Three and Out

by John U. Bacon

  He picked up a football lying on an end table and kicked it, causing it to ricochet around the tiny space, then picked it up again and threw it in the corner.

  “Call him on it!” Rita said. “Why do we have to be so politically correct when no one else is with us?”

  Of course, Hope’s gesture was adolescent at best. Likewise, Rita could not be blamed for supporting her husband and getting fed up with the endless stream of criticism while they were constantly being told to turn the other cheek. But it was not hard to foresee what would happen if Rodriguez did, in fact, call Coach Hope out in public.

  A few minutes later, at the postgame press conference, Rodriguez explained what Hope had done—and, sure enough, that quote eclipsed everything else. While some readers, bloggers, and fans would take Hope to task, it largely backfired on the man making the complaint. If Hope came across as classless, Rodriguez came across as petulant.

  It might not have been fair, but it was predictable. And avoidable.

  On his way back to his locker room, Rodriguez stopped in the Crisler Arena hallway, as he always did, to see the hospital kids. A reporter who had just asked some pointed questions about his job security stopped him and said, with a big smile, “No hard feelings, Coach. I think you’re doing a great job. I’m your biggest backer!”

  Rodriguez forced a smile, shook his hand, and said, “Thanks.”

  But that was his last good deed for the day. Two overweight autograph seekers, middle-aged men wearing Michigan jerseys, tried to interrupt his time with the young patients to get autographs. He stayed focused on the kids. And when he finished, he walked past the two men into Crisler’s wood-paneled hallway, with Rita at his side.

  Rodriguez didn’t get far, however, before running into Bill Martin. They ducked into the nearest open doorway, which happened to be the boiler room, and talked privately. Rita then walked in, and gave Rich a big hug.

  But the door was slightly ajar, allowing the middle-aged autograph seekers to sneak a peek.

  One said to the other, “Rich Rod is cryin’!” slapping his friend in his gut—though it wasn’t true. “He’s fuckin’ bawlin’!”

  “Well, good,” his friend said. “He should be.”

  28 TRYING TO KEEP TRYING

  On Sunday, the grading was finished, but Rodriguez was not. The defense was so bad in this game, Rodriguez concluded, that there was no point giving an award for the Best Defensive Player.

  “We better be recruiting our asses off,” he said, looking at recruiting coordinator Chris Singletary. “We need some guys who can get after their man and make a tackle. It’s no surprise that everyone who wins the toss takes the ball first. They see what we see.

  “Damn it!” he said, the frustration boiling over. “We can’t run, we can’t tackle, we can’t block. We are the worst fundamentals team in America. Embarrassing.”

  Later that day, Jon Falk said, “I feel horrible for that guy. Never have I seen such shit. It’s the perfect storm—Bo’s gone, the AD’s gone, all this NCAA crap—and he’s got to deal with all of it.

  “I try to leave him alone these days.”

  Rodriguez spent a few hours that Sunday going over every single play with the defensive coaches. Again, you could feel the tension between him and Greg Robinson, with Rodriguez walking a fine line between respecting Robinson’s autonomy over his defense and making his frustration plain.

  “We must be insane,” he said at one point, “to do the same things and expect a different result. But I’m just trying to understand. I’m looking for answers.”

  By the time he met the players on Monday, November 9, at 3:00, Rodriguez found his message.

  “To accept losing is unacceptable,” he said, jaw clenched. His body looked tight, ready to pounce. “I hope you guys understand that. But the nice part is, we’re playing a nationally ranked team this weekend, on the road, and no one thinks we’ve got a chance. This is a game where, if you’re not a man, don’t show up.”

  * * *

  They showed up.

  Built in 1917, Camp Randall Stadium is the oldest in the Big Ten. At the outset of the Civil War, the site had been home to an actual camp built to train Union soldiers. It had long since morphed into one of the toughest, and drunkest, places to play college football.

