Rosenberg on Dantonio's second chance policy: "No sir, I don't like it."

"if my son did what Glenn Winston or Roderick Jenrette did, I would be heartbroken, but I would not kick him out of my family. (Of course, the little dude has to learn to walk before he can commit a crime.)" Does this make any sense? This whole article is all over the place. One sentence he is criticizing the program the next he is praising the program. How does Rosenberg keep his job ... maybe the Free Press has a second chance policy

As has been so well documented here, this weird dual standard that interprets events occurring in Dantonio's program in the best possible light, and vice versa for Rodriguez's, has long since entered the realm of self-parody. But why? What's going on behind that elfin, bespectacled visage? Here's one theory: To oversimplify, the anti-RR movement seems to have two factions. The first doesn't like RR because he's losing. The second just doesn't like RR, period. This faction seems to correlate strongly with the minority of alumni who take that "Harvard Of The Midwest Alumni" thing a little too seriously. From the perspective of the HOTMA crowd, here's this guy who grows up as "poor white trash" in (shudder) West Virginia, and rises a little too far, too fast, based on nothing more than brains, hustle, and heart-on-the-sleeve street charm. He's still 50% enthusiastic yahoo. Worse, he takes a whole gaggle of fat, profane, sloppy-looking assistants with him. Then, he gets in a public spat with sleazy former compatriots, and doesn't get the rule about Too Much Information to the press. It all made the HOTMA skin just crawl. Rodriguez, to further prove his unsuitability, ignored the traditional round of homage to the self-important coaches of the traditional recruiting feeder network, and instead went running around Florida in search of dreadlocked kids from dirt-poor, dead-end backwater towns. Kids that never could have gotten into the Harvard of anywhere, except they can run 4.25 in the fake 40. Kids whose origins and accents and very appearance highlight the pretensions and contradictions of college athletics, especially at a place like Michigan. The contrast with the Carr regime was stark. The Carr guys were all well-groomed and at least moderately handsome. They spoke few sentences, mostly grammatically correct and in flat Midwestern accent. The head guy knew 50 ways to tell impertinent reporters to f--k off without ever using the actual words. They never let enthusiasm get in the way of projecting the mandatory image of Seriousness. They recruited kids from the good-old-boys network of Midwest coaches - kids who only needed a wash, wax, and tuxedo job to look like future captains of industry, and weren't allowed to open their mouths much, lest they spoil the illusion. And they ran I-formation, pro-style offense and 4-3 defense, as carried down from the mount by Moses. If those guys had unseemly motivations or ambitions, they were loath to admit it to themselves, much less show it to the public. For the HOTMA crowd, the Carr regime was just fine, although perhaps in need of an injection of neurons from Pete Carroll's football brain. And here's the thing: if you liked Carr, you almost certainly like Dantonio too. Stern, serious, religious, appropriately guarded, a man of few carefully calculated words, "cares about his players", plays sound fundamental football. On the other hand, if you like Rodriguez's informality, enthusiasm, and football creativity, and you get chills reading the feel-good stories about those Pahokee kids, then you probably find Dantonio boring, uptight, sanctimonious, and a little hypocritical. As I do. My guess is: Rosenberg is a HOTMA. He might not know it, might not want to admit it even to himself, but he is. He can't help himself, and he's too much of a star for his editors to help him, either. The only good news is: he's a dying breed.