Rich Rod Observation From 10 Years Ago This Month
Saw this on the Diary post "This Month in MgoBlog History" January 2008. Included in a mailbag was a letter from a guy named Randy regarding Rich Rodriguez. Observed him when he was OC at Tulane. Suggested he might not be our guy. Amazingly prescient. Frankly...he nailed it. Check it out:
First let me say you have a really good and informative blog about UM. I started reading it when I thought you guys were going to take our coach. My email is to give you maybe a little different perspective on your new coach. I work in New Orleans for someone (big booster and on the athletic committee) for Tulane.
I always liked Tulane and was shocked the Rich wasn't hired when Tommy Bowden left. He was on the search committee for a new coach, so I asked him why they didn't hire Rich? His response was that Rich was an excellent football coach, but every once in a while, just did someone stupid and illogical. There were some others small things, but basically they just didn't feel comfortable about the guy. My boss still follows Rich (they are friends) and when this happened, his first response was, "he's not a Michigan man".
Michigan football, as you know, is what most programs strive to be. You run a good clean program with an exc
ellent reputation and win lots of football games. Lloyd Carr was a very good coach and probably knew it was time for him to leave. I may be wrong, but unless winning is everything, you guys may have happened on the wrong coach. I truly hope not.
Also, I bet you guys wanted the football program going in a different direction, you didn't expect all this hullabaloo. [It's the "multivariate spellings of hullabaloo" mailbag -ed]
Good luck and I hope it all gets down to football soon.
Randy
FWIW. The "occasionally does something stupid and illogical" thing would be a character flaw that fits in with a couple of the minor faux pas Rodriguez has committed.
January 9th, 2018 at 6:00 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 5:57 PM ^
It's hard to say what happened though with only one accuser and no physical proof. I'm neither condemning nor absolving him
January 9th, 2018 at 6:00 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 5:37 PM ^
For me it was more about the fact that we brought in an outsider and almost immediately railroaded the guy and then fired him after 3 years which is something I had only seen ND do at the time and seemed inexplicably bad form. Even though he's proven himself guilty of all the terrible things said about him, it will always bother me that Michigan treated someone like they treated him.
January 9th, 2018 at 5:40 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 6:09 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 6:23 PM ^
Yes it's Lloyd Carr's job to teach a 45-year-old man how to behave
January 9th, 2018 at 8:56 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 8:56 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 8:56 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 6:14 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 6:53 PM ^
Even though he's proven himself guilty of all the terrible things said about him, it will always bother me that Michigan treated someone like they treated him.Interesting bit of cognitive dissonance there.
January 9th, 2018 at 7:39 PM ^
I don't think finding out that somebody did bad stuff over the last year or two retroactively justifies treating someone like garbage 7-10 years ago when you didn't have that information.
Not defending RR or taking sides in the "how nice should we have been in 2008" debate, but it's not cognitive dissonance to feel bad about treating someone badly before they deserved it (or at least before you actually knew that they did).
January 9th, 2018 at 7:47 PM ^
If the allegations are true, it's very doubtful to me that RR simply began this kind of behavior in the past couple of years. (There were rumors of him engaging in sleazy stuff back at WVU, though it was generally dismissed by us at the time as mudslinging by a bitter fanbase.)
January 9th, 2018 at 8:21 PM ^
But still, barring actual evidence of that... I mean, if you're someone who has always believed RR is a sleaze, and that's the reason you didn't like his hire, then yeah I guess this justifies you. I just don't think that describes all that many Michigan fans (heck, a lot of people wanted Les, who was rumored to be involved in sleaze while he was at Michigan). Really don't see what his currently alleged misbehavior at Arizona has to do with his Michigan tenure.
I just hope we learned some valuable lessons from both RR and Hoke, who both failed in excitingly different ways, and can move on.
January 9th, 2018 at 8:16 PM ^
It's fairly explainable. Carr (and in particular the Mike deBord offense) was a football dinosaur and (at least during the years the blog was active) boringly good-but-never-quite-elite. Always felt like the team undeplayed its talent, and was constantly mind-boggled when a quarterback ran the ball. RichRod was new, exciting, interesting. The stuff that appeals to an analyst rather than a hot takez / feelingsball type sportswriter.
Brian also certainly has a contrarian streak, and the pro-MANBALL, MICHIGAN MAN contingent that hated what RR was (rather than merely what he ultimately produced on the field) deserved a thoughtful contrarian.
And while RR failed, the Hoke flameout and the continued dominance of Urban Meyer in the B1G proved Brian right on a lot of the principles.
January 9th, 2018 at 5:25 PM ^
There was no shortage of people criticizing the hire at the time and much of the criticism was a lot louder and stronger than that.
If there were personality concerns in the vein of what is claimed about RR now in that lawsuit and that's the reason for why RR didn't get support inside the university..then the parties involved in the situation at Michigan certainly had plenty of time and opportunity to air that grievance (and their silence wouldn't reflect well on them either).
