Why did Brandon Fire Rich?
1. The record. I'm not going to list the details we all know, and pile on. But it obviously wasn't good. Was that the primary, or overriding factor?
2. The atmosphere around the program. Fans, alumni unhappy, media circling, national perception. Had it just gotten to the point that it had all gotten so ugly, that it didn't seem like there was enough momentum to turn it around, or fight through it?
3. The other 95%. Brandon says the W-L and the stuff we saw was only a small part; so he did like the whole picture?Maybe he didn't like either the state of the program, the talent level, or what he saw behind the scenes; whether in practice, or in interactions with players, staff, the department, the public. Everything seemed like it was good, but was Brandon saying he was seeing stuff we can't? Because if he thought 2 and 3 were great, wouldn't he put up with #1 against all fan pressure?
It's surely some combo of any number of things, but now that we've had a day away from it, we can consider why it didn't work, and why Brandon came to the conclusion he did (whether you agree with it or not).
January 6th, 2011 at 12:14 PM ^
and I think DB asked RR : "What are you going to do about it?"
And RR said, "Give me more time - just wait."
DB: "For what? What is the plan? Personnel changes? Philosophy changes? New recuiting goals? What?"
RR: "You'll see - it will all work out - just need more time."
Poor performance + No Plan = Canned in any profession.
January 6th, 2011 at 2:08 PM ^
More like this
RR: "Give me more time"
DB: "For what?"
RR: "Well Dave since I was handed a bunch of players that couldn't start by their junior and senior years, I still have rebuilding to do. Have you noticed how young our team is compared to other teams in college football that are successful?"
DB: "But shouldn't you have a good team by year 3? I mean that gives you a chance to have your own true seniors and redshirt juniors playin, right?"
RR: "Dave you do know that not every recruit pans out. This should have been evident by the roster I was left from the previous coaching regime. Do you see how many players from the previous coaching staff are contributing at this time? So you expect me to rebuild the team by year 3 when I am relying on mostly freshman and sophomores. Do you not realize how crazy that is?"
DB: "But Jim Harbaugh had 8 wins in his 3rd year at Stanford! Stanford! They do not have the prestige that Michigan has, Rich!"
RR: "Harbaugh had a roster loaded with upperclassmen by his 3rd year. Prestige doesn't win games anymore Mr. Brandon, join the new age of college football and realize that you need experience and depth to win. Harbaugh had experience and depth at Stanford because his previous coaches produced players who could contrubute and had talent. Do you want to name the players that Mr Carr left to help make this program a winner by year 3?
DB: ".... well umm you should just win you're at Michigan! Who cares if you are starting mostly freshman and sophomores. It's all about results, there is no such thing as valid reasons why this team isn't in the top 25, you are at Michigan!"
RR: (facepalm)
January 6th, 2011 at 2:51 PM ^
You're not Athletic Director...
January 6th, 2011 at 12:20 PM ^
Inside a College-Football Tragicomedy
Thoughts on the Stormy Tenure of Michigan Coach Rich Rodriguez From a Writer Who Was There
"When Michigan's 63-year-old head coach, Lloyd Carr, announced his retirement in 2007 after 13 seasons, athletic director Bill Martin seemed genuinely surprised. At the outset of a monthlong search for his successor, ESPN reported what just about everyone suspected: former U-M player and assistant Les Miles, who was about to lead Louisiana State to a national title, would succeed Mr. Carr.
But contrary to popular belief and published reports, Michigan never tried to contact Mr. Miles, and his calls to Ann Arbor went unreturned.(Mr. Martin, who's now chairman of Bank of Ann Arbor, said Wednesday that he had been traveling in search of a coach.) Mr. Martin instead offered the position to Rutgers' Greg Schiano, who turned Michigan down..."
January 6th, 2011 at 12:44 PM ^
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704723104576062163140431804.html
Bacon article: "UM never called Miles in 2007"
Very insightful stuff, besides that. Sorry if posted already.
edit: just missed it
January 6th, 2011 at 12:35 PM ^
Because rr's teams weren't good; because most fans, media, alumni, students didn't like him; because even players were turning against him; because he stubbornly refused to change; because he knew nothing about defense; because we're on probation; because RR didn't recruit well enough; because of attrition, Feagin and Dorsey; because of the Groban fiasco. But most because of the first one.
January 6th, 2011 at 12:42 PM ^
I'm sure this is all just part of the plan
January 6th, 2011 at 12:46 PM ^
http://www.grandhaventribune.com/paid/303240878681939.bsp
Through various social networking tools, Haynes is connected with a huge group of fellow former Wolverines. He said they're all in agreement when it comes to Rich Rodriguez, who was fired as Michigan's head football coach on Wednesday — it was time for Rich Rod to go.
