Rich Rod's Demeanor

If he were all smiles out there while his system was being butchered (a little too harsh, maybe), I would be confused. The kids obviously like him, and all we see is the games and the press conferences.

absolute pain on his face more than anything. The guy wants to win, and he's frustrated to hell.

I really am glad to see the emotion RR shows on the sideline. Like slappie said, it shows that he wants to win and is frustrated with the execution of the team, in all aspects of the game. As for seeing little yelling from RR in the game against OSU, i would have thought that the seniors (mostly BG) would have been the one yelling on the sidelines.

Rich Rod yells at his players during games LESS THAN Bo Schembechler ever did. (And he yells at Big Ten refs far less than Bo, Gary Moeller or Lloyd Carr.) What I saw this year in particular was that RR seemed to be more upset, talking into his headset, while the defense was on the field, but that was because, to my observation, he is less invoved in the defense's calls and player substitutions than was Bo, or Lloyd (both of whom, like RR, had defensive coordinators that they basically relied on). To imply that RR is a hothead on the sidelines during games is untrue, and anybody who has observed both sidelines at Michigan Stadium for 30 years would know that it is an unsupportable claim.

of insulting and threatening to send kids back to the "ghetto" or street corner.

that Coach Rod brings to the table. Unlike Dennis Green, he will not let you off the hook if you fuck up, and that's the best way to learn from you're mistakes. Crown his ass.

demeanor meter.

"Keep the people who don't like you apart from the people that aren't sure."

How much did Bobby Knight's infinitely stupid comment about rape factor into Myles Brand's decision to fire him from Indiana? Side note: I just realized that "Myles Brand's" has a surprisingly awkward sound to it. Update: Knight made the comment in 1988, so the answer is probably no.

In addition to the fact that there is zero evidence that RR is anything other than a perfectly-normally-demonstrative-major-college-football-head-coach, there is this: Remember that the initial concern about Rich Rodriguez's "demeanor" was manufactured, out of thin air. It was the product of public mystification at what the Boren family press release meant, when it curiously and rather obliquely referred to an "erosion of family values at Michigan." At the time, people scratched their heads, then turned on their computers and started musing in cyberspace about what it all might have meant. Hmmmm? Swearing at players? Hitting players? Working them too hard? The rumors swirled, and the fact that there were so many guesses, and they were so varied, pretty much proved the point that no one had any idea what the Borens were talking about with the "family values" reference. (A few days later, Mike Boren made his tiny revelation to Mark Snyder in a Free Press blog entry that he would "not have [his] two sons playing for two different universities.") We now know what a complete crock the "family values" kerfuffle was. That by his own account, Justin Boren had told the Free Press a year earlier that his dad had yelled at him with such fury at halftimes in his Pickerington North games, that Justin had thought "somebody might call the cops." The stories alleging a bad demeanor on the part of Rich Rodriguez aren't just unsupported; they have been largely fabricated.

In this era, I doubt that Bo would get a chance to amass the record he did. He would be charged with being "verbally abusive to players," and half of the players who got yelled at would run to mommy and daddy, who would immediately demand that something be done about "this heinous injustice to our son." The media would harp on it, document it, and demand his resignation at the first sign of decreased performance on the field. Sadly, too many people forget one fact: football is played by men, not pussies. If a player can't endure being yelled at, how can you count on him to suddenly display toughness in the fourth quarter of the BCS Championship game? For that matter, how can you ever expect to get to the title game with a bunch of weak whiners on the team? I truly hope this trend is cyclical and that it isn't something that is inexorably marching toward a day when coaches aren't allowed to raise their voices to players.