Coaches Izzo, Petrino On Opposite Sides of Moral Spectrum

Two college coaches stood at their respective podiums recently. I don’t need a program listing to tell me which is taller.

The images couldn’t have been starker in comparison.

First, there was Bobby Petrino, the morally bankrupt coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks football program, looking every bit the pathetic fool that he is, addressing the media with his scratched, cut-up face and wearing a neck brace.

Had Petrino been in that condition because a group of Alabama or Auburn fans set upon him and beaten him to smithereens, then that’s a different kind of pathetic.

Instead, Petrino was the kind of pathetic that makes you feel embarrassed for him and even more so for his family, particularly his humiliated wife.

Petrino was, as it turns out, spewing lies as he spoke of the motorcycle accident that (fittingly) occurred on April Fool’s Day.

Petrino was lying to the press, to the university, to his boss, to the police, to Arkansas football fans and—again, worse—to his family when he said that he was alone on his bike when he careened off a highway.

Thankfully, Petrino said, a Good Samaritan in the form of a 25-year-old woman named Jessica Dorrell happened along and offered a ride to the hospital.

It didn’t take very long for that version of what actually transpired to be folded, spindled and mutilated.

Petrino was actually in the company of Dorrell—she was his passenger—when Bobby wiped out. And she wasn’t a hitchhiker.

Turns out Dorrell, an Arkansas football staffer, had been carrying on with Petrino, 26 years her senior, in the form of what Petrino finally admitted was an “inappropriate” relationship. Basically, she was his mistress.

Anyone surprised that Petrino’s tale unraveled faster than a cheap wool sweater maybe played football—or rode a motorcycle—without a helmet.

Let’s wind the clocks back to the fall of 2007, shall we?

Petrino was in his first year as coach of the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons, having been hired away from the University of Louisville by owner Arthur Blank. The Falcons had played 13 games and were having a rough go of it under the rookie pro coach with a 3-10 record.

One day in December, the Falcons players arrived to their lockers to find a brief, typed out letter in their respective stalls. It contained all of four sentences.

It was a notice, put out by Petrino, informing his players that he had quit the Falcons and was about to take the job at Arkansas.

Signed, Bobby.

It was a dash into the night, one coach’s impersonation of the Baltimore Colts skipping out to Indianapolis back in 1984.

Petrino didn’t have the guts—hell, the common courtesy—to speak to his football team in person. And this after he promised owner Blank that despite the rumors to the contrary, Bobby wasn’t about to abscond to Arkansas.

Shortly after giving Blank that assurance, Bobby banged out his four-sentence letter, made photocopies and hopped onto a plane for Arkansas.

His players, after finding out that their coach had the integrity of a marked deck of cards, flew into a rage. They let Petrino have it, to the media. The Falcons’ season was spiraling out of control and the coach had fled.

Petrino sacked his team with a blindside hit, but he had the temerity to sing the Razorbacks fight song mere hours after his photocopies cooled.

Blank was seething, like the Falcons players. The man who Blank showed confidence in by giving him his first pro coaching job turned out to be a gutless liar and a phony.

So I wasn’t surprised at all when details of Petrino’s lies and the subsequent facts about the voluminous number of text messages and cell phone calls that pocked his relationship with Dorrell, were made public.

Not at all.

The second coach to take the podium this week was MSU basketball wizard Tom Izzo.

Izzo was the antithesis of Petrino: He was dressed casually, but looking very professional, and serious as a heart attack, as he talked to the press about senior player Derrick Nix’s arrest on suspicion of DUI, which occurred April 3 and resulted in Izzo kicking Nix off the team, albeit temporarily, as it turned out.

It was temporary because after Nix pleaded guilty to a reduced charge, Izzo rescinded the suspension. But that’s far from the end of the story.

Nix spoke before his coach and sobbed as he apologized to those who he disappointed and let down. Tears rolled down his very sincere face.

Then Izzo spoke.

The coach said that it was still too early to determine Nix’s ultimate fate as a Spartan hoopster. Izzo said he had met with his coaching staff—and presumably Athletic Director Mark Hollis and university President Lou Anna K. Simon—and kicked Nix’s future around, so to speak.

What kind of challenges does Nix face now, both academically and as a person? Does the kid have it within him to recover from this and be a productive member of society, let alone of the basketball team?

Those were the kinds of questions, Izzo said, that he discussed with his inner circle.

And, last but not least, what kind of further discipline will Izzo mete out?

“There is gonna be issues that I’m gonna have to determine yet,” said Izzo to the media on Thursday, “depending what he does this summer, depending on how he acts.”

And through it all, one couldn’t look at Tom Izzo, standing mere feet away from the repenting Nix, and not see a coach in total, complete control of his program—and with the integrity and credibility that goes with that.

Compare that to the image of the fool Petrino, looking like Wile E. Coyote after another go-round with the Roadrunner. How can Petrino ever guide young men again?

It’s been a rough year for the institution of the college coach—pro coaches, too, for that matter.

It’s been a year of shrinking leaders and emperors wearing no clothes.

But watching Tom Izzo discuss Derrick Nix, in front of Derrick Nix, was a silver lining to a cloud.

At least somewhere, there’s a college coach who won’t embarrass his school, his AD, his president, his players or his alumni supporters. Ever.

So take some heart in that.

Paterno’s Self-Suppression of Power Protected Wrong People

The irony is, Joe Paterno could have covered the spread easily.

He had home field advantage. He had all the weapons at his disposal. It was a cupcake on the schedule. One of those pre-conference games against an opponent whose only goals were to get out of town with their wits and a cool paycheck from the gate.

Paterno could have swatted this one away with hardly breaking a sweat.

When you’re Joe Paterno, iconic football coach at a big time university, you can do some things. It’s like a playbook on 2nd and 1. There are options not available to a lower profile coach.