January 6th, 2011 at 1:35 PM ^
RR did not have anyone around to explain to him what he needed to do and who he needed to connect with and how so that he could garner the crucial support of the former players and the alumni. Martin and Coleman went out and did their search without consulting these people and then tossed RR into the melee without guidance or back-up.
Again, our real problems started on a November day in 2006 right before we played OSU with them no. 1 and us no. 2 and the football coach emeritus at the U died of a heart attack.
Truly, we have seen nothing but horrors since that day!!!!!
Bo, now would be a great time to appear in DB's dreams at night and tell him what to do!!!!
January 6th, 2011 at 1:05 PM ^
the team that played Utah in August, 2008 was very bad and started Nick Sheridan, but would have probably beaten the team that just played Mississippi State a week ago.
January 6th, 2011 at 1:10 PM ^
really believe this?
January 6th, 2011 at 1:20 PM ^
please cite your evidence to the contrary.
January 6th, 2011 at 1:21 PM ^
That's kind of backwards.
January 6th, 2011 at 1:43 PM ^
I could maaayybee see an argument that the 08 team would perform better in that one game, but to say they would have won the game?
going into it, I'd take the team with Denard and the better offense 100 times out of 100. Even though the 08 D was better, no way they score enough points.
January 6th, 2011 at 1:17 PM ^
The sole reason that Rich Rodriguez lost his job is because he failed in an area of his job where he had zero leeway, recruiting defensive backs. You can't have two entire classes have no corner backs. He appeared to learn his lesson about depth the year before he came, where he began insisting we have 2 or 3 quarterbacks ready to play. The same amount of care was not placed to recruiting defensive backs, where we lost about as many as we have on the team. While there were other factors at play, such as the failure to get the offensive line up to snuff, the horrible execution, these could have been over looked and later on fixed if our entire defensive did not fall apart due to the lack of athletes in the 5 deep.
January 6th, 2011 at 2:02 PM ^
No Rich Rodriguez is not the sole reason that Michigan has bad defensive talent or even the biggest reason why. Rich Rod can only rebuild so many positions at once. He has started to establish depth through his 2 and a half recruiting classes. He was left with so many holes to fill that when he lost a few of his recruits it made the situation a disaster.
Why was it such a disaster since most programs do experience player loss? Well take a look at the two deep that RR inherited at Michigan. Sure he had some older players that were talented but the probelm was the depth. RR was left with a very, very big problem. He had to reestablish depth at every position on the team and that task takes a very long time. By year 3 there was very little help from the previous coaching regime. No other college coach has to deal with that. Most coaches in America get to rely heavily upon their seniors and juniors but RR never had the ability to rely on upperclass players. This is an enormous fault of the previous coaching staff.
January 6th, 2011 at 2:05 PM ^
You should re-read my post, you reworded what I said and made your first paragraph based on that, and ignored my "had no leeway" caveat and made a second paragraph out of that.
January 6th, 2011 at 2:36 PM ^
Wrong. My first paragraph was explaining how Rich did not fail at recruiting defensive backs. You stated in your paragraph that he didn't place the same amount of care recruiting defensive backs as he did quarterbacks. To me that is placing blame on Rich for the secondary issues. My first paragraph was explaining that I don't believe Rich was at fault or in other words I believe he did put care into recruiting defensive backs. He simply had a lot of bad luck with defensive backs but I don't believe had he taken extra care he could have changed the circumstances. I shifted the blame to what I beleive was a problem created by the previous coaching staff.
My point in the second paragraph is that you can only recruit so many positions at once. Sure he could have oversigned defensive backs but that would have depleted the depth at other positions. I find it hard to say he took little care in improving the secondary, he was just given a very poor depth chart and little time to improve it. Add to that injuries and I see "RR caring about the secondary issue" as one of the least of his concerns on being fired. There was just little patience by DB and Michigan to allow RR to let his players mature and develop.
January 6th, 2011 at 1:34 PM ^
I sadly kind of wish that Brandon would have kept RichRod around, while dish out a good amount of money/control to a defensive coordinator. I am not seeing too many positive scenarios left that are possible..
January 6th, 2011 at 2:33 PM ^
I hope another coach is hired soon, so every thread on the board isn't 400 posts all discussing the same two or three topics.
January 6th, 2011 at 2:53 PM ^
You don't like combing through page after page to search for a message you posted this morning to see if there were any responses?
January 6th, 2011 at 2:56 PM ^
You need to adjust your settings.... ;-)
Now, if you don't like SCROLLING down down down down (or up up up)....I got nothin'.
January 6th, 2011 at 2:59 PM ^
Why is water wet?
