This is the end
Jim Morrison wasn't writing about the Rich Rodriguez era of Michigan football, but he might as well have been.*If you've been keeping score in bed the last two weeks you've witnessed:
*Our allegedly business savvy and smarter than the average bear athletics director*mystifyingly leaving his head coach hanging out to dry in public at every opportunity*during the most vital time of the recruiting season.*
*Said coach then using*the football bust to all but publicly plea for his job if the numerous accounts I have read from those who were there are to be believed.
*What I'm sure*is the first (and hopefully last for the love of all that is holy) time that a Josh Groban ballad has ever been played at a football event.
*The potential loss of easily the most celebrated recruit in what so far, according to the recruiting experts (I know, substitute you're favorite oxymoron here), is the lowest ranked recruiting class most of us can remember.
At the rate this is circling the drain,*losing 37-7 to Ohio State will be the highlight of the last two weeks. Tom Goss called, and he doesn't necessarily think being a genius in business automatically makes you a wunderkind as an AD. Bill Martin is*so stressed out by this mess he's going windsurfing because it looks he picked the wrong day to give up smoking.
Brandon got a lot of deserved praise for how he handled the NCAA matter, but it's a lot easier cleaning up someone else's mess than it is cleaning up your own.
I've covered high level college sports up close for a decade so I've seen my share of dysfunctional*coaching situations. For the last five years I've also covered and analyzed national politics for national media outlets and one of the top 15 news talk radio stations in the United States of America with access to*Congressmen, Senators, and numerous presidential candidates.*I've seen people with supposedly impeccable credentials and vast resources who looked like they were immune to meltdowns pull out the figurative gun and shoot themselves in the foot because they were too smart by a half.
This is beginning to look a lot like that.
For once the current worrisome message board zeitgeist is well-founded if you ask me. If you're going to retain a coach, this is an awfully awkward way of doing it. Turning him into a hanging chad in front of the media and a karaoke crooner in front of his boosters and alumni*isn't a good way to set him up*for future success as your standard-bearer, but it*is a good way to make yourself look like someone that other coaches in the industry might not want to work for. If you're going to let a coach go, there are more dignified and efficient ways of doing so.
People have been comparing this to the Les Miles fiasco of 2007, which I don't agree with because*that is totally unfair to 2007. Our program is not as strong today as it was three years ago, so any similar type fiasco is prone to cause much more lasting damage.
For the first time I might actually side with those on this board who have said they wouldn't fault Rodriguez for just getting the h-e-double-hockey sticks out of town on his own accord. He's certainly responsible for his record, but he's not responsible for the uncertainty that continues to cause calamity in his program.
Brandon alone is accountable for that, and with each passing day he allows this college football version of a cliched reality show to go on it raises the expectation level for him to eventually show us he really is the proverbial sinister master mind who had it all figured out all along. Whoever Brandon ends up letting coach*this team in 2011, and at this point I would be shocked if it's Rodriguez, better end being*Bo Schembechler reincarnated.
There are moments in leadership when you set the tone for the remainder of your term. This is that moment for Brandon.
But I'll give him "credit" for this, in a backassward way he's managed to unite a Michigan fan base divided over what to do with Rodriguez because regardless of where you come down on that question no one wants to see this happen to the Michigan brand.
