriguez had started out 6–2 instead of 2–6, the critics would have been a lot quieter and ignored by the masses. Likewise, if Carr hadn't generated so much well-earned admiration over a distinguished career among Ann Arborites, Michigan Men, and fans, what he said or didn't say would not have mattered so much, either. But Rodriguez was struggling and Carr was respected, making it easier for many players to follow their former coach than their new one.

And that, in turn, made it easy for the fault lines the search had created in the Michigan football family to split wider with each loss.

 

13   PLAYING FOR PRIDE

On a picturesque fall Saturday in West Lafayette, Indiana, Michigan's team buses rolled past a guy in a Michigan jersey standing on a street corner with a sign that said
OUR 2–6 TEAM IS BETTER THAN YOUR 2–6 TEAM!
That's what the 2008 season had been reduced to. They were in a dead heat with Purdue for the bottom of the league.

Michigan busted out to a 14–0 lead just five minutes into the game, then watched Purdue mount its own 62-yard touchdown drive and convert a fumbled punt into another touchdown. And that's how the game went, with Michigan going up 28–14, falling behind 35–28, then falling behind again, 42–35, before tying the game at 42–42 with just 1:20 left. The offense was working, but the shift from the 4-3-4 to the 3-3-5 defense, at least, could not be deemed a success. The Boilermakers, eager to give their avuncular head coach Joe Tiller a respectable final season—and avenge the “stealing” of Roy Roundtree—mounted another scoring drive.

With just 34 seconds left and the ball on Michigan's 32-yard line, Purdue's Justin Siller dropped back and found Greg Orton in the flats, wide open but facing the wrong way. The Wolverine defenders soon discovered why when Desmond Tardy ran up to Orton, who tossed the ball to him, pulling off a perfect hook and ladder for the 48–42 victory.

That was it. Any chance the Wolverines had to keep their streaks of forty-one winning seasons and thirty-three bowl games was dust. Back in their locker room, a few of the players banged the metal stalls and knocked over stools.

The press conference, held in an annex of the locker room, wasn't much better than the game itself when a Detroit reporter asked, “What's the problem?”

Rodriguez was typically candid: “Blocking, tackling, and holding on to the ball.” Then he added, “And that's coaching. That's me.”

He would never make it in politics.

*   *   *

The Wolverines stood at an unheard-of 2–7, heading up to face the 7–2 Minnesota Gophers, and they would enter the game without their starting quarterback, Steven Threet, who was home nursing a concussion suffered during the Purdue game.

But putting in Threet's understudy didn't concern the coaches too much. Threet worked hard and was eager to please, but he had never fixed his odd delivery or gotten much better at running the spread. Nick Sheridan, who looked half-asleep in the quarterback meetings, turned out to be listening the entire time. His goal, after all, was to coach—and if he couldn't learn, he couldn't teach. He was also undeniably tough.

Since the Wolverines had won the Little Brown Jug back in 1909, they had kept it seventy-six of ninety-eight years, merely lending it to Minnesota the other twenty-two. This great imbalance probably explains why, when the Gophers do win the most storied trophy in college football, they give it a seat on the team plane and parade it through every restaurant and bar in the Twin Cities, where patrons actually drink from it. (This is not advised.) But when Michigan keeps the Jug, they just put it back in its box, pack it on the truck, and head on home.

That latter scenario didn't seem very likely when they faced off again in 2008. That morning, ESPN conducted a poll to see which team would run up the most points: Ohio State against Northwestern, or Minnesota against Michigan? The viewers voted for Minnesota in the kind of landslide that would have made President Reagan proud.

What the viewers weren't seeing, admittedly along with almost everyone in Ann Arbor—coaches and players included—was that Rodriguez's team wasn't as bad as its record. Far from good, no question; even genuinely bad; just not
as
bad. If Rodriguez could take any solace from 2008, it was watching his team “lose close.” Overthrowing a wide-open receiver against Utah. Missing a tying field goal against Toledo. Falling for a last-minute hook-and-ladder play against Purdue. Just a few plays the other way and Rodriguez's Wolverines could have been 5–4, with plenty to play for in the last three games. It was a tin lining, to be sure, but to the farsighted it suggested there was reason to expect better days weren't far off.

The Friday night before the game, the Wolverines gathered, like always, in the banquet room of their hotel. The meeting was scheduled for 8:00, but by now everyone knew the starting time was a myth. The players arrived no later than 7:42. When Rodriguez walked into the room five minutes later, the players shushed each other, and he began his speech.

“We don't play these guys for a couple years, so the Brown Jug is going to be in someone's possession for three years. I think it should be ours.

“Number one: We must play the game with GREAT PASSION. I don't understand why anyone would
not
do that.

“Number two: WE MUST stick together as a TEAM! The most important people in my eyes are my family and my football team. Outside of that, whatever people say really shouldn't matter. On campus, in the press, doesn't matter. Stick together! Everyone wants me to point the finger, and they want you to point the figure. Never gonna happen. Never will.

“Number three: We MUST enjoy being PART of the TEAM! It's as simple as having something bigger than yourself to fight for.

“Think about the opportunities
you
have to make a statement to the entire country. And you get to make that statement
every
time you play! You play for Michigan—everyone's watching! Trust me, if this season has taught me nothing else, it's that
everyone
is watching!”

They all laughed.

