Three and Out (26 page)

*   *   *

On Thursday, August 27, the team took a “practice road trip” to a suburban Detroit hotel. They devoured another gargantuan team dinner, consisting of salad, clam chowder, potatoes au gratin, chicken cordon bleu, lasagna, and prime rib, washed down with a two-scoop ice cream sundae.

Then the freshmen put on the team's second annual Gong Show. What followed could charitably be described as “energetic.” The show hit a low point when four freshmen played a boy band dance troupe—without any of them able to play, sing, or dance. But it was so bad it was funny, and it gave the upperclassmen the chance they'd been waiting for: to stand on their chairs and yell “GONG!” in unison.

More than a few sketches mocked the coaches, including Barwis and Rodriguez, with impunity. The targets took it in good humor.

The boldest of the batch, though, was the freshman who came out wearing a headset over his baseball hat, mirrored sunglasses, and pillows stuffing his sweatshirt and sweat pants while chewing on a white towel wrapped around his neck. The crowd howled, immediately recognizing the character as quarterback coach Rod Smith. But it took a few extra beats to realize the player doing the imitation was Smith's star pupil: Tate Forcier.

Nine days before his first game, the kid was already exhibiting his trademark trait. Whether people called it arrogance or fearlessness would probably depend on whether he won or lost.

The most therapeutic portion of the show was a skit they titled “Dead and Gone,” about the fifteen players who had quit or transferred in the previous twenty months, from Ryan Mallett to Justin Boren to Steven Threet. It wasn't the most gracious gesture of the evening, but it was probably the most cathartic—and it got the most laughs. For the 2009 squad, all that business from the previous team was, as the monkey in
The Lion King
says, “in the past.”

When the show ended, Rodriguez stepped to the front of the room. “Okay, men, that was a lot of fun, but I don't want to pass up this chance to teach. So let's take a look at the top twenty plays of camp.”

The highlights included a few examples of coaches jumping to get out of the way of deadly collisions—and some not quite making it; Carlos Brown tripping over his own feet in the end zone; and center David Molk wiping out and inadvertently kicking Nick Sheridan in the balls.

Most of the plays, though, showed how much better this team might be: Jonas Mouton blasting his man so hard his helmet popped off like a Rock 'em Sock 'em Robot's head; Jordan Kovacs, who'd just made the team from the walk-on tryout, racing across the width of the field to break up a pass; and the most impressive play, Denard Robinson, who set the Florida state record in the hundred-meter dash that spring, running toward the left sideline, planting both feet, jumping to his right like a snow skier making a cut, then continuing down the field untouched. The “Oooooh's” were involuntary.

The lights went up. “Okay, men,” Rodriguez said. “We've all heard enough crap over the last sixteen months, and I've had it up to here with all that.

“I gave a speech at a club today, and they all mean well, but you get the same questions every time: ‘Are you gonna be better this year?'

“‘No, I don't think we are!'” The players laughed. “Hell, we
better
be better this year!

“Well, we've been here almost three weeks, and you can already feel there's something special going on here. I wanted to tell those folks today, ‘You have no idea what these guys go through and you have no idea how much these guys want to win.' But I don't want to tell anyone outside this room, because we know it, and that's enough. Everyone else is going to find out soon enough.

“That's why we train the way we train, that's why we coach the way we coach—and that's why we'll play the way we'll play.

“We're going to have adversity, but no one in this room is gonna panic. We're just gonna keep coming after you. I can't
wait
for September fifth.”

The previous season, Rodriguez had said a lot of things that sounded something like this—but weren't quite this. The new message was more direct, more confident, but the biggest difference was something intangible: Rodriguez knew he had this team. He believed in them, and they believed in him. The feeling in the room that night was unlike anything they had felt in 2008.

“You freshmen will soon learn,” Rodriguez said, “that we have the greatest fight song in the country. After we win a home game we go over to the student section and sing it, and that's great. We love it, they love it. But after that, we run back to the locker room, where it's just us, and sing it again—and that's what I enjoy most.”