Football coaches like Paterno, who’s been at Penn State since the Lyndon Johnson administration, don’t walk around campus—they are the campus. They get things named after them—streets, buildings and practice facilities.

They make friends in high places. They show up at a restaurant and the staff can’t seat them quickly enough.

Coaches like Paterno, if they appear in a commercial for a dry cleaners, can put all the other dry cleaners around campus out of business.

Paterno, 84, looks like someone Al Pacino is set to play at the drop of a hat.

Lombardi had the gap-toothed grin.

Bear Bryant had the checkered hat.

Bo Schembechler had the sunglasses under the baseball cap with the block M.

Woody Hayes had the white shirt and the skinny black tie.

Paterno has the big glasses and the big nose and the raspy, New York accent. Pacino could play him in his sleep.

Paterno is as iconic as it gets in the world of college athletics—forget just football.

So let’s be real.

Joe Paterno wasn’t at any disadvantage, when presented with evidence that his defensive coordinator had sexually assaulted a young boy—in a Penn State football facility, no less.

Paterno—his name ironically so close to sounding like “paternal”—could have snapped his fingers and the weight of the university’s tradition, standards of excellence and integrity would have collapsed onto coach Jerry Sandusky like a 16 ton weight.

Sandusky would have been ruined—much sooner than he now is, and before untold numbers of additional boys were harmed.

Paterno could have rained hell down on Sandusky, had Paterno wanted.

Instead…

“In hindsight I wish I would have done more,” Paterno said in a prepared statement he released last week, when the tempest of the disgusting news swirling around PSU’s campus began to release its stench.

Paterno was referring to his role in the allegations—the role where he was told about Sandusky’s assault of a boy in a shower, and merely passed the charge on to the athletic director.

Paterno could have gone in for the kill. He had the other guys on their heels, in the shadow of their own end zone.

But Paterno chose to keep all of his power sheathed. It was a kneel down, a mercy job.

Sadly, Paterno chose to protect the wrong person.

A man of Joe Paterno’s stature doesn’t pass stuff like this along. He doesn’t treat charges of sexual abuse like a bag of peanuts in the middle of a row at a ballgame.

A man of Paterno’s importance at Penn State, just as with Bryant at Alabama, Schembechler at Michigan, et al, needs to be Harry Truman, not a middle man.

The buck should stop with them.

It’s an age-old debate.

Who is more culpable for certain heinous behavior?

The perpetrator, or the man who could have stopped him dead in his tracks?

Paterno should have done more than simply pass on the eyewitness account of Sandusky’s sick actions to his supposed boss. And Paterno knows it. He knew it long before he issued his milquetoast statement last week.

In hindsight, Joe? Really?

You needed hindsight to tell you that keeping inordinately quiet in the wake of such disturbing information was wrong?

Again, I ask, isn’t that worse, in a way, than what Sandusky allegedly did to who knows how many kids?

Paterno failed that child in the shower. And his willful suppression of his own powers failed subsequent kids.

Legally, they say, Paterno is in the clear. He did what he was legally obligated to do.

That may be, but I’m surprised Paterno has gotten a wink of sleep since.

You think all of this salacious behavior has been going on around Paterno without his knowledge? For almost 10 years?

The university did the right thing in firing Paterno and the school president, effective immediately. They saw Paterno’s offer to retire after the season and raised it.

They had to.

It was the only thing they could do and still salvage some of Penn State’s integrity.

A football program shouldn’t define a school, but it does in many people’s minds.

A football coach shouldn’t define a program, but he does.

And a terribly poor choice of judgment shouldn’t ruin a man forever, but it can, and it has.

Jerry Sandusky is small fish here, really. That sounds outrageous, because he’s the child predator, not anyone else in this story.

But see how the actions—or lack thereof—of someone like Joe Paterno can overshadow even a person with as vile of character as Jerry Sandusky?

Some say that this vile situation should put college football in perspective.

Bologna.

The bully pulpit of big time college athletics should have been used, by Joe Paterno, to put an end to Jerry Sandusky’s abhorrent acts against kids.

Paterno had everything at his disposal to stop the monster that might be Sandusky.

He took a knee instead.

Downfall of Tressel Good, But Solves Nothing

Ding, dong the warlock is dead.

One down, how many to go?

The demise of Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel is a blow struck—a blow struck for honesty, decency, ethics, and playing the straight and narrow. That much is true.

But if you think now that Tressel is gone—having resigned in shame from OSU—we have eradicated cheating in college sports, well, I just hope you’re not that naive.

Tressel wasn’t the only cheater, and he won’t be the last to be caught. You’re also naive if you think that the other cheaters are now scared straight. As nice of a thought as that is, it’s just not realistic.

College sports are just pro sports without the players salaries. And without the integrity, steroids be damned.

Tressel had himself an amazing 10-year run in Columbus, and now we suspect that at least part of that success was due to his being able to play the system like Perlman with the violin.

Now we see quarterback Terrelle Pryor driving around in cars that would make a multi-millionaire pro athlete blush.

Who knows how many ineligible athletes the Buckeyes played with over Tressel’s decade of Big Ten dominance? Who knows how many were on the take? This isn’t over with, by a long shot—the discovery of grisly stories of largesse and hubris flowing from Columbus.

It may turn out that Tressel was operating a football factory in the Third World sense—full of corruption and disregard of labor laws. Only, this was no sweat shop. OSU’s football players were taken care of, it seems.

Combining Tressel’s decade at OSU with the revelation of what happened with Pryor and other players last year begs the question, “Do you HAVE to cheat to win big in college sports?”

It’s tempting to say, yes, you do.

It’s also tempting—and I’ve been one of these to say so—to strongly suggest that athletes get compensated while making their institutions lots of money. Those opposed say that it’s not just athletes who make the dough—the best and brightest students do, too, via research grants and other forms of money that are bestowed based on academics.

