How Close Was Greg Schiano To The Michigan Job?

The sexiest guy with Shrek ears on the planet.

In recent weeks we've seen two mainstream mediapersons state that Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano either had accepted or was incredibly close to accepting the Michigan job. Michael Rosenberg:

On the night of Dec. 6 - several days after the Les Miles fiasco - Martin told several people he had hired a coach. He thought he had landed Rutgers coach Greg Schiano. But the next day, Schiano turned down the Michigan job, sending Martin scurrying for another plan.

And Stewart Mandel:

And a well-informed source told me after the fact that Schiano got serious cold feet after turning down the Wolverines and tried unsuccessfully at the 11th hour to get himself back in the running.

Are these things true? If there's one thing following the coaching search taught me, it's that everything lives in some sort of limbo, neither true nor false. But we can take these as two sources. I have two more, both of which sort of agree with the mainstream sources above.

The first ended up in my inbox at 11:30 on December 6th; the source was someone in a position to know:

... got a call tonight from a person who has a friend who is a Grad Assistant for Rutgers football and he's saying that Schiano is a done deal to go to Michigan to the point where they are actually going to have an interim coach at Rutgers for the bowl game.

I was out until late and didn't check my email before going to bed; when I awoke the next morning Schiano had publicly rejected the job. The same emailer followed up, saying Schiano had done a last-second 180 after talking to his players.

It was at this point the search careened wildly, with the internet (and myself) seizing upon any vaguely viable or terrifyingly DOA candidate: Jim Grobe. Brady Hoke. Mork and/or Mindy. Eventually opportunity met something that could just barely find its ass with both hands and the Michigan-Rodriguez union was consummated in Toledo, with Elvis presiding. A couple days later I got this email:

Michigan re-offered Schiano on Saturday and he stayed up until 2am with the OC (maybe more-family?) debating on whether to take the job. When he called Michigan on Sunday morning to turn it down, they then offered Rodriguez.

I can't vouch for the emailer, but the path from Schiano to yrs truly was short and left very little room for reinterpretation.

So. Everyone on the planet thinks Schiano got a real offer from Michigan and had actually accepted it before making a last-second 180. Mainstream news accounts even have this version of events. I think this is incontrovertible. For a brief period from about 11 PM December 6th to 11 AM December 7th, Greg Schiano was Michigan's coach. Then he backed out.

I think there's plenty of evidence suggesting that the two parties tried once again to come to an agreement but failed. Mandel says that was Michigan's decision; my emailer says it was Schiano's. I know the asserted provenance of the emailer's rumor, and think there would be very little reason to dissemble in the aftermath of hiring someone else, so I lean towards Michigan making a second run and Schiano having to say no again. FWIW.

Does this matter? If you're a Michigan fan, not much. But if you're a Penn State fan scouring the nation for potential JoePa replacements I think it signals that Schiano is going to be a tough pull. He's getting a huge investment in facilities at Rutgers and is just now ramping up his recruiting. With Rodriguez out of the Big East the only thing standing in the way of Rutgers dominion is Brian Kelly at Cincinnati and maybe the Wannstache's inexplicable recruiting prowess. And he's now turned down serious Miami and Michigan offers in consecutive years. I don't know how much credence to lend the PSU internet's "Schiano dreams of State College" article of faith.

IMO, Schiano is going to be piloting a program not far removed from PSU's by the end of this year or next or whenever Paterno finally calls it quits, but he'll be doing it in a conference without 800-pound gorillas. He'll have to think long and hard about whether he should go.