Three and Out

by John U. Bacon

  Rodriguez had enough perspective to recognize that the NCAA investigation, which had just kicked into high gear, was of a different magnitude altogether. Initially, Michigan’s compliance director, Judy Van Horn, interviewed the coaches, staffers, and players herself—in a clear conflict of interest, since the quality of her performance was one of the central questions to be answered. Yet she did not stop the practice until Rodriguez’s lawyer—not the university’s or the NCAA’s—insisted that the U-M and NCAA lawyers should conduct the interviews. When the investigators asked Van Horn directly if she had told Rodriguez of the missing CARA forms, she replied, “I wish I had.” If she had, it’s doubtful Labadie would have been able to put them off for more than a year, that a university audit would have been deemed necessary, and that Free Press reporters would have learned about the situation, prompting their FOIA request—and sparking the bigger story, and the NCAA investigation that followed.

  Van Horn’s reply didn’t answer the question, but it was apparently enough for the investigators to drop the issue. And then things got a little stranger. The only coaches kept from Carr’s staff were tailbacks coach Fred Jackson and strength coach Jim Plocki, and neither the university nor the NCAA asked to interview Plocki, and no one asked Jackson, or anyone else, about anything before 2008, including policies and practices that had been constant throughout.

  Around this time, Mike Parrish discovered on his university computer the résumé of one of Carr’s quality control people, Tom Burpee, on which he boasted about all the coaching his role required, one of the very NCAA rules Rodriguez’s regime was being accused of violating.

  After Parrish showed it to Rodriguez, he faced a dilemma. If he turned it in to the NCAA, he risked the entire university being found guilty of the dreaded “lack of institutional control,” which would hurt him more than anyone else and for which he would no doubt be blamed. But if he kept it from investigators, he would violate the legal pledge he signed at the outset of the investigation, stating that he would dutifully report any potential violations he came across—which was one of the rules Jim Tressel broke, launching his investigation in 2011.

  Rodriguez concluded that he had to submit Burpee’s résumé to the Compliance people at Michigan and the NCAA. He did so with some trepidation, fearing the consequences, but to his surprise, no one cared. Burpee’s claims of coaching were assumed to be simple résumé padding—and the NCAA agreed. No one ever considered the possibility that Burpee was telling the truth—which he was. In the words of one former player, “Burpee coached his ass off.”

  For whatever reason, Michigan and the NCAA had no interest in investigating Michigan, just Rodriguez.

  But it’s also true that after the scope of the investigation had been limited to the 2008–2009 school year, no rock within that time span was left unturned. Van Horn told me that President Coleman insisted their mission was simply to “find the truth,” wherever it led.

  “That really impressed me,” Van Horn told me. “I have such great respect for President Coleman.”

  “With Compliance,” Rodriguez said, while finishing his meal, “it was pretty clear that the NCAA person was there to find any little thing she could to make sure she looked like a tough guy. They spent about two hours asking about the role of quality control. I said, on the record, that U-M Compliance should know exactly what they were doing, since they were there for plenty of the practices.”

  During the six weeks I worked out in the weight room and Oosterbaan Field House, I saw every member of the compliance team pass through many times. The doors were always open, and the coaches were not hiding anything. While the coaches should have had a better grasp on the many rules regarding quality control and seven-on-seven drills, if they were committing violations, they were doing so in plain sight of the people whose sole job it was to make sure those violations didn’t occur.

  “And I also said,” Rodriguez continued, “on the record, that the only reason the NCAA is here is because of some completely irresponsible story in the Detroit Free Press.

  “‘Oh, no, no,’ the NCAA person said. ‘We look at all our schools.’

  “Bullshit,” Rodriguez said at the table, digging into his dessert.

  His response was not elegant but accurate. The Big Ten and the NCAA might have started as governing bodies, set up by university presidents solely to ensure that all players on the field were unpaid amateurs, bona fide students, and safe, but their roles had fundamentally changed since then. For decades, the Big Ten’s and the NCAA’s main source of money had been members’ dues, which they used to enforce the rules. Simple enough. But their roles started growing when the Big Ten discovered that enormous profits could be had through expanded bowl bids, conference basketball tournaments, TV contracts, and now its own TV network, while the NCAA’s current TV contract for March Madness alone is worth more than $10 billion.