And those eggheads don’t make a dime, either.

And what about the free room and board and training facilities and medical care the college athlete receives? Isn’t that “compensation,” too?

Well, yes, it is.

But it’s not enough. My opinion.

Let’s please be real. Let’s stop pretending that college athletes—of the money programs like football and basketball—are just some kids passing through town for a few years who should be thankful for the opportunity, while the institutions rake in piles of cash using their likeness on TV, in magazine ads and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the athletes risk injury, just as the pros do, and work every bit as hard at their craft as the eggheads do at theirs, if not more so—physically, at least.

The athletes should be paid, plain and simple. And with a compensation system comes a wonderful opportunity to establish new rules and regulations that are easier to monitor and harder to look the other way from.

Don’t buy the argument that paying athletes is “throwing money” at a problem that money can’t solve. Don’t buy the notion that with salaries comes more greed and corruption.

Do NFL teams have to cheat to get personnel? NO—because they have an equitable compensation system.

As far as how MUCH to pay college athletes, that’s part of the regulations that would arise with the advent of such a system.

Sure, there’d still be some cheating initially, as less-than-ethical schools decide to test the system. But if the NCAA does it right, and tweaks it as necessary, they should be able to create a good enough filter to catch the scum.

I know that the mere thought of paying college athletes draws the ire of many and strikes at the core of what lots of people believe college athletics to be.

But tell me, how is that idealistic, doesn’t-really-exist-anymore model of college athletics working out for you nowadays?

Jim Tressel is just a symptom. Getting rid of him has solved nothing, other than making the Big Ten winnable again in football for 10 other schools.

“Michigan Man” Hoke Right Man to Save U-M Football

 It’s not easy being Blue these days.

The University of Michigan football program isn’t used to this. It isn’t used to staring up at half the Big Ten/Eleven. It isn’t used to fielding a defense that was perilously close to scraping the bottom of the barrel—nationally—and giving up more points in a season than Michigan teams used to surrender in three.

Michigan football had been living in the penthouse and is now slumming. This is a program whose name wasn’t just spoken, it was said with a sneer—by both supporters and rivals.

Michigan didn’t get hurt, it inflicted it on others.

It started in earnest with the hiring of Bo Schembechler in 1969, and for the next four decades, just about, Michigan football was 10 wins, a Top 20 ranking (or higher) and a conference championship or very close to it. It was fall Saturdays spent terrorizing visitors to the Big House before 101,000-plus pairs of leather lungs.

It was a win over Michigan State, one over Ohio State at a rate of at least once every two years, a helluva tussle with Notre Dame and a bowl game—where the mystique sometimes took a hit. But at least there was a mystique.

Michigan football was a monster, being fed by the media, the fanbase, the alumni and the larger-than-life personality of Schembechler, the Chairman of the Board. Frank Sinatra had nothing on Bo.

Even after Bo retired in 1989, the program didn’t miss a beat. His disciples took over—Gary Moeller and Lloyd Carr—and the monster stayed fat and it kept devouring MSU and then it even slapped Ohio State in most years.

Michigan football was, at the same time, real and mythical. The players arrived as teenagers and left as men. It wasn’t so much a program as it was a place, like West Point. It’s a wonder the players could move every Saturday, what with the weight of so much history and tradition on their backs. Yet no matter how much blood, sweat and tears were shed, the participants declared that it was all worth it.

But it’s not easy being Blue these days.

Carr retired and Rich Rodriguez—square peg, meet round hole—breezed into Ann Arbor from West Virginia and ever since, the Michigan program has been Humpty Dumpty, post great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…

Rodriguez is gone, given the ziggy by Athletic Director David Brandon in January, a move only slightly less necessary than when Moses raised his hands at the banks of the Red Sea.

The Man Who Would Save Michigan Football is so far removed from Rodriguez that you need a protractor to measure the difference.

Brady Hoke, ever since he was hired by Brandon from San Diego State, has been walking around Ann Arbor and other parts like his hair is on fire. Everywhere Hoke goes, he talks up Michigan football. As a former assistant at the school, Hoke gets it.

No one has to remind Hoke how important it is to beat Ohio State, squash Michigan State and give Notre Dame fits. Hoke doesn’t need a GPS to find State Street or Packard or the Diag. And certainly no one has to slip him any caffeine.

Under Hoke, Michigan isn’t “going” to do anything. With Hoke, you’re not going to do something; you’re “gouhnna” do it.

As in, “We’re gouhnna work hard. We’re gouhnna fight. We’re gouhnna battle. This is gouhnna be a winning program again.”

When you say that someone conveys something in their own words, it’s literal when it comes to Brady Hoke—he really does have his own words.

Hoke also has his own style, and it’s just what Michigan needs right now.

For all his inferring that the cupboard was near bare when he arrived in Ann Arbor three years ago, Rich Rodriguez has left a mess for Hoke.

The image of the university has taken a major hit. Michigan is pitied by some, laughed at by others. The last time that happened simultaneously, the Wolverines were being stomped on by Ohio State in 1968.

Then Bo was hired.

The word about Hoke when he was hired was that he could recruit a little bit. Nothing since then has changed that belief; Michigan has been widely praised for bringing in a competent class, which wasn’t easy because Hoke had mere weeks to get commitments after his hiring.

Then there’s the matter of that school down south.

Hoke started talking about Ohio State early in his introductory press conference. Only, he called OSU, simply, “Ohio,” or “that school in Ohio.”

Hoke made no bones about it; OSU is the biggest game on Michigan’s schedule. He said as much—in his own words.

Sorry, MSU fans. Three straight wins over the Wolverines hasn’t elevated your school past “Ohio” in terms of importance. Nor should they.