  Michigan fell behind the twentieth-ranked Badgers 7–0, but came right back to tie the game. At the end of the first quarter, Michigan had outgained the Badgers, 108 yards to 50, and could have outscored them if they had not roughed Wisconsin’s punter.

  Rodriguez’s speeches had achieved their goal: Despite the heartbreaking setbacks and long odds, they continued fighting. But they still had no knack for capitalizing on their efforts. If the 2009 Wolverines were a baseball team, they would have led the league in runners left in scoring position.

  Michigan held leads of 10–7 and 17–14 before the Badgers scored the last points of the half, going into intermission ahead 21–17.

  “Keep striking their ass!” Rodriguez told a jacked-up bunch in the locker room. “They’re starting to feel it now. Keep after ’em. Get what we want now!”

  Wisconsin scored on its first possession of the second half to go up 28–17, but once again, the Wolverines came back: Forcier to Roundtree on the bubble screen, to close the gap to 28–24.

  But there they stalled. Michigan’s offense couldn’t muster any more points, while its defense couldn’t generate any more stops, and they fell apart. 45–24.

  Long before the clock had run out, the party had started in Madison.

  In the coaches’ room, Rodriguez said, to no one in particular, “They’re running the same goddamn play twenty times in a row and we can’t fuckin’ stop ’em. Fuck me!”

  But he was not giving up. He walked out into the locker room. “Everyone STOP what you’re doing and get in here—every coach and every player.

  “Now, here’s the deal. We are going to get ready for the biggest game of the year. Nobody is going out tonight. Nobody. We are getting ready for Ohio State immediately. Immediately!

  “We can do it. When we execute like we did in the first half, we can beat anyone. I’ll be right there with you, every step of the way. Every step.

  “Now, ‘all in’ for Michigan.”

  “Say it like you mean it!” Brandon Graham shouted, and others added, “If you don’t, get out!”

  “ALL IN!”

  Rodriguez retreated to the coaches’ room, where he bent over, with his hands on his knees, as though someone had just punched him in the gut—and held the position for well over a minute. He was in physical pain.

  But the indignities were not over. Back on the field, with fans filing out, longtime Michigan cameraman Pat McLaughlin looked around and said, “In the old days, if they beat Michigan, they’d be crying, rejoicing. Now they don’t care. There’s no awe, just disrespect and vulgarity. I don’t like it.”

  On the bus ride to the airport, the caravan got stuck just a couple of blocks from Camp Randall, among the rows of two-story wooden houses typical of almost every old neighborhood surrounding a Big Ten stadium. This being Madison, the residents were drinking, blasting music, and dancing on the porch roofs.

  When a few of them realized Michigan’s football players were in those buses, they started yelling, flipping them off, and simulating masturbation. But after a while, even they got tired of all that and crawled back through their second-floor windows.

  Nothing to see here. Move along.

  29 HUMBLED

  In the week before the Western Michigan game, the Detroit Free Press came out with its sensational story.

  In the week before the Michigan State game, the NCAA conducted its interviews and the GPA mess surfaced.

  In the week before the Illinois game, Rodriguez learned that David Molk would be out for the rest of the season, and the NCAA sent its Notice of Inquiry.

  Those were all pretty bad weeks, but the week before the Ohio State game was right up there.

  On Sunday
night, Rodriguez’s attorney called to let him know the university was going to send out a press release Monday. The Free Press’s FOIA request for the CARA forms audit was expiring, and by law, the university had to deliver the goods. The documents they were forking over to the Free Press would show that football staffers had failed to submit the internal documents charting the hours athletes spent on football for the entire 2008–2009 school year.

  This, in turn, forced Michigan to respond to the stories it assumed would follow, from the Free Press in particular. The people on the Hill promised Rodriguez he would get a chance to revise their press release before they sent it out.

  At eleven o’clock Monday morning, however, Rodriguez discovered that a press release had already been sent out. It stated, in part, “The audit does not identify where the system broke down,” even though the university knew exactly where it had broken down: among Labadie, Draper, and Van Horn.