January 6th, 2011 at 3:21 PM ^
All of the Above.
January 6th, 2011 at 3:23 PM ^
Did DB retain Fred JAckson, Chris Singletary and Mike Barwis? How does it work normally when the coach is fired? Does he fire everyone and rehire or simply retain some that he deems worthy to stay on during the transition?
January 6th, 2011 at 3:24 PM ^
When he said "we get ready for every game the same way" At first I brushed it off thinking it was ok because he probably was trying to keep the guys from overlooking other games. But I think this is where the problem would have been if we had kept him. We would never have done MSU and OSU in like we used to. Bo always said that he always had the team do something to prepare for OSU every single week of of the season, even if they didn't know it.
January 6th, 2011 at 3:30 PM ^
First, a little background so you know where I'm coming from:
The first Michigan game I ever watched was the 1969 M vs. tOSU. Since that day, I've been as loyal a Michigan fan as there ever was. Attended all the home games and some away during the five years I was attending the UM (grad. in 78). Lived through the agony of the 10-10 tie and "the vote". Attended the Orange bowl and two Rose Bowls with the Michigan Marching Band. Married to an M grad, and all three kids have gone there as well (one currently a sophomore).
So yes, I've been an M fan for a long time, but: I am not over 60, not a big donor to the UM, not a "wine and cheese", "down in front" alum. I consider myself (and my family) to be loyal fans who love the university and its traditions. The question is why RR was fired. Here is my take, as just a "regular" M alum and fan:
Although I was a bit surprised at the Rich Rod hire, I was totally sold on the whole "change" thing, and really pretty excited to see what he could do. I was also not expecting things to turn around immediately - the first season's record was hard to take, but we all felt that this was a year of "adjustment".
But as the last three years have unfolded, even though the wins category has improved a bit each year, I've seen some distressing trends with the team; it's hard to put a finger on exactly what has been happening, but I just kept thinking, "something's not right here ..."
1) Season regression: Whether they've started out a little weak, or strong, Michigan teams always have managed to improve over the season. Sometimes they've made great improvements, sometimes not so great. But there's always been an upward progression. These last three teams have actually gotten worse or stayed the same. Every year. What is up with that?
2) Weekly stagnation: From week to week, the team's performance really did not seem to improve. Don't they watch the films? Learn from their mistakes? "Get ready" for the next opponent's plays? Practice the basics ? ("it's all about the basics, the nuts and bolts of football: blocking and tackling" - Bo) Were the expectations not high enough?
3) Game regression: Within each individual game, the team's performance also seemed to deteriorate as the game goes on. Rather than learning from their mistakes, getting fired up, making adjustments, pushing harder, striving to win, more often than not they just continue to make more and more mistakes, until the end. The old "let's just shoot ourselves in the foot" syndrome. If we won, it always seemed like we were just lucky to win, rather than deserving of it, as the better team. Were they ever admonished to strive for excellence on every play? That is the Michigan tradition.
4) The play has been "streaky", i.e. one quarter they're great, the next they look like they don't know what's going on. Or worse yet - one or two plays are great (eg. DRob breaking open for 20 yards), but then we blow the gain with penalties. This used to happen once in a while over the past thirty years, but recently has become a consistent, sadly predictable problem. Is this a coaching problem? Are there personality issues that we don't know about?
5) It's been said that in practice, everything goes great - our kicker makes kicks, our passes are completed, etc., but for some reason, that just doesn't translate onto the field. Huh? What's wrong with this picture?
6) Rich Rod's response in post-game interviews was always "well, we just didn't execute". Yes. And why is that? Is it a player problem? A coaching problem? Did we need to bring in a sports psychologist to help the team? Whatever was needed, it wasn't happening.
Rich Rod seems like a nice guy - a good family man, cares about his players, active in the community, etc. etc. Maybe he "didn't fit in" right away with the M culture. But as many of you have already said, if he'd won more games, that wouldn't have mattered.
Something was just not right, and as head coach, it was ultimately his job to assess the situation and make the necessary corrections, adjustments, whatever ....
After three years, it had become obvious that whatever he was or wasn't doing was not effective. Things were at best, stagnating, at worst, unraveling.
That is why DB had no choice but to fire him. It was messy, but it's done now. And although we're in a bad situation, with no head coach at all and new rumors swirling by the minute, I still do love this University and have not given up hope for a great, new coach (whomever that might be), and a better season starting next fall.
GO BLUE! Beat the Broncos!
January 7th, 2011 at 12:52 AM ^
dave brandon, dave brandon, dave brandon. Michigan the Harvard of the Midwest.
January 7th, 2011 at 11:16 AM ^
and his teams played sloppy.