Ohio’s coach—for now—Jim Tressel, is either bemused by Hoke or admires him, depending on how you read Tressel’s comments about Hoke, made at the recent Big Ten coaches gathering.

“Brady’s great. Anything that’s good for the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry is good for college football. And Brady’s good for the rivalry.”

It’s become a one-sided rivalry, and those trends in the past have cost some coaches their jobs—both in Ann Arbor and in Columbus. The Buckeyes fired John Cooper because Michigan was beating OSU like a drum every November.

Rodriguez, incredibly, actually admitted that he, basically, didn’t know “how big of a deal” it was to beat Ohio State until he’d been at Michigan for a while.

Hoke has only known it to be a big deal. The biggest, in fact.

But Hoke needs to start beating Michigan State, too. And continue to beat Notre Dame. And he needs to keep having good recruiting classes. He needs to restore pride and faith in Michigan football once again.

Brady Hoke has one charge and one charge only: He has to save Michigan football. That’s all.

And you know what?

I think he’s gouhnna do it.

Hard to Get More “Michigan Man” Than Brady Hoke

They might as well have held the press conference introducing new University of Michigan head football coach Brady Hoke in the Wolverines’ locker room.

Watching Hoke, the “Michigan Man” that supporters of the program have been clamoring for, address the media today didn’t seem quite right without a chalkboard behind him and a whistle around his thick neck.

The room should have been filled with the smell of sweat and Ben Gay, not ink and cologne.

The captive audience should have been made up of 19-to-21 year-olds, not pear-shaped reporters twice that age.

The first thing you notice about Hoke, fresh from San Diego State, if you didn’t already know him, is that his motor has two settings: turbo and warp drive.

Hoke was introduced by athletic director Dave Brandon, and the new coach didn’t step up to the podium, he annexed it. He all but jammed a flag with a maize block “M” into the dais. Then he started speaking.

Only, he didn’t speak so much as he bellowed. Within minutes, I was looking around for the exit to the tunnel leading to the football field—and I was sitting in my office.

I wonder if these Michigan football-playing kids have any idea what they’re about to get themselves into.

Hoke, for the duration of his presser, owned the room. He was Bob Knight at March Madness, Dennis Green after playing the Bears. There was even some Dickie Vs about him—Dicks Vitale and Vermeil.

Hoke pointed fingers. He slammed the podium. He made up words if he had to.

“This is MICHIGAN!” he said at one point, and for that moment I saw a guy named Bo with a blue baseball cap with a maize “M” on it.

Brady Hoke looks like a tough football coach. He sure sounds like a tough football coach. And he already has more hatred for “that school in Ohio”—Hoke’s words—than his predecessor could muster up in three years.

Hoke coached Michigan’s defensive line for eight seasons in a stint that ended in 2002, and listening to him, the subsequent eight years were spent just so he could find himself right back in Ann Arbor, this time as the Big Cheese.

Well, he certainly is big. Nothing about Brady Hoke is small—not his girth, not his passion, not his voice, not his enthusiasm. And certainly not his love for Michigan.

“I would have walked here,” he said almost from the get go, referring to his rather conventional method of getting to Ann Arbor: by flying.

Hoke was like a fighter pilot, picking off questions from left to right, and in almost the same rat-a-tat way as the Red Baron.

Hoke, to those who think Michigan is on its way down, especially if they’re “Michigan people”: “Shame on them.”

Hoke, on the rivalry games: “You want to win ‘em.”

Hoke, on the game against Ohio State: “It’s the most important game on the schedule” (and repeated for emphasis).

Hoke, on his program: “Everyone will be fanatical in their love for Michigan.”

Hoke gave the most boisterous, motivational press conference of any new coach that I’ve ever seen around these parts.

Now we’re about to see if he can actually coach.

Hunch? He’ll be fine. And so will Michigan.

Frankly, Michigan hasn’t had a coach with Hoke’s personality since Bo Schembechler, and Hoke might even one-up Bo when it comes to being bombastic. At least Bo came up for air, as I recall.

Hoke only stopped talking long enough to take requisite swigs of bottled water.

Gotta keep yourself hydrated when you get out there, boys!

Sorry. Hoke just has that effect on guys, I guess.

For anyone who fantasized about Jim Harbaugh or Les Miles standing up there today, take heart. Michigan didn’t do too shabby. At least, not on first blush.

A word now about Harbaugh, the former U-M quarterback who the fan base coveted, but who took the job with the San Francisco 49ers of the NFL instead.

Harbaugh is 47. You really think he’d have looked at Michigan as a destination job? You think he was coming here to coach for the next 20 years, until he earned a gold watch?

After a couple years, tops, Harbaugh’s name would start to be mentioned on an annual basis, in connection with just about every NFL vacancy du jour. He’d have been another Nick Saban.

Just ask the folks in East Lansing’s basketball nation how annoying it can be when your coach is always rumored to be on the move.

U-M fans would have fallen in love with Harbaugh, then would have been forced to watch helplessly every winter as his name would be connected with every NFL city from Jacksonville to Houston, from Cincinnati to Denver. Every. Single. Year.

Always there’d be the dreaded feeling that Jimmy Harbaugh would flee to the NFL. Is that what Michigan fans really wanted?

No offense to Brady Hoke, but I dont’ see the NFL banging down his door, ever. But that’s not a put-down.

Hoke is a college coach, pure and simple. He’s as collegiate as they come, and he’ll stay that way. More important, he’s as Michigan as they come.

Being the head coach at Michigan has long been Hoke’s dream. His former boss, Lloyd Carr, started asking Hoke in 1998: What do you want to ultimately do in college football?

Why, be the head coach at Michigan, Lloyd, Hoke would answer.

“This is where I want to be,” Hoke said today. “I don’t want to go anywhere else.”

Just about every reporter who introduced him or herself at today’s presser before asking their questions gave Hoke the same greeting.