  The release did not point out that: the CARA forms were unique to Michigan; they were not required by the NCAA; and the communication problems had nothing to do with the coaching staff. The forms had also not been lost or shredded. In fact, it said, they had been “misplaced,” which sounds shady and was true only if by “misplaced” they meant “Labadie had them in his office the entire time.”

  Thanks to the lack of clarity, however, the Free Press could lead with this: “University of Michigan football coaches failed to file required forms to school compliance officers that document the hours put in by its players for the entire 2008–09 school year, U-M announced today,” even though the coaches had had nothing to do with it—by design.

  Rodriguez went “ballistic,” according to the people in Schembechler Hall: talking so loudly in his office that people outside his door—closed for once—could hear everything, and occasionally stomping down the hallway to see this person or that. The outburst marked the maddest he had ever been at Michigan.

  Remarkably, he managed to calm down before he met with his team that afternoon, belying none of the fury he had been feeling just a few hours earlier. In front of his team, I cannot recall him saying anything egregious. He usually blamed himself while extolling Michigan tradition—all things he was accused of not doing at the press conferences.

  He knew that whatever he was facing, more distractions were the last thing his team needed before trying to upset Ohio State in a last-gasp attempt to save a bowl bid, and the season.

  “This week, we will give Ohio State our undivided attention. This is all you’ll be thinking about this week, except for classes—and as you know, we expect you to attend.” The last bit was a reference to Carr’s policy of letting the players skip class during rivalry weeks. By Rodriguez’s second year, they knew not to ask him anymore about that.

  “There is no game on our schedule that is bigger than Ohio State,” he said from the podium. “Never will be, never can be—until we play for the National Championship. And that will happen, sooner than you think.

  “If you want to be remembered for years and years and years, you play well in this game.”

  With that, Phil Bromley started a special DVD he made of some of the greatest moments in the rivalry—from Michigan’s perspective, of course: Tom Harmon, Desmond Howard, Charles Woodson. The big plays, the big wins.

  Rodriguez then spoke about the seniors—how proud he was of them, and how much this game meant to them. Then he turned the room over to the seniors so they could address the team without the coaches present.

  “We don’t ask for much,” Mark Ortmann said. “I’m just asking you all to give all you can. None of us have ever beaten Ohio State. So let’s start a new streak.”

  “We haven’t had the kind of season we worked for,” Brandon Graham said. “Winning this game would cancel out all that. Everyone’s thinking they’re gonna blow us out by fifty-something. They’re just slapping us in the face and saying we’re weak as fuck. We ain’t weak as fuck! We’ve been in every game we’ve played. So let’s get out there and embarrass those boys.”

  * * *

  At the team dinner, Rich and Rita couldn’t ignore the events of the day.

  The people on the Hill told Rodriguez they didn’t want to give out more information than necessary, fearing it would lead to more questions about the investigations and more FOIA requests. The concerns were real, but their solution—be as vague as possible—made things worse, especially for Rodriguez. Further, they told him they didn’t want him to comment on it, instructing him not to answer any questions.

  “That’s just gonna lead to more questions and make me look guilty!” Rich said that night, ripping into a chicken leg.

  “It’s like taking the Fifth,” Rita added.

  “Here’s an idea,” Rich said. “Maybe here at Michigan, we should get off our high horse and answer some questions. They’re too worried about politics—and not the truth!”

  The chicken leg went momentarily forgotten as he openly wondered whom, exactly, the muzzle order was intended to protect.

  “Since when is telling the truth a bad idea? Why are we so scared of the regents? Why are we so scared of the NCAA? Why are we so scared of telling the truth? For cryin’ out loud—we haven’t done anything wrong!

  “They have the fucking forms! They’re not even required!

  “And you want to protect them, at my expense? I’m always taking the hit. ‘Oh, he can take it.’ Well, I’m reaching my limit. And they seem to forget, I’m Michigan too! On my hat there’s a big block ‘M,’ and that stands for ‘Michigan!’