He had dramatic pauses in this speech. Not for effect, it seemed, but because he was savoring the sentences.

“You talk to guys who've played in the Super Bowl and got all the bling. And I promise you, they will tell you the joy of singing ‘The Victors' with 125 brothers in that locker room is the greatest football memory they have. By far.”

He let that sink in, looking out at the fresh faces. Believers at a religious revival are not more rapt.

“So you freshmen need to learn it as soon as possible. Seniors? Time for you to get up and teach your younger brothers the greatest fight song in the world!

“Listen to the words closely, freshmen. You'll be singing this on September fifth!”

They got loud, their fists shot up, and they finished with a cheer.

“We brought you here,” Rodriguez said, “because we thought you should be part of the greatest football program in the country.

“Go Blue! See you tomorrow.”

*   *   *

The next morning, they headed back to Ann Arbor for a scrimmage in the Big House. They touched the banner, the band blasted “The Victors,” Dusty Rutledge announced fake scores from around the Big Ten on the stadium PA system (“Michigan State 9, Montana State 47; and in Columbus, we have a final: Ohio State 3, United States Naval Academy 33”), and they ended the game with a 12-lateral play worthy of the Berkeley-Stanford classic.

“Final score,” Rutledge boomed on the PA. “Michigan 56, the Rest of the World 0.”

They were ready. They were unified. Football was fun again.

On that day, more than any other in the Rodriguez era, it seemed the Rodriguez Revolution was ready to launch, and the sky was the limit.

 

15   BIG STORM COMING

It had been a cool, gray, drizzly day, but hot showers after the scrimmage got the chill out of their bones. They walked to the adjoining Junge Champions Center and ate a hot dinner while the sun reappeared.

Life for the Wolverines could not have been much better.

But at one of the coaches' tables, cell phones started buzzing in unison.

It was already past five on a Friday, but within minutes, Michigan's associate athletic director for compliance, Judy Van Horn, and her assistant showed up, whispering to the coaches and staffers while they ate. A few of them got up and walked to the lobby to talk more freely.

While the team had been scrimmaging, Bruce Madej, Michigan's associate athletic director for communications, received a visit from Mark Snyder and Michael Rosenberg of the
Free Press
to get their comments for a piece they planned to publish on Sunday.

Rosenberg told Madej they were accusing the football program of violating the weekly time limits, and read him a few anonymous quotes. Exactly how much they divulged to Madej is unclear, but it's fair to say they gave Madej the gist of the piece, without spelling out all the specific charges.

In a 2011 interview, Rosenberg told me, he distinctly remembered Snyder sitting across from him, asking for information. “‘We need anything you have,'” Rosenberg recalled Snyder saying. “‘We need Rich. We need Bill. We need schedules. Tell us we're wrong—anything you have.'”

“The problem is,” Madej told me, “they work on a project for months, and you've got seven or eight hours to respond. That's difficult.”

Rosenberg stressed that no one at Michigan asked them to delay the story, though he admitted if they had, the
Free Press
would have “discussed it” without any guarantee of postponing. Knowing how vital it is for any newspaper to publish the Sunday before the season starts for maximum impact, it seems unlikely such a wish would have been granted.

Madej told Rosenberg, whom he considered a friend, they would get back with them. Before they left, however, Madej added, by way of advice as much as warning, “You better make sure your sources aren't exaggerating and know the rules.”

“We're covered,” Rosenberg replied confidently.

The coaches, including Rodriguez, were initially less upset than confused.

“Practicing too much?” he asked Van Horn. “They know taping doesn't count, getting dressed doesn't count?”

Rod Smith chimed in: “Study table doesn't count, team meals don't count.” They wondered, and worried, how well the reporters had mastered the intricacies of an admittedly absurd list of rules.

