Rich Rod article on SB Nation
LINK:
Bill Connelly's preview of Arizona, titled,
The Arizona Wildcats are checking every box on the Program Collapse Checklist
Rodriguez fired Jeff Casteel. Greg Byrne (who hired RR) left to be the AD at Alabama. Rodriguez just went 3-9 in his 5th season at Arizona.
It's not looking good for the ol' Rich Rod.
I think the biggest thing with Rich Rod is his recruiting is good awful! Pair that with a system (spread) that is common place now in the college game, its easy for teams to prepare for.
would have been interesting to see if Bama had to endure some of the woes we suffered.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Alabama would not have turned it around with RR. Previous to Saban, Mike Shula was 26-23 in four seasons. Previous to that was 2 years of Dennis Franchione, the Mike Price fiasco and NCAA sanctions. Saban brought immediate credibility and an NFL pedigree that drew interest from top-flight recruits.
RR would have "modernized" the offense in Tuscaloosa, but RR's history of recruiting at Michigan says that even with a top flight program and resources, RR goes for "his guys." My guess is that the results for Alabama would have been near identical as they were at Michigan.
I'm not a dump on RR guy, there's plenty of people around here that are happy to fill that role. That said, Rich's sample size is pretty big at this point. Tigers don't change their stripes.
Even if he had recruited better (I don't know - I think he's just not that good of a recruiter in general), he probably couldn't have overcome his awful defensive coaching, just like Hoke could never overcome his awful offensive coaching.
You know, the same guy he fired following Arizona's 2015 season.
I can give you 3-9 reasons why he needs better assistants.
Sure, and probably a few other guys that wouldn't cut it at Michigan too, but most of his recruiting and most of his coaching were still bad. He would've been 3-and-done in Tuscaloosa too
Going against a Les Miles offense a tougher task?
I get it though, the LSU offense did have top flight recruits, a power-running pro-style offense, and would have run right through an RR defense.
1. I think you're right, he would have recruited better. Michigan's academic standards aside, blatant cheating aside, Alabama can draw a lot of athletes.
2. I think he was on the forefront of the spread, but we've seen that he is fundamentally limited as a head coach, and that the upgrade in players would have turned him into more of a 9-3 / 8-4 type guy with maaaybe one season where they competed for a conference title.
3. He would have been on the hotseat after his second season and perhaps fired just as quickly as at Michigan; certainly by the end of 2010 (four years if he takes the Bama position).
Alabama has natural assets that mean that the right coach can win huge there. Those conditions also exist, basically in perpetuity, at Texas and USC and Ohio State and perhaps Florida. But the wrong coach can still lose big, and Rich Rod would have sooner or later.
They did one thing absolutely right; they identified Nick Saban as the right guy after some false starts, they hired him, and they've kept him happy.
They don't exist at Florida because there was never one historic team that dominated there like there was in California, Texas, and Ohio. In the cases of Ohio and Texas, schools in neighboring states (Michigan and Oklahoma) have been the closest things to competition those programs have had.
By the time Florida experienced the demographic boom that has made it the third largest state in the country, there was no dominant program. No Florida team won a national title until 1983, and then their big three schools won 11 national titles in the next 30 years. Florida, FSU, and Miami all rose more or less at the same time and have more or less paralleled each other along the way. And instead of just a single Michigan or Oklahoma (and the myriad of smaller programs that have periodically built powerhouses on California talent, like Washington and Colorado), every team in the country raids Florida for recruits because times have changed and all recruiting is national. .
Interesting take. This reminds me of how Steve Bartman caused the fall of Michigan Football
-2003 NLCS: Bartman interferes with foul ball in stands. Florida Marlins advance to WS instead of Cubs.
-Because the Marlins and Dolphins shared the same stadium, the infield dirt diamond stayed in Sun Life Stadium for an extra couple weeks. Against the Patriots, Olindo Mare misses two game winning field goals because he slipped on the dirt twice. Dolphins miss the playoffs by one game and Dave Wannstedt is fired.
-Pitt hires Wannstedt. In 2007, they upset #2 WVU in the last game of the season as a 30 point underdog. LSU goes to the National Championship instead and wins.
If WVU goes instead, Rich Rod never leaves and Les Miles comes to Michigan.
PITCH THE DAMN BALL TO BREASTON!
Epic post. You win the internet for the day.
RichRod isn't the reason Les didn't come here. He was just the guy we settled on when Miles proved too controversial. We would have just reached out to someone else if he'd been at Bama.
This is true, we would have hired Greg Schiano if you trust Three and Out.
Bama boosters buy everyone the coaches really want and let everyone else fight over who's left. RR would have won National Championships there, just as Saban has. He could have won one in Ann Arbor during Denard's senior year.
Oh, well. For now, he is going to be seen as a classic underachiever by many. But he could walk away tomorrow and have enough money to never have to work again. That isn't a bad life...
