RichRod and Tressel
so now that we know what was really going on, I feel for RichRod.
Lets put the defensive implosion aside for a moment, and reflect on a guy who went down with his morals intact.....and our cheatin' bastid of an opponent, who paid for and lied for his success.
Lets reflect on RR's handling of Tate (lookie, no wings!), his concern for Denard vs Illinois, when his job was clearly on the line......even suspending the punter for the OSU game for violating team rules.......did I hear that Tressel once punished an offender by "suspending" him for the first series of the game?
How 'bout the story about Tressel rigging raffles so the big-time recruits win the goodies at a kids summer football camp? We learned plenty about RichRod in his time here.....and he certainly seemed a "stand up guy" to me.
So if you were a college athletic director looking to elevate your bs school with a higher profile in football, who would you hire if the choice was RichRod or Liar Liar Vest on Fire?
I would hire Hoke. Then Rich Rod. Satisfied?
RR was never in a situation where he would come out on top. Too many people against him because he's not a Michigan Man. It's a shame, really, because RR is an innovator and a good coach. He'll succeed elsewhere. But he never stood a chance at Michigan. Not with the alumni and fan base here and how he had to change just about everything about the program.
Sorry, but you are way off. Ultimately, RR didn't succeed because his teams lost a shit ton of games, went 0-6 against MSU/OSU, missed a bowl for two years and got destroyed in the bowl.
Did the alumni make it easy? No. But, can you explain to me (and I mean this seriously) how the alumni support caused our defense to suck so badly, how it caused RR to make the worst DC hires / fires ever, how it caused us to run the 3-3-5, how it caused RR to oversee the program during our only ever NCAA violations, or how it caused us to try to run the spread with Nick Sheridan at QB? Sorry, RR's lack of success here had less to do with the whole "Michigan Man" thing than many on this board believe.
Note: this is not an anti-RR post. It is a response to your post and nothing more. I think that RR is, in fact, an innovatorm and a good coach in the right situation
Another post where I agree entirely with michgoblue. This is happening too often, when do we get back to talking about Denard's running yards?
There is nothing that anyone else could do on the field. Were there distractions off of it? Yes. I'd like to see one elite program without distractions.
Ultimately, if RR had gone 39-0, he would be as much of a Michigan Man as Yost. There are a lot of things at fault for the last three years, and the football alumni (the ones we're talking about) were very annoying but I don't think they lost even one extra game.
well, i would say both are involved. one thing led to another.
he didn't win, and that's the main reason why things didn't work out. but he would've had a better chance to win in the first place, and survive after that, had he had proper support from the fanbase, from end to end.
Coming even from someone who would most likely be happier if the CC hadn't happened (or at least hadn't played out like it did, nobody can miss the excellent job Hoke is doing) I just don't see it. It's nice to have support, but what exactly does it do? It's not like they were playing to an empty stadium and no cheers, there were just a lot of distractions from Sunday to Friday.
I'd be willing to argue that a large portion of why Scott Schafer was fired was because an incensed alumni base. Obviously, RR should be faulted for hiring GERG, but I personally believe if Schafer were around, RR would still be around.
Schafer wasn't fired because he was a bad coach; Schafer was fired because we went 3-9 and heads needed to roll, and you couldn't fire the brand new coach. It was stupid.
You make it sound like things were going swimmingly on the staff and then RR just decided one day to fire his DC. That's not exactly how it happened.
Shafer isn't here because he and the positional coaches, and by extension he and RR, were oil and water. They could not get along, and RR decided to side with the positional coaches by midseason. The ill-fated move to the 3-3-5 was a clear signal that RR no longer trusted Shafer's authority. After that it was a matter of time until he was gone, either by his own call or RR's.
No one ever said he wasnt a stand up guy. He didnt understand what Michigan Football was all about. The media ate that shit up and destroyed him.
Is Michigan Football about a bunch of guys trying to get a ball over a white chalk line on a grass field?
I'm confused. Please explain.
Edit: Also, I think you meant what Michigan Football "is" all about, because if it changed then I am really fucked trying to figure out what the fuck you are trying to convey.
Here you go again. First off, cut out the swearing, youngster.
Second of all, you know very well that Michigan Football means more than the game of football, not only to the players in that program but the fans who support it.
Go flame away.
There is no "getting" or "not getting' Michigan Football. It's football. Linemen are big. Running backs are fast. Wide outs are tall. Also, fuck shit damn fuck deal with it, old man.
There is way more to Michigan football than just the game, just like at Notre Dame, Ohio State, Auburn, and every other school with a noted football tradition. Academics, prior football teams, prominent fans, a team's gameday traditions, the marching band, and on and on.
If you don't think this is true, you're supporting the wrong team. Go ahead and root for Florida Atlantic this year and tell me again how it's just a football game in Ann Arbor.
Oh, and your swearing makes you read like a 12-year-old. Keep it up.
I didn't get my degree from FAU, brohemia. Fuck ass shit cock BALLS.
I really think you have no friends.
It is not about just football, and I think the OSU situation explains that at an extreme. Its about developing youngsters into men, teaching life lessons, etc. Then there is also the tradition and a degree of loyalty to past teams (*not* a brotherhood per se ;) ).
I am not taking a stance on the whole RR "not getting it" issue. I am simply stating that Michigan football has always prided itself on being a successful program AND providing players with a basis for success in other aspects of life, and thus there is SOMETHING to "get" if you are going to coach at Michigan. Tressel, for example, clearly would not "get" it (although he seemed to perfectly get it at TSIO because, uh, its been their tradition to cheat).
Just trolling.