“Starting tomorrow, you seniors can make a statement about your last three games in a Michigan uniform. And you freshmen can make a statement about the future. The future of
Michigan football.

“So let's play the game with great passion. Let's stick together as a TEAM! And let's
enjoy
being part of the team!”

*   *   *

The next morning, instead of packing it in, the Wolverines packed a punch, shocking the experts and just about everyone else with a dominating 29–6 victory over the Gophers. Nick Sheridan, who hadn't started since the season's first game against Utah, played the best game of his life, completing eighteen of thirty passes for more than 203 yards, one touchdown, and no interceptions.

“Now, there's a guy who's taken a lot of heat all year,” Rodriguez said afterward. “But look at that! That, to me, was nothing short of heroic. That was the Nick we saw all spring.

“Good for him.”

When the gun sounded, Jon Falk brought the Brown Jug out of its box. But this time, the seniors didn't just stuff it back in and store it for another year. They hauled it to midfield, then ran it over to the Michigan fans celebrating in the corner of the end zone, heaved it high, and sang “The Victors” with their fans like they meant it.

With nothing to play for but pride and a five-dollar, 105-year-old water jug, the Wolverines, led by a beleaguered senior class, reminded the country what they were made of.

It's a good thing they enjoyed it, because that was the last highlight of the year. The Wolverines lost their final home game to Northwestern 21–14 on a cold, dark, rainy day before heading to Ohio State.

All week, reporter after reporter asked Rodriguez how the Michigan fans were reacting to this dismal season. “Really, they've been good,” he said, and in almost all respects they had been much better than just about anyone could have expected. At which point Rodriguez grew expansive. The entire quote bears repeating. “They're still coming out and supporting us, we get a lot of positive support from fans when they talk to us or send us e-mails. But sometimes we get these amazingly nasty personal attacks on me or my players or my family. Those people need to get a life! But I can understand it. When you're 3–8, no one's happy, and we're not happy, either!”

In a season where very few things went right, on or off the field, Rodriguez's answer was reduced to this headline on
ESPN.com
:
RICH ROD TO UM FANS: “GET A LIFE!”

A week later, around Thanksgiving,
Sports Illustrated
used the comment to name Rodriguez one of its “Turkeys of the Year.”

“Man, some days you can't do anything right,” he told me, “and this has been a year of those days.”

*   *   *

Michigan had enough to worry about without those distractions. The Buckeyes had lost only two games all year, to USC and Penn State, they were ranked tenth in the country, and they hadn't lost to Michigan in four years—a little statistic that seemed to get repeated every half hour.

But as Michigan's buses rolled to Columbus Friday morning, the story's focus shifted far from the field.

Rick Leach, arguably one of the three greatest athletes ever to attend Michigan, along with three-sport stars Bennie Oosterbaan and Ron Kramer, earned All-American honors in both football and baseball. After finishing in the top ten for the Heisman three years in a row, he went on to a solid ten-year career in the major leagues. But he is still best known for being Schembechler's only four-year starter at quarterback and beating the Buckeyes three straight.

In December 2007, right around the time Rodriguez agreed to coach Michigan, Leach received a call from Don Nehlen, whose three years as Schembechler's quarterback coach had overlapped with Leach's last two. “I always had an awful lot of respect for him,” Leach said. “Whatever he asked me to do, I was going to do.”

Nehlen knew Leach was still a close supporter of Michigan football. On January 1, 1998, when Michigan won the national title at the Rose Bowl, Leach was on the rooftop patio celebrating with Fred Jackson, Lloyd Carr, and the rest of the coaches while recruiting his former Tigers teammate Lance Parrish's son, David, to play catcher for Michigan (He did.) After Carr's 2007 team lost to Appalachian State and Oregon, Leach led a group of forty or fifty football alums down to the tunnel as the team got off the buses for the Notre Dame game, to show their support for the coaches and the players. If the Michigan coach was a good guy, worked hard, and did things the right way, he could count on Leach's support. Nehlen knew that, but the call was still unexpected.

“He said, ‘Rich could really use your help getting acclimated,'” Leach recalled. “I told him, ‘If Rich ever needs anything, he can just ask. Make sure he has my number. Happy to help.'” But it seemed very informal, and Leach figured Rodriguez would probably never call.

Leach attended a few spring practices and met Rodriguez briefly, but he spent most of the 2008 season watching from afar. “But then I started seeing all the stuff in the papers—about shredding papers and buyouts and everything out there trying to make [Rodriguez] look as sinister as possible—and I'm saying, ‘Where is all this coming from?' They're talking about all these things, and I'm thinking, ‘I've never seen this at Michigan. What the hell is going on?'”

At first, Leach's few public comments that fall were limited to supporting Rodriguez. But that changed after Mitch Albom's column appeared in the
Detroit Free Press
the Friday morning before the Ohio State game. The column's focus was Rodriguez's suddenly infamous “Get a life” comment. Albom also rehashed the buyout mess, repeating the conventional view that Rodriguez was making Michigan pay for his betrayal of his alma mater. In fairness to Albom, the column was no hatchet job, and only Coleman, Martin, Rodriguez, and his wife knew that Michigan had promised to pay $2.5 million of the buyout from their first meeting, and that they asked Rodriguez to keep quiet about that fact. But for Leach, seeing Rodriguez's character questioned once more was the final straw.