I have a hunch that - given the problem between RR and the "Michigan football community" started pretty quickly if not immediately - that it was more the big difference between Carr and RR in terms of football style, coaching style and outward personality that rubbed people the wrong way instantly rather than any feeling RR was a borderline sex pest.
January 9th, 2018 at 6:02 PM ^
there was in-fighting and rod got dragged into a lot of bs
January 9th, 2018 at 11:35 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 6:05 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 6:39 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 7:59 PM ^
But not the fattest *ducks*
January 9th, 2018 at 6:52 PM ^
One of the great CFB what ifs will always be what if Michigan hires Les Miles instead of Richrod
January 9th, 2018 at 7:00 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 7:03 PM ^
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January 9th, 2018 at 11:08 PM ^
MSU was too rigid academically? What does this say about Alabama?
Is the SNL skit mostly or exactly on point??
January 9th, 2018 at 7:31 PM ^
So "amazingly prescient" and "he nailed it" means... some vague rumors and that damn "he's not a Michigan Man" crap that got us Hoke?
Not seeing the point of this.
January 9th, 2018 at 8:14 PM ^
To be clear, the "vague rumors" I'm referring to here are Randy's unspecified "stupid things" from 2008, not the current allegations against RR.
Too bad Randy wasn't right about the "all about winning" part!
Also note this letter, and the "hullabaloo" that prompted it, were in Jan 2008, i.e. before RR coached a game (even a Spring Game), which ought to quiet the "RR was only disliked because he lost" argument. He was controversial from the beginning, and the fact that the January '08 haters correctly predicted he wouldn't work out doesn't make them right about everything (spread works just fine in the B1G (damn you Urban), Braylon should not be the voice of Michigan football, "Michigan Man" is a bonus but doesn't make you a good coach / lack of Michigan history doesn't make a bad coach). The worst thing about RR was his record - the second worst was that his failure empowered the crowd that got Hoke hired.
January 9th, 2018 at 10:29 PM ^
Like many people and the national media in the weeks leading up to the Harbaugh hire, it seems clear to me that you completely don’t understand what the term “Michigan Man” means.
Being a Michigan Man is about having the mindset as a leader (head coach in this example) that values hard work and achievements in the classroom and on the field, values the tradition this program and university holds, does not overlook the rivalries, values functioning as a team, determination to achieve goals, and overall understands the established culture of this program.
The term “Michigan Man” has absolutely nothing to do with origin. Being a Michigan Alumn or being from the state has NOTHING to do with being a “Michigan Man”. The original and most famous Michigan Man of all was from Ohio, of all places, having essentially nothing to do with this school until Canham hired him. Harbaugh being a Michigan Man has nothing to do with his earlier connections in his life to this school. It is not literal like that, it is a term that describes a way of life.
It is a mindset that Rich Rod didn’t have and never had from the beginning. It was clear with everything he ever said that he just didn’t fit here.
Brady Hoke is a Michigan Man, he understood this mindset unlike RR. He was also just an incredibly incompetent football coach, and that’s the reason behind his massive failure.
January 9th, 2018 at 11:30 PM ^
January 10th, 2018 at 12:27 AM ^
Point taken.
Dave Brandon can make anyone look like a Michigan Man....
January 9th, 2018 at 8:33 PM ^
for Michigan football. It may take a while for Harbaugh to turn this mess around. But after waiting through the RR and Hoke years, I'm willing to give Harbaugh 3 to 5 more years to get us back to being legitimate B1G competitors and possible playoff contention.
January 9th, 2018 at 8:42 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 8:33 PM ^
who see the spread as the "modern era" of college football. Rodriguez was proclaimed by them to be the future of Michigan football. The messiah who'd lift Michigan up from it's man ball fallacy and lead it to the promised land. That formed the foundation for the "soft spot" and the basis for all there reasons that he wasn't given a "fair" chance. Well folks, life ain't fair and he was a very bad fit for Michigan.
I do think that he either misunderstood his mission statement, or the people gave it to him poorly understood Michigan football and where it was in its progression.He took over a winning program that wasn't performing to expectations and threw away virtually all the aspects of the program that provided its strength. Maybe his charter was out with the old and in with the new, but that charter still expected him to win during the transition.
Now there are allegations of heinous behavior and harassment of at least one female employee who reported to him. That's he said she said at this point, but if those allegation hold up in court, then he wasn't just a bad fit at Michigan, he is a despicable human being and Michigan is damn lucky that the entrenched folks in the program prevented him from feeling like he could pull such crap here.
January 9th, 2018 at 8:46 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 8:59 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 10:41 PM ^
Also, the worse season record in 46 years during his first season in 2008. It was last done by Bump in 1962 when he only won 2 games.
January 10th, 2018 at 1:50 AM ^