I think if you are a high level coach you "get it" in that regard. You have been teaching kids how to play well and stay on the field for many years at that point. Even Tressel for all his cover-ups was still quite obviously a man his players respected and thought very highly of. It may be different here because the academics are at another level, but let's be honest some athletes wouldn't make the cut if they didn't run a 4.5. I agree that the tradition is to build model citizens as well as great athletes, but that is the case almost everywhere. I can't think of a single coach that says "Ah well fuck these kids. Win or get lost, assholes!" People don't make it far with that outlook. RR got it, Hoke gets it.
Nick Saban?
It sucks the way he treats some kids, I agree.
At the end of the day he must be somewhat of a quality guy to most of his players or the word would spread that you don't want to play for that guy. Until that happens even the guys we think are awful must not be all that bad to have as a coach. I have never played for the guy. I disagree with over signing, but it doesn't seem to be stopping kids from wanting to play for him.
I liked it better when you didn't comment at all for a few months. You have nothing interesting to add and you hate life.
I distinctly remember many of OSU fans calling RR a cheater. Oh, the irony.
One fan tried to tell me that "RR was the REAL cheater" because "practicing too much is ACTUALLY cheating" and "selling your own stuff isn't, it's different." I was like
O____________________________O
Hey, there's nothing wrong with giving Rich Rod his due. Despite everything that went wrong, the OP makes a valuable point: Rich Rod was an honest, class act, and therefore deserving of our appreciation and respect. And the JT-tsio situation makes this clear in a new way. I am so glad to have Brady Hoke and his staff. But Rich Rod is still worthy of my admiration and respect.
I don't think that most would disagree with what you say - RR was a classy guy who deserves respect. But, the whole JT-OSU thing really has nothing to do with RR, so that is why there have been so many negative comments on the OP.
I hope that we get to a point where people stop relating everything in the college fb world to RR's tenure in an attempt to either defend RR (JT is such a scum - see how great RR is by comparison) or attack him (look, coach X came into a program and installed his new system in 1 year with no attrition - see how much RR sucks!!).
No, the OP makes the point that the guy who beat Rich Rod for three years was cheating. One way we measure our coach's success is his record against tsio. The fact that Tressel cheated the whole time he was beating Rich Rod calls for us to raise our estimation of RR's career here just a little bit higher. That's all. But it's still something. If it was my record, I would be glad that people were fair enough to point it out.
How can you say that I guy who consistently passed the blame onto his players was classy? Gimme a break.
I am changing my default to read all comments.
I logged in just to moderate a couple of comments back to normal. Yeesh.
People are trying to make mgoblog not worthy of reading by changing legit comments to flamebait.
Dude, don't you know you can't post here without mentioning Hoke?
My god, the pitchforks!!
Hoke Uber Alles.
You seem to have melded your own personal frustrations with Hoke and the football program with Section 1's sense of overweening paranoia.
Nicely done.
Hoke. Uber. Alles.
Now you're just showing off!
Dude, I appreciate you. You're kind of like the angry friend that I had back in school, the guy that was pissed for an entire year after being dumped by his girlfriend. We kept telling him that she wasn't even that cool (in fact, she was annoying as sh-t) and that he'll find someone better. It wasn't until he had some good rebound s-x that he was able to turn it around . . .
Just made me picture a shirtless, oiled hoke reaching across a candlelit table, chopsticks poised delicately, to feed His Dudeness some hamachi.
It was glorious, obvs.
Damn.
Thanks, but since it laid the ground work for the nightmare fuel that is a bare chested and oiled hoke, I now hate you.
But what if he was bare-chested, oiled, AND pointing at you?
You'd be a big gob of cookie dough in his hands, just waiting to be touched and molded into a (sinfully delicious) Michigan Man, that's what.
Maybe a nightmare for Dantonio. I can think of a number of Mgofans that would not resist such an embrace.
It's seems like he didn't like his results on the T.M.I. scale.
Mr. Rodriguez is gone. The ship has sailed. Let the man be.
let it go man
albeit nowhere near as severe. Let's just say that painting Rich as an angel doesn't necessarily have a ton of merit. Tressel..... a self-righteous phony. Rich.... a good guy who had a stupid situation to try to deal with.... oh, and a terrible understanding of defense. Let's just leave it at that.
the thing about RR (and yes I felt he needed to go) is that when the NCAA started investgating a little too much supervision and practice time were the only violations they could find. There were never any suggestions of improper benefits or anything of the like. RR was not the right choice for UM but he had class and proved it when he left without a gripe.
I don't think the NCAA ever looked into any possible extra benefits here. They don't necessarily conduct program-wide investigations. They respond to specific allegations. The allegation against us was that we were conducting practice too long, so they looked into that. If there had been other allegations, they'd have expanded the investigation.
Odds are, given how football players are idolized on campus, that our players get the occasional freebie here and there. That's probably true just about everywhere.
Just thought about this. Was thinking what if everything that happened, happened last year instead of this year. It's interesting to think about, but it happened this year.
He will he some where next year.
If it happened last year, we wouldn't be in as strong a position to capitalize on OSU's weakness because of the combination of our own NCAA investigation and our coach's shaky job security. The biggest beneficiary may well have been MSU, or perhaps ND.
...seriously, if I were an AD, I wouldn't hire either of them. Tressel will likely earn a show cause judgment when the NCAA COI completes its work. As far as RichRod goes, until the NCAA completes its investigation into potential practice overages at WVU, he's too risky of a hire. But this assumes I'm not a desparate AD. If I were, RichRod's pros may outweigh this risk.
Shoe (or anyone else who knows), can you explain exactly what a show cause is, and what that would entail? Would it basically stop him from coaching D1 football?