Three and Out (61 page)

His teammates weren't sure where he was going with this, but they were listening. Moundros started shouting, his neck straining, his voice almost immediately hoarse, and before long he was marching and stomping around the front of the room. Moundros had only one speed: overdrive. Everything else felt unnatural to him.

“For all the haters: Go ahead and talk shit about this program. You don't know us! You don't know Michigan!”

This hit home. They were all sick of answering questions and defending themselves and their team and their coaches from people who had little idea what was actually going on.

“We've got a chance to make a statement to the world: You don't mess with us. Our coaches aren't going anywhere. They're staying right here!”

“Yeah!” A dozen or so players were getting vocal, others were nodding.

“What are you willing to sacrifice for a program that gives you an education every day, that gives you a future? For them. For that winged helmet.

“Three and a half weeks. What are you willing to sacrifice for three and a half weeks—to beat this team right here?” He slapped the schedule on the wall, which showed only Illinois.

“They don't own us. Only we decide how hard we play. Every play, every day, a hundred miles an hour!”

Moundros was in phenomenal shape, but all the shouting and stomping was testing his lungs.

“Remember the winter, the spring, the summer? All that blood, sweat, and vomit? What was that for? Everyone can be first in line when things are going great. But when shit's not going great, where do you stand? The FRONT of the line, that's where! Bring that shit on! All day! Every damn day! Bring that shit on!

“From the very first play, you knock that bastard over—let him know that's how it's going to be: every play, all day long.

“Where are we going to stand?

“At the front.

“It starts today.

“Michigan football.

“Let's go.”

Whatever problems this team had, no one could accuse the players of giving up or bailing on their coaches. Rodriguez may have come trailing enemies from Morgantown, he may have failed to win over certain factions of the fractured Michigan family, and he may have lost Brandon after Penn State, but as of Illinois week, he still had his team.

The practice that followed was, not surprisingly, fast and crisp. Moundros's teammates were responding.

But the very next day, a player left his feet to make a tackle—a definite no-no in practice—diving for cornerback J. T. Floyd, who had become the most valued of a decimated bunch. He fell to the ground, spinning like a lathe, with a freshly broken ankle. Floyd went off on a golf cart, then to the hospital. He was done.

A few minutes later, Rodriguez finally got some good news—sort of. Dave Brandon appeared and summoned Rodriguez to the sideline for a minute or two.

When practice ended, Rodriguez gathered his team around him like he always did, but this time to tell them the NCAA report would finally be released the next day. They had agreed to all of Michigan's self-imposed sanctions except probation, which they increased from two to three years.

Rodriguez left a lot out, however. When Rita walked into his office between practice and dinner, he revealed the rest: The NCAA had been persuaded he had not, in fact, been guilty of failing to promote “an atmosphere of compliance,” changing the charge to the far milder “failure to monitor” those who were in charge of the monitoring. Given the possibilities, the ruling represented just about the best possible outcome.

Rita gave Rich a big hug. When they walked into the Commons, Rita was smiling more than she had been after the victory over Notre Dame.

*   *   *

On Thursday, November 4, 2010, the regional press gathered in the Junge Champions Center—the same room where Lloyd Carr had announced his retirement, where Rich Rodriguez had been introduced as his successor, where the coaches' cell phones had rung in unison with the news that a major report from the
Free Press
would be coming out that weekend, and where Rodriguez had broken down addressing the paper's charges the day after they hit the newsstands.

This time, the media—a couple dozen strong—was coming to hear the verdict.

Everyone received a copy of the NCAA's twenty-nine-page report, which actually referenced the
Free Press
's initial story, noting that “the violations of daily and weekly countable hour rules, though serious, were far less extensive than originally reported and that no student-athletes were substantially harmed.” The committee characterized the violations as “relatively technical.”

The NCAA officials gave a synopsis of their findings via speakers on a conference call, then opened the floor to questions. Michael Rosenberg, who was in Minnesota, asked the first question over the speakerphone. “If the committee noted that the rules were stated clearly, but the staff willfully ignored the rules, how is that not failure to comply?”

A committee member calmly explained the difference in terms that were dry as dust but unequivocal. They knew this terrain.

Next up, Jim Schaefer, the
Free Press
editor from the news side who had worked on the paper's initial bombshell. “The report seems to be fairly critical of Rodriguez in several important areas,” which he listed, then asked the committee to explain, in layman's terms, their findings.

“There were many different facets to it,” one committee member said, “but in layman's terms, it's the ‘captain of the ship' theory. The captain is ultimately responsible, but that doesn't mean the coach is involved in
any
of the things involved. Some of the things we found didn't get to the coach, but ultimately he bears responsibility.”

On and on it went, with
Free Press
editors and columnists dominating the session, focusing almost entirely on getting a central concession: You say he's not guilty, but he really is
,
isn't he? The committee was polite and patient but never gave them the answer they wanted, which only inspired them to ask the same question in new and different ways.

The conference call complete, Dave Brandon took the podium. “Effective today,” he said, “I'm pleased to report that the NCAA investigation is over and done. There will be no appeals, because there's nothing to appeal.” He went on to mention that “a local newspaper did a very high-profile story” that suggested players were being harmed due to a wanton disregard for the rules and their well-being. “There was nothing found that even remotely suggested that our players' well-being was at all at risk.”

When he finished his statement, he welcomed questions, and the cycle started anew, with the same people asking the same questions, hoping for different results. They had little chance getting Brandon to stumble. He was in his element, the best practitioner of the craft in the room.

Free Press
columnist Drew Sharp asked an original question: “Are these grounds for firing the football coach?”

At this moment, Rodriguez shot Sharp a look that would later be described on websites as a “death glare.”