“Welcome back.”

Hoke is back, no question. Back to his one true college football love. Back to the girl who knocked his socks off for eight years—the one who he never truly got over after he left in 2002.

The Michigan football fan base got what they wanted. They got a Michigan Man.

Let the healing begin.

With Rodriguez Gone, Time Now for Michigan Football to Heal

On December 17, 2007, Rich Rodriguez stood in front of the gathering of media on the campus of the University of Michigan and made gallows humor about himself.

The question was, to paraphrase, “What’s it like, knowing that you’re the third choice for this job?”

It was widely known that Michigan, making a mess of its search for a new football coach to replace the retiring Lloyd Carr, had botched things with fanbase favorite Les Miles, and had been rejected by Rutgers coach Greg Schiano.

That left U-M with Rodriguez, who was in the midst of a messy divorce from West Virginia.

Rodriguez smiled sheepishly at the podium and said, “Well, I wasn’t my wife’s first choice, either,” and the room broke out in guffaws.

It was pretty much the last time folks could laugh so easily with Rodriguez at Michigan. Laugh <em>at </em>him? Sure. But not laugh with him.

Rodriguez is gone, fired by Michigan after three years that Athletic Director Dave Brandon correctly called “full of turmoil.”

“I don’t think Rich Rodriguez has had a good night’s sleep in the three years that he’s been here,” Brandon said today in announcing Rodriguez’s getting the ziggy.

Brandon’s words ring true, but with some explanation.

No football coach has ever gotten a good night’s sleep—not while he’s been employed, anyway. The life of a football coach at the major college or pro level means putting in 12-18 hour days, sleeping on a sofa in the office. Sometimes they wake up to find the film projector still running.

But what Brandon meant was that Rodriguez, ever since arriving in Ann Arbor, had been dealing with, again in Brandon’s words, “One thing after another.”

This was a mercy kill. Brandon shot the horse. After letting his coach twist in the wind, Brandon finally put him out of his misery.

It’s time now to heal the Michigan football program.

Brandon couldn’t keep Rodriguez, not after the way the season, Rich’s third, ended with three straight blowout losses, including a New Year’s Day Massacre to Mississippi State, of all schools.

Not after a 15-22 overall record, including an amazingly bad 1-11 vs. ranked teams, and—this is the real wince-inducer—an unsightly 0-6 against Michigan State and Ohio State.

Not after scandal and players bolting and a defense that was the worst in the 131-year history of Michigan football.

Not after seeing the fans and alumni becoming polarized—those in Rodriguez’s camp, and those who wanted him gone. Never in recent memory had a football coach at Michigan incited such a love-hate reaction amongst the faithful.

Let the healing begin.

This is, already, Brandon’s defining moment as AD—and he’s been on the job less than a year.

But Brandon has a chance for a freebie here. Rodriguez wasn’t his man, so it made it easier for Brandon to can him. The freebie part to this is that, unless he hires Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum, Brandon can buy himself some time by picking anyone whose name isn’t Rich Rodriguez.

So the AD already can’t lose.

After the loss to Mississippi State, any remaining fence sitters certainly had to be shoved onto the side of “fire RichRod.” Though there are still some steadfast, stubborn Rodriguez supporters, the overwhelming sentiment was to run him out of town.

So Brandon will bring in a new coach, and that man will be welcomed much more graciously that Rodriguez ever was.

It’s not always what you know, or how much you’ve won. It’s who you’re following.

Rodriguez followed Carr, who had continued the Bo Schembechler lineage which began nearly 40 years prior.

The new coach will be following Rodriguez.

See the difference?

I once asked the late Mark “Doc” Andrews, formerly of Dick Purtan’s radio team and a damn good sports announcer in his own right, if he was interested in throwing his hat into the ring, in the wake of the news of Ernie Harwell’s firing by Bo Schembechler in 1991.

Would Doc want to be considered to be the Tigers’ new radio voice?

“I won’t follow Ernie,” Doc told me. “But I’ll follow the guy who <em>follows</em> Ernie!”

Good point.

Remember how Harwell’s successors, Rick Rizzs and Bob Rathbun, were treated in Detroit?

Brandon needed to heal Michigan’s program, and the first step in that healing process was to fire Rodriguez, the deserved lightning Rod (pun intended). With Rodriguez gone, Brandon can bring Wolverine Nation together again.

In a perfect world, the next Michigan coach will stay for 10 years or more, returning stability to the program, and placing it back where it belongs—as a Top 10 program annually.

Michigan’s been lucky in that regard. They hired Bo, an unknown from Miami of Ohio, and that turned out really well.

Bo stayed as coach for 21 years (1969-89), and by that time there was no shortage of solid candidates to succeed him, from within.

The university went with longtime assistant Gary Moeller, who had strayed briefly for a failed fling as Illinois coach before returning to Michigan. Moeller worked out well, too—until his infamous drunken incident at the Excalibur restaurant in Southfield.

But that was OK, because Michigan again had a capable replacement at the ready in Lloyd Carr, who himself had almost become head coach at Wisconsin a few years earlier.

Carr stayed for 13 years (1995-2007).

Yet Michigan blew it when Lloyd retired, by offending top candidate Les Miles, LSU’s coach and a former Michigan player and assistant, by suggesting to Miles that he interview for the job, like he was just another candidate.

Miles told Michigan to take a hike—pun not intended this time.

Ironically, Michigan has another chance at Miles. With the news that fan favorite Jim Harbaugh doesn’t see himself as Michigan’s coach, Miles may again be in play. Bill Martin, the AD who botched things with Miles in 2007, is gone.

Miles could be had, if Brandon plays it correctly.

It’s my opinion that Les Miles, despite his quirkiness and occasional unorthodox strategies, would excite the alumni most and sell more luxury suites than Brady Hoke of San Diego State would, the other most-mentioned candidate.