  The sheriffs had become the saloonkeepers, and nobody can do both jobs equally well.

  The Big Ten and the NCAA now seemed less concerned with actual integrity than the appearance of it. That’s what sells. It’s image, not substance, that those organizations are now designed to protect. Truth might have been on Rodriguez’s side—time would tell—but one question had already been settled: The marketers who run modern college sports had far more power.

  “I think this will all be done in a few weeks,” Rodriguez said. “They might get us for secondary violations, about Quality Control supervising seven-on-seven drills, but I might fight that, too.”

  He was wrong about at least one thing: In the NCAA’s twisted lexicon, even those violations are called “major.” But he had made up his mind about something else: “I’ve been run over too many times. So I’m going to speak for myself.

  “I haven’t been able just to coach football for two years. That’s all I want to do. That’s why I came here, to get rid of all the distractions building up at West Virginia. That was our goal in coming here—to get rid of the distractions! We figured Michigan was the place.”

  He didn’t say it, but he didn’t have to: He would have been hard-pressed to name any school with more distractions than the one he had picked.

  Another problem: Rodriguez knew his players were being called in for NCAA interviews all week, but he didn’t grasp what this was doing to his team.

  “In my opinion,” Brad Labadie told me, “none of the players knew the rules, even when they were being interviewed. They were just pissed about having to deal with the whole thing.”

  Because they didn’t know what the rules were, they weren’t sure what to say. Had they been violating one of the NCAA’s countless and often senseless prohibitions, which allow the school to offer players a breakfast of bagels and butter, but not cream cheese or jelly? (I am not making this up.) Were their off-season workouts voluntary or involuntary? Were the Quality Control guys conducting seven-on-seven drills or not? The average player didn’t make distinctions among assistant coaches, graduate assistants, volunteer assistants, or Quality Control personnel in the first place. They didn’t know what to say, and they didn’t know what their teammates were saying, either.

  “We were 4–0, with Michigan State coming up,” Labadie continued, “when all these players get interviewed. And they come back and they’re talking about it in the locker room. How much did that matter? A lot.”

  The team unity they had forged heading into the season was strong enough to withstand the Free Press and the negative media response that followed. In some ways, it only reinforced the us-against-the-world mentality.

  But these interviews were different. They were all conducted separately, and they created divisions. Some kids knew some of the rules. Some thought they did. Most were uncertain. They were understandably confused, since even Compliance didn’t know what the rules were. When Mike Barwis called the office to ask about stretching—months before the Free Press story appeared—Ann Vollano called back to tell him stretching didn’t count. Barwis let the call go to
his machine and saved the message, which he later played back for Dave Brandon. A few days after the Free Press story broke, Vollano met with the entire team to repeat the same mistake, saying stretching didn’t count. Except, of course, it did—or it usually did. In fairness to Vollano, even the NCAA couldn’t give a straight answer when Compliance first called to check.

  So, when the players entered the interviews, they were almost completely confused. Did stretching count or not? What about taping? Or team meals? When did watching film count, and when did it not?

  And more important: What did you say? Is that going to get us in trouble?

  “It was not the same as a guy screwing another guy’s girlfriend, which will break up any team,” one staffer said, “but you need to be pulling in the same direction, and after that week, you’re not. You could see it on the field.”

  23 IN SEARCH OF PAUL BUNYAN

  Jim Plocki woke up early Saturday morning at the team hotel, which was a stone’s throw from the state capitol, and three miles down Michigan Avenue from Michigan State’s verdant campus.

  He opened the drapes, saw the rain turning the old asphalt a rich black, and said, “Crap. This is just what I didn’t want to see.”

  How would two green quarterbacks, from San Diego and South Florida, handle the ball on a cold, wet day, working with a substitute center who was just learning how to snap the ball? Plocki shook his head.