Rodriguez pointed out that during the unofficial walk-throughs before spring ball, “we didn't even practice with footballs,” instead using taped-up towels, which the players didn't bother handing off. He could have added that, before he started his noon workouts, he called down to the weight room to make sure no current players were still lifting, to ensure his presence did not constitute “coaching.” He was making the case, through anecdotes, that they were not running a renegade program.

Football sports information director Dave Ablauf whispered to recruiting coordinator Chris Singletary, “Who're their sources?”

Singletary shrugged, but they were able to throw around a few suspects pretty quickly, all of whom had an ax to grind for some reason or other. One was mad he wasn't a permanent captain. Another's NFL career hadn't turned out the way he'd hoped. Another didn't like the new workouts. A fourth didn't fit the spread offense.

Other candidates included half the senior class of 2008. As 2009 senior walk-on Jon Conover later put it, “They worked harder than ever”—particularly on Sundays—“and they go 3–9. Of
course
they were pissed.”

Then the coaches started guessing which administrators might have helped the
Free Press.

“Numero Uno?” one asked, referring to Lloyd Carr.

About a month earlier, at a Michigan alumni luncheon in the resort town of Petoskey, an alumnus asked Carr if his views had been solicited on a successor—an open invitation to comment on Rodriguez.

“I have not commented on that because it's not my responsibility, first of all,” he said. “I will say this, I was asked for my opinion.” And that was it.

You could argue that, acting in good faith, Carr's Delphic comments reflected his awareness that any statement from him on Rodriguez would inspire endless rounds of splicing and spinning.

But you could also argue that, as the former head football coach turned associate athletic director, drawing an annual salary of $387,000 for a loosely defined position devoted mainly to public relations, showing public support for the current coach was one of his
primary
responsibilities. It was, after all, exactly what Elliott had done for Schembechler, and Schembechler had done for Moeller and Carr—without title or salary.

Of course, given everything that had transpired since Rodriguez had arrived, Carr declining to make comment at all was also grist for media spin. While Carr's tepid answer hardly constituted interference, no one confused it with support, either.

So, thirty-six hours before the
Free Press
story had even arrived on readers' doorsteps, suspicion, paranoia, and divisions were exploding anew in Schembechler Hall—exactly the viruses the coaching staff had been working for nine months to eradicate.

Rodriguez, Singletary, and Ablauf cut dinner short and headed back to Schembechler Hall in complete silence. They weren't sure what was coming next. They knew it couldn't be good, but they could not have predicted that the hard-earned focus the team had achieved was about to be shattered.

Back in the team room, the players waited for their coach to give his scheduled postdinner speech. They were talking and joking, oblivious of the concerns swirling around them. When the digital clock hit 5:56, the seniors started shushing their teammates. They knew their coach would be walking through the door at any second.

After some housekeeping, Rodriguez asked his players: “The foundation of our program is built on what?”

“TRUST!” they yelled back. They knew their lines.

“We've had a good camp. A
great
camp. You've done what I've asked you to do—I
like
this team—and after tomorrow, you need to give me thirteen more weeks.

“Tonight, go home, and get off your feet, and get your rest.

“Sunday we'll get ready to kick some ass next Saturday.

“Go Blue!”

The players still had no clue about the crisis control being conducted down the hallway, and the staffers stewing in those offices didn't know a heck of a lot more. They were scratching their heads, trying to figure out what, exactly, the
Free Press
was up to.

That night, the coaches and staffers went back and forth between Ablauf's secondary office at Schembechler—a glorified walk-in closet—and Rodriguez's far more spacious room down the hall. They started piecing together what information they had. They quickly eliminated money, grades, or steroids as targets, which left … what? The best they could come up with were some problems they'd had with something they called the CARA (Countable Athletically Related Activities) form. John Hardt, an influential NCAA staff member who became the director of compliance at Michigan State, developed the form, which Judy Van Horn brought with her when she left MSU for Michigan.