We’ll see.

Regardless, Brandon must play healer now. He has to bring as many people as possible back under the tent. The AD is a smart guy. He has the tools, and the resources (he hinted that money would be no object in hiring a new coach) to put smiles back on the faces of Michigan football fans and alumni.

Firing Rodriguez was the tourniquet that U-M’s football program needed. Brandon’s choice as RichRod’s successor is the surgery.

Rodriguez’s Display Causes U-M Football to “Jump the Shark”

There’s a term used in the circles of television called “Jumping the Shark.”

Simply, it’s the moment, whether because of a singular episode or a cumulative effect, when a television series loses its mojo and proceeds on a nosedive to irrelevance or embarrassment—or both.

The phrase was coined after “Happy Days” aired an episode featuring a leather jacketed Fonzie water skiing, jumping over a shark. The legendary show was never the same after that ridiculous sight.

So, from that point forward, “Jumping the Shark” became the dreaded designation for any long-running, successful television show that lost its way.

Or football programs that have lost their way.

The University of Michigan football program, I fear, had its “Jump the Shark” moment last Thursday night, in a banquet hall in Livonia.

How fitting, this time, that they call the Wolverines’ annual football banquet, the football “bust.”

It’s the most talked about football banquet around these parts since Lions coach Buddy Parker walked off the dais and off the job, quitting in August, 1957 at the team’s annual pre-season function.

U-M coach Rich Rodriguez, in his clumsy, ham-handed attempt to ingratiate himself with the Wolverine faithful, instead brought the program to the national forefront as a big, fat, maize and blue joke.

The desperate plea by Rodriguez that he wants to be a “Michigan Man,” the hand-holding, the biblical quotes, the swaying back and forth while “You Raise Me Up” played in the background—it all added up to staining Michigan football for untold years to come.

The display confirmed what I’ve suspected for quite some time—that Rodriguez puts himself first.

The term I used on “The Knee Jerks” podcast a couple weeks ago was, “Rich isn’t in the bunker with these guys.”

And that was before what happened in Livonia last week.

From a strictly etiquette point of view, the football bust wasn’t the time nor the place for Rodriguez to make a spectacle of his tenuous job security. Everyone from Miss Manners to Dear Abby will tell you that the bust is an event to highlight the positives that happened during the season. It’s a feel good event, designed to temporarily forget the program’s ills.

It’s not a job interview. It’s not an audition.

It’s not about the coach.

A true “moment,” one that you treasure, would be a player—or players—making impromptu remarks of support for the coach.

Not a contrived, choreographed, syrupy display that makes people reach for saccharin.

Michigan football has jumped the shark. What happened last Thursday night in Livonia won’t go away anytime soon.

You don’t think they’re laughing in Columbus? In East Lansing? In South Bend?

The U-M football program is spinning its wheels, led by a good, round coach in a square hole.

It’s not that Rodriguez is a bad coach—it’s that he’s a bad coach for Michigan. And there’s no shame in that.

There’s no shame in going to a big time program and things not working out. Good people have failed in all sorts of situations, where it turns out that it’s not a good fit.

Michigan Athletic Director David Brandon almost has a freebie here. He’s barely been on the job and he’s already being hit with what could be the defining moment of his tenure. But he, in a way, has a freebie.

I haven’t been one to espouse the firing of Rodriguez. My feeling is that by doing so, you’re likely to set the program back a couple years before things start getting better again. But, I have also said, if the Michigan fan base is willing to do that, then God bless them.

Jim Harbaugh, Stanford’s coach and as Michigan Man as it gets when it comes to available coaches, is out there, the white elephant in the room. Harbaugh is Les Miles all over again.

Then-AD Bill Martin fouled up the Miles-to-Michigan courtship by having the gall to tell the former U-M assistant that he’d have to go through the interview process like any other candidate.

But Miles wasn’t just any other candidate, and he became offended by the notion that he was. Miles told Michigan where they could stick it, and he remained at LSU.

Brandon has his Les Miles now in Jim Harbaugh.

Brandon has a freebie, as I said, because he can make this very easy on himself. Brandon didn’t hire Rodriguez; letting him go wouldn’t be an admission of his own poor judgment.

Brandon could take the high road, buy Rodriguez out, declare that he appreciates everything Rodriguez has done, and simply say that it didn’t work out. Brandon should also mention that he’d be making the move for the “long-term” good of the program—code for “we’re taking a step back to hopefully take two steps forward.”

Who could find fault with such an approach?

Even the pro-Rodriguez people would be hard-pressed to be aghast, because a new AD bringing in a new coach is hardly considered as being reckless.

Let’s wipe the slate clean, Brandon could say, and let’s heal this program.

Let’s not become Notre Dame, which has been wandering around in the woods for almost 20 years now.

Rich Rodriguez didn’t do himself any favors last Thursday night. He didn’t do his kids any favors. And he didn’t do the program any favors.

All he did was put the school high on Google and YouTube searches, and for all the wrong reasons.

Michigan football has taken its hits in the past three seasons. Some of it has been on Rodriguez, some of it hasn’t.

But it took no bigger, more embarrassing hit than it took at what should have been another humdrum, routine, end-of-the-season football banquet.

U-M football has jumped the shark. Heaven help them now.

MSU’s Dantonio Returning Greatness to Spartan Football

It’s amazing how often the saviors of college football programs arrive, and you didn’t know it at the time.

When the University of Michigan tabbed him in 1969, Glenn E. “Bo” Schembechler was the head coach at Miami of Ohio, a school so unheralded they need to remind you what state they’re from all the time.

Bo coached at Miami in the Mid-American Conference for six seasons, compiling a 40-17-3 record, yet one of the Detroit newspapers welcomed Schembechler to town with a derisive, two-word headline.

“Bo WHO?”