Brandon replied that he had made it clear at the first press conference he had seen nothing in the evidence to give any reason to terminate the coach's contract, and “what I see now is even more positive than it was then.”

A few minutes later, Brandon closed the event by saying, “Let's just go play the games.” That was more than an exit line. It underscored the obvious: Regardless of the report's findings, it would not protect Rodriguez if he fell short at his principal job, winning football games.

As Jim Brandstatter put his bag in the backseat of his car, in the same parking lot where Rosenberg had made his feelings for Rodriguez plain after the coach's first press conference, the former Michigan football player and longtime broadcaster said, “So, it took the NCAA fifteen months to determine that Michigan stretched fifteen minutes too many? Am I missing anything?”

Not much. The NCAA investigated Michigan from January 2008 through the fall of 2009. During that span, the players were allowed to engage in 976 countable hours of athletic activity. The NCAA penalized Michigan for working 65 hours more than it was allowed, 58 of that stretching, or roughly 6 percent. But the NCAA had actually discovered that Michigan had exceed the
daily
limit of 4 hours in-season by 20 minutes of stretching on Mondays only, even though Michigan's
weekly
total was often still below the NCAA limit of 20 hours. Thus, the actual
total
excess was much lower—perhaps a half or a third of the 65 hours. It also found that graduate assistant Alex Herron had helped run the voluntary seven-on-seven workouts in the spring of 2009. In his classic,
Season on the Brink
, John Feinstein reported in 1986 that even the squeaky-clean Bob Knight, whose integrity Feinstein extolled, and his assistants sat high in the stands to watch “captains' practices,” “though even doing that is a violation of a universally ignored NCAA rule.” Universally ignored or not, it is still an NCAA rule, and Michigan had violated it. Further, the NCAA accused Herron of lying to the panel about it. “When you've got four attorneys firing questions at you,” he told me, “they can get your head spinning pretty fast.” Michigan had to fire him.

But, on the grand scale, after dozens of people from the NCAA, Michigan, and the football office spent over a year on the investigation—and probably more than a million dollars in legal fees among them—the outcome was undeniably small. Far more common in these cases, once they open Pandora's box, they find money, cars, and other illegalities. It is hard to remember the last time this much time and money were spent on an NCAA investigation that found so little—tantamount to hiring a few full-time plumbers to live in your home, and finding only a leaky faucet on the second floor.

But the consequences would be real enough. In addition to resources devoted to the case, seven people received official reprimands in their personnel files: Rodriguez and Barwis; Van Horn, Ann Vollano, and Joe Parker working in Compliance; and Draper and Labadie. Within eight months, six of them would no longer be working at Michigan.

In the less tangible column, you could list the hundreds of hours everyone had to spend away from their families and the players. The effect on the squad was incalculable. If the reporters were trying to make the players' lives better, as they occasionally claimed, few players would say they had succeeded. The players would have to answer for it the rest of their lives.

Back at Schembechler Hall, Dusty Rutledge had watched the whole press conference on the TV in his office. “Well, we won't get fired today, at least,” he said at his office computer. “And now we can go somewhere else if we have to.”

He returned to his computer but more bile bubbled up inside him, forcing him to turn back. “But that whole thing pissed me off. They asked eight times, eight different ways: ‘Wouldn't you say he's guilty?' ‘Why didn't you declare him guilty?'

“You know why?
Because he wasn't guilty!

“I hope Rosenberg feels like an ass. But no matter what Rosenberg's going through right now, he can't be half as miserable as he's made Rich and Rita the last year and a half. Rich can't sleep, his hands shake, and he can only listen to XM radio, the only place where they're not bashing him night and day.

“The kids like it here! Raquel says there's too much homework, but that's it! And if they're gonna have to move because of that asshole, when I'm walking out of here, I want to punch Rosenberg in the face.”

*   *   *

You might think Rodriguez would have returned to his office thrilled—or at least relieved—but he was steaming.

“What did I do to them?” he asked of the
Free Press
reporters. “That's not standard questioning. That's humiliating. That's what it is. To sit there and listen to that is humiliating. ‘Oh, it's part of the business, blah blah.' No,
that
is not. They weren't trying to get the truth. They were trying to make it as humiliating as possible. And especially on a day I was proven right? Man, it pisses me off!

“You know, I blew through my life savings to defend myself against that bullshit, three or four hundred thousand dollars. I don't care how much you make. That's pretty substantial.

“Is it good news?” he asked, trying to feel better about it while yanking his tie off to get ready for practice. “Yeah, but the guys who created this bullshit don't care. And you watch—they won't report it that way.”

The next twenty-four hours would prove just how much Rodriguez had learned about the media.

That night, Jonathan Chait wrote for
The Wolverine
, “It's interesting to read how different news outlets report the conclusion of the NCAA investigation into allegations of practice abuse at Michigan. Here's the headline of one report:

“‘RichRod gets win, but still needs more on field'

“Here's the headline of a second:

“‘UM's violations deemed major, but not serious'

“And here's a third:

“‘NCAA's verdict: Rodriguez ignored rules; U-M gets more probation'

“Those headlines came from ESPN, the
Detroit News
, and the
Detroit Free Press.
You can probably guess which was which.”

*   *   *

When I visited the barbershops that Friday, Red Stolberg was none too optimistic about Michigan's prospects—or the head coach's. “Oh, I don't know,” he said, cutting away. “We might keep Rodriguez … for another week! The students have been loyal all along, and now they're selling their tickets.”

What he and his customers were talking about was less surprising than what they weren't: yesterday's NCAA report, which was making national news. After I prompted him, Stolberg said, “That? Well, it's kind of weak. But most of the customers just talk about the defense.”