In what world would Michigan have won a Natty in Denard's senior year? Even without the elbow issue that was never going to be a thing.
He probably would have... Bama was not really that bad off when they fired Shula. They had gone 10-2 the year before his firing and it was as much about sanctions as it was about his performance. Saban only needed one year to turn things around.
Rich would have been a much better cultural fit at Alabama and his recruiting heartlands would have been much closer at hand. I think he would have reeled off a good, not Sabanesque, run before defenses caught up to his offensive system and that he might still be there... albeit on the hot seat perennially.
neither of you read the freaking article. It actually suggests that the odds are stacked high against any AZ coach, that the program has suffered some bad luck, that the team was especially hard-hit by injuries last year. It says that the team is on track for 8-9 wins this year! And we're using this to bash RichRod.
Piling on is fun, but let's try to keep it bounded by a few facts here or there.
Rich Roriguez.
No D.
and litu (log in to upvote)
He's toast. Coming off a 3 win season and this year projected to finish dead last in PAC12 South. Same division with USC (enough said), a very good Utah program, Colorado on the come up, UCLA (trending down with More but an attractive job), and the school with the domestically renowned hottest girls in the country (Arizona State).
Recruiting rankings under RR:
2017: 44th
2016: 50th
2015: 43rd
2014: 30th
2013: 44th
Meaning his first year with Seniors after a full 4 year recruiting cycle....lead to 3 wins, and this year doesn't look much better. His recruiting has been absolute garbage for 10 years.
His offense is stale and everyone knows it, he is still running all the same plays he ran at Michigan with no variation, and the defense finished 119th out of 128 teams in PPG last year (shocker).
There was a time when he was a great offensive innovator, and was allowed to recruit any degenerate he wanted to play at WVU (Pac Man, Chris Henry, etc..). Things changed, he didn't. His next gig should probably be at an FCS school or doing TV, it's over.
I actually think it's getting weaker, at least in the P12 South:
USC (probably rising)
Utah (probably falling, lost almost as many NFL players as Michigan)
Colorado (probably falling)
UCLA (probably falling)
Arizona State (falling)
North:
Washington (rising)
Stanford (same)
Washington State (same)
Oregon State (probably rising, but that's not saying much)
Oregon (jury is out)
Cal (jury is out)
Not saying RR will turn things around, but if there is a year to do this would be it since USC is really the only team in the South that looks to be improved next year.
To quote POTUS,
Wrong.
USC is most definitely back after the sanctions and if you paid any attention to recruiting, Colorado and Utah are very solid programs. ASU is simply a more stable program, now with some consistency winning over many years and UCLA has more talent than Arizona.
It wasn't a fluke that RR failed last year - its a reflection of the program and lack of talent.
This thread is about to be 250 comments deep of rehashed arguments we've been having with each other for almost a decade now
Never let it be said that the average MGoBlogger does not have a sense of history and a long memory. Now, whether or not those things in individuals are wholly accurate is another matter, but such is the risk when you have the highly engaged portion of a fanbase concentrated on a site.
Ya and the same thing keeps running through my mind. Man I am so happy he is gone and I don't care how it happened, but I am sooooo happy we got Jimmy Harbaugh
Speaking as an avid RichRod supporter (back in his early Michigan period, anyway), I think the Arizona years have given us a clear picture of him. He's had five years to do his thing with good support from the school and the fans. Excepting one relatively glorious year, he hasn't done very well even when you adjust for a tougher-than-average Pac 12 job.
Extending from lhglrkwg's point, I'm amazed that, after all these years, people still believe:
- His players were too small.
- They weren't tough enough.
- He messed up a team (2008) that was capable of double-digit wins.
- In just one year (2009 recruiting class) he singlehandedly allowed Dantonio to "take over the state" and that alone accounted for all the years of Sparty's prosperity. (Sorry, this is not a straw-man argument.)
- He's an inherently bad person.
- His stretching violations were legitmately MAJOR(!!!).
Why bother with those when you can cite a stale offensive mind, lack of attention to defense (particularly the defensive line), a poor eye for talent at most positions, an apparent obsession with finding guys who could be slot ninjas (based on the numbers of WRs and DBs he puts in his classes), pi$$-poor situational awareness (based on his read of the UMich culture), etc.? I'll never understand ...
He messed up a team (2008) that was capable of double-digit wins.
That's a straw man. No one would argue that. I think that team was capable of winning 6-7 games (still a rebuilding year, by our standards), though, so I do fault him for going 3-9. We returned a lot of defensive starters, and were expected to be very strong on that side of the ball, but RichRod's staff badly mismanaged it.
As for him being an "inherently bad person," I don't know, but for whatever reason, RichRod made a lot of enemies at both West Virginia (his alma mater, no less) and Michigan. Maybe it was all bad luck - or perhaps he bears some responsibility for that. In hindsight, the fact that his departure from WVU was so ugly probably was a bad omen.