That November, on a gray day in Ann Arbor, his Wolverines having just upset the mighty Ohio State Buckeyes, no one asked who Schembechler was. Instead, they wondered where he’d been.

Bo took over a Michigan program that was a shell of what it used to be (sound familiar?). The year prior to Bo’s hiring, Woody Hayes’s Buckeyes beat Michigan, 50-14. Late in the game, Hayes elected to go for a two-point conversion, despite the lopsided score. After the game, reporters asked him why.

“Why did I go for two?” Hayes growled. “Because I couldn’t go for three!”

In 1969, behind the running of Billy Taylor, Michigan stunned previously unbeaten OSU, 24-12.

Schembechler, the coach from Miami (of Ohio), turned into one of the most successful coaches in college football history. Some would tell you he was the best ever at Michigan—even better than Fielding Yost.

Bo saved Michigan, even though no one could see it coming.

Mark Dantonio didn’t drop out of the sky onto the campus of Michigan State University, but he may as well have.

Dantonio was an assistant at MSU and OSU before becoming head coach at Cincinnati, a nice little program but not exactly the career path to elite status. Just ask Brian Kelly. In Dantonio’s three seasons coaching the Bearcats, his overall record was 18-17.

Mark WHO?

The Spartans, following the retirement of George Perles in 1995, have used the revolving door method with their football coaches. No one man ever stuck around long enough to get a good foothold on what they were going to do with the program.

MSU had Nick Saban for five years, then Bobby Williams for three, then John L. Smith for four. The Spartans’ cumulative record during that time was 73-69-1. The wheels, they were a spinnin’.

Then came Mark Dantonio from Cincinnati, with his 18-17 record and a resume that most athletic directors may have tossed back into the pile.

It’s looking like the hiring of Dantonio might be the best one MSU has made with the football program since plucking Perles from the pros in 1983.

It isn’t just that Dantonio is an MSU guy; after all, so were Saban and Williams. It’s that Dantonio has something that’s hard to describe—a certain je ne sais quoi. He just feels like the right guy to make the Spartans relevant again in college football.

This isn’t just the drumbeat for a guy who’s enjoying a 7-0 start this season. Dantonio, since taking over in 2007, has been building something in East Lansing, though it hasn’t always shown in the won-lost record.

There’s some continuity forming in the football coaching at MSU, a program that needs such continuity in the worst way.

Winning football programs have that continuity. Few are the schools who change coaches with the frequency of leap years, who find success on the gridiron.

The University of Michigan, I fear, may be heading in that direction. The anti-Rich Rodriguez folks can certainly make their case for a change, but every time you change coaches, you potentially set the program back a couple of years, at least.

I hit Lloyd Carr with the situation going on at my alma mater, Eastern Michigan University, before we at the Wayne County Commission honored Carr and Perles with Lifetime Achievement Awards on October 7. EMU is being coached by Ron English, former defensive coordinator at U-M under Carr. The Eagles just snapped an 18-game losing streak.

Has Carr spoken with coach English, I wondered. He had.

“When you’re a new coach at a school, it takes you a year, maybe two, just to figure out what you have and who can play,” Carr told me about English, who’s in his second year at Eastern.

And it was, ironically, John L. Smith, who said these words to me when I interviewed him in the summer of 2006 about what he was trying to do at MSU.

“We need to get some continuity here,” Smith told me, “So we’re not changing coaches every dadgum couple of years.”

2006 would be Smith’s last year at MSU.

Mark Dantonio is building something in East Lansing—something that campus hasn’t seen the likes of in decades. It can be a powerhouse program again, maybe as soon as this season. No joke.

One thing’s for certain. No one dares ask, “Mark WHO?”

U-M/MSU Football Rivalry Relevant Once Again

Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies. Batten down the hatches. Tell Katy to bar the door.

I don’t know where you’ll be Saturday afternoon around 3:30, but wherever it is, kneel down and place your ear against the soil. That low rumble you’ll hear can be traced directly back to Ann Arbor, Michigan.

This is Michigan-Michigan State Week, in case you’ve been unable to push that rock from on top of you. This is a week where co-workers who would normally be as cordial to each other as the attendees of a British tea party sneer as they pass by in the hall.

This is Michigan-Michigan State Week, where the logos from the respective schools are branded on the foreheads of the graduates. It’s Civil War, minus the civility.

It’s Michigan-Michigan State Week, and this time the game actually matters.

It’s a football game played annually, alternately in the corn fields of East Lansing or in the chic, quasi-cosmopolitan Ann Arbor.

It’s a game that will be coached by a Rich and a Mark. It used to be coached by guys named Biggie and Duffy and Fielding and Bump and Bo.

This is Michigan-Michigan State, and upstairs Duffy Daugherty is giving Bo Schembechler the skunk eye. Fielding Yost doesn’t trust Biggie Munn’s backfield formation. Someone in a fur coat carrying a flask and a noisemaker is letting the air out of the tires of someone’s Packard.

You could scour this entire great nation of ours and not find a bigger college football game this week.

Correction—this isn’t a football game, not really. To steal and paraphrase from the late, great sportswriter Jim Murray, “Yeah, this is a football game—the same way the Nazis’ game was 20 Questions.”

Michigan-Michigan State. Two unbeatens, both a little crabby. The Wolverines are tired of hearing how bad their defense is and how they haven’t played any real competition yet. The Spartans are tired of hearing how they’re, well, the Spartans—a football team that has often collapsed like a cheap tent after mid-October.

In the past, this was a synthetic rivalry, designed to look like the real thing but rarely did it deliver the goods. Michigan-Ohio State was sugar; Michigan-Michigan State was Splenda.

In the past, Michigan coaches would politely tell anyone who asked that, yeah, this was a big game for the school. It took all they could to not roll their eyes and stifle a chuckle. Then on Saturday, the Wolverines would politely hand the Spartans their rear end on a platter.