  “If people want to question my play calling, go right ahead. But my integrity? At some point you’ve got to defend yourself.”

  After Rich left to watch film, Rita admitted her own sense of guilt. “Rich was going to stay at West Virginia, but we were all excited to come to Michigan. An elite school that will treat him right and give him the resources he needs to be among the top, every year. What kills us is we had such undying faith in this place—the integrity of Michigan.

  “This place is special. I know it’s special. Even after all this, I still believe we were meant to be here. We’ll get through this. We want to win here!”

  Back in his office, after fielding scheduled interview calls from Mitch Albom, Dan Patrick, and other national stars, Rodriguez took a call from President Coleman.

  “I wish I could be calling you just to say congratulations on being named the number-three U.S. college president in Time magazine!” he said.

  He listened for a bit, then Coleman turned the topic to the business at hand. You didn’t need to hear the questions to know what they were.

  “I didn’t know about this until August of 2009,” he told her, clearly referring to the CARA form situation. “This morning they said, ‘Here’s the press release.’ I said, ‘This is going to make it look like I’m to blame.’ ‘Oh, no it won’t.’

  “Well, sure enough, today’s paper has a picture of me with the headline, COACHES FAIL TO SUBMIT PAPERS. I’m tired of eating it. I’ve been eating it for two years.”

  He listened.

  “I’m just sitting here trying to get ready for Ohio State, and I’m gonna be asked about it tomorrow and Wednesday. What am I gonna say? I can’t discuss it? Then I look guilty, like I’m trying to hide something.

  “It makes it look like it’s Rich Rodriguez over here and the university over there. It makes me look like the bad guy.”

  He listened for a while.

  “I know it’s a big-boy business, and you have to have thick skin. Well, I’ve got rhino skin now, but I’m human. And so is Rita. And it’s not our fault. We haven’t done anything wrong!”

  The president was wrapping things up. They managed to generate some small chuckles, then Rodriguez brought it to a close. “All right. I know you’ve got to get on your plane. Have a safe trip.”

  He hung up.

  “Same old bullshit.”

  * * *

  Once again, he compartmentalized the distractions to rally for
the Senior Walk-Through on Thursday, when he gave lavish announcements of each senior, who then ran out of the field house through a tunnel of teammates.

  By Friday evening, he was ready for the pep rally on the Diag before a crowd of about a thousand people. They had not given up. When Rodriguez arrived with the four game captains, the cheer went up: “Rich Rodri-guez!”

  “I tell ya, from the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU!

  “I love coming to work. I love the people I work with, and I love our fans!”

  He introduced the captains, each of whom said a few words before giving the microphone back to Rodriguez. “As coaches, we love to practice—but not too much!” The crowd laughed. “Just enough! So let’s practice ‘The VICTORS’! And let’s sing it so loud they can hear you in Columbus!”

  “Thank you! We love you!”

  If you had seen what he had gone through that week, you had to wonder how he did it.

  * * *

  On November 21, 2009, Michigan entered The Game without three of its most important players—Molk, Minor, and Carlos Brown—making the already long odds even longer. But after Michigan’s defense stopped the Buckeyes’ first possession at midfield—punctuated by Stevie Brown picking up Brandon Saine and throwing him to the ground like a rag doll—the crowd went crazy, and hope was in the air.

  But when the Wolverines faced third-and-8 from their 9-yard line, Forcier rolled out to the right, across the end zone, carrying the ball like a loaf of bread and swinging his arm as he ran—exactly what they’d told him not to do a thousand times. He was carrying the ball so carelessly that he didn’t need a defender to knock it loose. He did it himself, bouncing the ball off his right thigh and fumbling it in the end zone. Cameron Heyward recovered it for the easiest touchdown ever recorded—truly, a gift.

  Things could have gone south fast, but the Wolverines kept fighting. The offense got the ball to Ohio State’s 5-yard line at one point—where they failed to get the touchdown or the field goal.