  Yes, the Spartans were 1–3, and probably one good loss from throwing in the towel, but they weren’t 3–9 the previous year. They didn’t have dozens of players being pulled from practice all week to be questioned by NCAA and university attorneys. And Coach Dantonio wasn’t constantly on the hot seat—even at 1–3 in his third season.

  “I don’t get it,” said another staffer, waiting to board the buses. “All these people bad-mouthing Rich and his staff. I want to tell them; ‘You think you’re taking Rich Rod down. But you’re taking the whole program down.’

  “When the old players ask me about them, I always say the same thing: ‘Have you met these guys? You know who they are? Have you watched them work? Once you meet him, you like him. He’s genuine.’”

  To those ends, alumni were always welcome, with a few celebrated as honorary captains at each home game—one of several “traditions” Rodriguez initiated, along with the alumni flag football game and locker room tour on the day of the spring game, the Victors’ Walk and the post-victory sing-along in the student corner. The honorary captains ate breakfast at Rodriguez’s table Saturday mornings at the Campus Inn, and as focused as he tended to be, he always made the effort to connect with them.

  “And after they meet him,” the staffer said said, “they always tell me, ‘You’re right. He’s the real deal.’”

  * * *

  On the way to Spartan Stadium, the buses passed a Michigan fan wearing a T-shirt that said BIG BROTHER IS BACK—a far cry from the sign seen on the way to the Purdue game last year: OUR 2–6 SIX TEAM IS BETTER THAN YOUR 2–6 TEAM.

  When Rodriguez’s Wolverines took a knee in the Big Ten’s most hated visitors’ locker room, Jon Falk said, “Let’s get that trophy back, Blue! It’s right next door. Paul Bunyan wants to come home.”

  “Get him outta jail, Jonny!” Brandon Graham yelled.

  “Let ’em talk,” Brandon Minor said. “We don’t play that game. Let’s just go out and kick their asses.”

  “C’mon, Rod, get on out here!” Graham begged. “We wanna go!”

  Whatever fault lines Labadie had sensed starting that week weren’t visible in that locker room.

  “This is a different Michigan team than they played last year,” Rodriguez said. “We’re going to stick together no matter what. That’s who we are. That’s the men who wear the winged helmet.”

  But Dusty Rutledge, sitting in his usual spot on the Michigan bench, was not so sanguine. How did he feel? “Scared to death. I wasn’t last year, because we knew we weren’t very good, and next year we know we’re going to be very good. But right now, who knows? I guess we’re about to find out.”

  * * *

  Just 98 seconds into the game, Ryan Van Bergen tipped Cousins’s pass, which linebacker Stevie Brown ran back to the Spartans’ 18-yard line. It was easy to think that if Michigan could get to the end zone, it could be a short afternoon. Michigan State’s season could quickly go down the drain, and the Wolverines could take Paul Bunyan home with a 5–0 record and a top-twenty ranking. They would also have the breakthrough victory Rodriguez and his players needed to get ahead of the avalanche chasing them, once and for all, and focus on football. It was Rodriguez’s first shot at match point.

  But Michigan looked out of sorts, losing yards, getting sacked, and at one point throwing a simple screen to Tay Odoms—who hadn’t even turned around. They had to settle for a field goal.

  On the Spartans’ next drive, facing fourth-and-inches at the goal line, Dantonio took his chances. Larry Caper vindicated his decision with the game’s first touchdown, 7–3.

  After Forcier’s receivers dropped two more passes, Michigan had to settle for another field goal, which the Spartans matched before heading into halftime with a 10–6 lead. Labadie was right, after all: The Wolverines were not the same.

  Back in the closet-sized coaches’ room, Calvin McGee read the stat sheet: nineteen offensive plays. Anemic. “We’re just dropping the damn ball. We just need to pitch and catch and make the reads. And we got to put Shoes [Denard Robinson] in there sometime. I don’t care if it’s too predictable—everyone knows he’s going to run—we just need to get going.”