That was then.

MSU is riding a two-game winning streak in this ancient series, and if you don’t think that’s a big deal, imagine Charlie Brown with a two kick streak against Lucy; Sylvester burping up the remains of Tweety Bird.

MSU hasn’t beaten Michigan three times in a row since the Johnson Administration.

This is where the churlish Wolverine fan asks, “Andrew Johnson?”

No—Lyndon—but that’s still over 40 years ago, 1965-67 to be exact. It was a time when MSU was among college football’s elite, with a brutal defense anchored by lineman Bubba Smith and linebacker George Webster. Michigan was the so-called “little brother” back then.

Michigan hasn’t beaten MSU since 2007, which in regular time is just three years ago, but in Rivalry Time is just this side of eternity.

The teams go into Saturday’s tilt both ranked in the Top 20, both with 5-0 records.

That’s the kind of stuff that used to be associated with Oklahoma-Nebraska or Notre Dame-USC or Florida-Florida State, back in the day. Or Michigan and that school in Columbus.

Michigan-Michigan State—a game that hasn’t been talked about like it has this week, in years. You bring it up this week and it’s not a hollow or phony discussion, not contrived rivalry talk. It’s not Splenda.

This is a game with subplots. The physical health of MSU coach Mark Dantonio. The employment health of U-M coach Rich Rodriguez. The All-Big Ten linebacker Greg Jones of Michigan State versus the dynamic Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson. That two-game MSU winning streak.

This could be a shootout like they used to have at the OK Corral. Bo and Duffy are spinning in their graves. We could see 70+ points scored on Saturday. In the days of Schembechler and Daugherty, it could take three meetings, combined, to hit 70.

Michigan and Michigan State are going to get it on and this is serious business, folks. This isn’t a rivalry in name only. It’s not a titular game. There won’t be any little brothers on the football field. Michigan can’t play this one with one arm tied behind their back, like so many of the other encounters.

The loser of this one will look like he bit into a lemon for a whole year, just about. It’ll be almost 52 weeks of grumpiness, a year of Monday mornings.

And for the winner? Well, MSU doesn’t play Ohio State this season, so if they win Saturday, the Big Ten title doesn’t look like anything like a fantasy. If U-M wins, Rodriguez’s detractors will temporarily have a sweat sock stuffed in their mouths.

Now, about this Denard Robinson kid.

Michigan hasn’t had a player this dynamic since Desmond Howard. But this is bigger than Desmond, because Denard—who is the spitting image of Howard, what with the 1000-watt smile—touches the ball on every snap.

Players like MSU’s Jones have never faced a player like Robinson, certainly not this season and maybe not in their entire lives. The emergence of Robinson as a legitimate Heisman Trophy candidate adds bling to this game, not that it needs it.

People used to ask, “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?”

Today, I ask you in advance, “Where will you be on October 9, 2010 at 3:30 p.m.?”

Michigan-Michigan State. This is not your father’s rivalry anymore.

Dantonio’s Episode Unlikely to Change His Colleagues’ Behavior

What happened to MSU football coach Mark Dantonio was sobering, but about as surprising as tomorrow’s sunrise. What should be causing chin rubbing and head scratching is why this doesn’t happen more often.

The heart attack that Dantonio suffered following Saturday’s thrilling victory over Notre Dame—ANY victory over Notre Dame is thrilling in my book—has brought coaches to their public all over the country, mainly in the form of their weekly press conferences.

They’ve all said the same thing, basically.

They’ve offered their best wishes for Dantonio and his family. They’ve acknowledged that this is a tough business that they’re in, and full of pressure. They don’t deny that they could be the next victim, though they hope not, of course.

Then they’ve gone back to their 18-hour days and sleeping on the couch in their office and watching film until they’re bleary-eyed.

The head football coach at the college and pro levels is like the race car driver. No matter how many of their brethren are struck down, they’re right back at it the following weekend.

I’m grateful but amazed that this doesn’t happen more often. Coaches in football and basketball, especially, drive themselves bonkers. Train your eyes on the basketball coach next time you’re at a game. Watch nothing else. You’ll be witness to a series of tantrums that would put a two-year-old to shame.

How more of them don’t keel over is a wonder.

Not long after Northwestern football coach Randy Walker tragically passed away in 2006, I was on the phone with then-MSU coach John L. Smith.

Smith gave me the usual somber analysis about his fallen colleague.

That’s when I hit him cold.

“But coach, you’re not going to change the way you do your job, are you, despite what happened to Coach Walker? You’re going to keep working 18-hour days.”

Smith sheepishly chuckled and admitted that I was right; he wasn’t about to change one iota.

Not to be morbid, but half of the Division I-A coaches could drop dead tomorrow and it wouldn’t change how the other half go about their business.

Mark Dantonio was lucky. Sometimes the human heart gives you a warning sign to change your ways, whether it’s diet, exercise, smoking, what have you.

Sometimes it just quits on you, leaving a widow and a grieving family.

The procedure that Dantonio underwent—the placement of a stent to open up a closed artery—is fairly common nowadays. As far as heart episodes go, this one was on the lower end of the danger spectrum.

So how will Dantonio respond to this warning sign? Will he take his foot off the gas pedal a little bit? Will his return to work be a return to work as before, or will “normal” take on a new meaning?

But Dantonio isn’t the proper gauge of the response to this incident. It happened to him, and you can’t hit closer to home than that.

The bigger question is, how will his coaching comrades respond to what happened?

My guess is that they’ve already responded. They’ve taken their moment to speak to the local press, maybe say a prayer or two for the MSU coach and his family, and reflect.

Then it’s back to the office for another 18 hours of film, practice, and recruiting.

You can take a man out of coaching, but you can’t take coaching out of a man.