  In the main room, Greg Robinson was working the board. “How’s their offensive line?”

  “Weak as hell,” Mike Martin said.

  “We’re just beating ourselves,” Brandon Graham added.

  “They had the ball damn near thirty minutes,” Robinson said, “and we only gave up 10 points. That’s it.”

  “Listen up, guys!” Rodriguez told the team. “We have not even made them play defense yet, and the tide is already turned. Let’s go!”

  * * *

  But Michigan was just as sloppy in the third quarter, relying on Donovan Warren to make a red-zone interception. After another failed drive, Forcier turned to Minor and Brown and said, “We haven’t played football all day. Let’s get going!”

  But right as Forcier said this, Glenn Winston slipped into the end zone to expand the Spartans’ lead to 20–6, just 11 seconds into the fourth quarter.

  A refocused Forcier started hitting short, sharp passes to find his rhythm, including a nice toss to Darryl Stonum, at the Spartans’ 17-yard line—only to see him fumble it 5 yards later. Michigan’s student equipment managers started emptying the coolers on the sidelines. But after Michigan’s defense stopped the Spartans again, Forcier went right back to Stonum, who gathered the ball, made a couple nice cuts, and dashed all the way to the end zone. With four minutes left, Michigan had cut the Spartans’ lead to 20–13.

  “The lights are back on, baby!”

  As if on cue, the sun came out in full force.

  After yet another defensive stop, the Wolverines got the ball on their own 8-yard line, with 2:53 left and no time-outs. They did not deserve to be in this game, having been thoroughly outplayed for fifty-five minutes, but there they were, with the same chance they had exploited against Notre Dame and Indiana.

  Forcier passed for 9 yards, ran for 11, and took a roughing-the-passer penalty for 15 more, leaving 2:02 to cover 42 yards. The rain came down again, forcing the managers to scramble for dry towels for the footballs and the ball handlers. “Towels! Towels! Get some dry towels, damn it!”

  On third-and-8, with just eight seconds left, Forcier rolled out and saw Roy Roundtree in the back of the end zone. Forcier threw a perfect strike, and Roundtree came down with the ball inbounds. Touchdown!

  The celebration on the bench was like no other in this already wild season. Players were jumping up and down, chest bumping, hugging, and high-fiving each
other. Total mayhem.

  Someone on the bench yelled, “That guy is unbelievable!” To which Greg Banks said, slapping his chest, “No, we are unbelievable!” Confidence is contagious.

  The scoreboard read Michigan State 20, Michigan 19, with 00:02 left. There must have been some temptation, with the Spartans’ defense clearly gasping for air, to attempt a 2-point conversion. But Rodriguez, uncharacteristically, resisted his gambling instincts and took the tie.

  Dusty Rutledge, sitting on the bench, just kept shaking his head. “If [Michigan State] had any discipline at all, they would’ve won this game a long time ago.”

  Phil Johnson, one of the trainers, agreed. “We just got our asses kicked, and now we’re going into OT.”

  The sun had returned, but it was still raining. It was that kind of day.

  In overtime, the Wolverines faced second-and-6 from the 9-yard line, comfortable territory for this team. In the unlikely event their suddenly hot offense couldn’t get to the end zone, even a field goal might be enough for Michigan’s resurgent defense to stop the struggling Spartans.

  There was, of course, a third possibility: After Forcier gave a halfhearted fake, he left the pocket, then fired a pass to Odoms, running through the back of the end zone. But State’s defender grabbed the tail of Odoms’s jersey and pulled him back for an instant, costing him a step. And that, in a tight offensive scheme, was enough to put the ball just out of reach—and allow another defender to tip it off Odoms’s pads and up in the air, high enough for State’s Chris Rucker to grab it before it hit the grass.

  Interception.

  All Michigan State had to do was score, but they fumbled on the first play. They recovered, and two plays later, Caper ran 23 yards for a 26–20 victory.

  Paul Bunyan was staying in East Lansing for another year.

  Tate Forcier sat on the bench alone, head in hands, agonizing over his first loss as a college quarterback.