Rodriguez to Michigan: A Moment Rich In Irony

How interesting it is that one year after Rich Rodriguez had a foot in the door at Alabama, the West Virginia mastermind would leave Morgantown to become the Wolverines' next head coach. The arrival of the new boss in Ann Arbor must be met with a healthy sense of irony.

Remember how life was in West Virginia one year ago? As was the case with Les Miles in relationship to the Michigan job over the past few weeks, national reports from major news outlets had Rodriguez going to Tuscaloosa before Nick Saban finally filled the void at the Capstone. For a few short hours, the words "done deal" were reportedly true, only to be proven false shortly thereafter. (Sound familiar, anyone?) Rodriguez ultimately left Alabama at the altar, but in an era when premarital relations are considered a given in America, there's no denying that a steamy courtship nevertheless preceded the cancellation of the wedding in Tuscaloosa. Coach and program romanced each other pretty seriously for awhile. Rodriguez--whose public statements contradicted many, though not all, of his actions--saved face and preserved some degree of credibility by staying at his alma mater. Had Rodriguez bolted for Bama, he would have joined the ranks of the A-list liars who make this time of year so distasteful.

What makes Rodriguez's decision to go to Michigan so interesting is that the path followed by West Virginia's ex-coach (ironically endorsed by Mountaineer coaching legend Don Nehlen, a Bo Schembechler disciple) is oh-so-similar to the journey taken by the man who can now breathe easy in Baton Rouge: Les Miles. Rodriguez did more than fill the vacancy at one of the premier jobs in all of college sports; he thankfully put to rest this exhausting and bewildering saga involving the Michigan man who remained in Louisiana.

A year after Nick Saban finally did take the Alabama job--the same job Rodriguez almost accepted--it was quite ironic to see Miles, Saban's newfound rival at LSU, dance with destiny around the time of the SEC Championship Game. That premarital courtship--say what you want about the exact details--evidently reached a point of appreciable intensity somewhere along the line. Miles hemmed and hawed, and after signing a new contract with the Bayou Bengals, he insulted the intelligence of journalists everywhere by saying this about a phone conversation he had with Michigan officials: "I was doing nothing more than helping them with their search for a football coach, just as any loyal alumnus might do. It was nothing more than that."

That statement didn't insult journalists because it turned out to be true; no, that statement was so utterly asinine because the memory of Nick Saban's Alabama odyssey, combined with Miles's well-known fondness for Michigan, created an environment in which any contact between Miles and Michigan was going to be pounced on. Miles played ball behind the scenes and tried to keep a secret affair under wraps, but when exposed to a certain degree, the LSU coach--who was very close to coming to Michigan--suddenly got all huffy and proclaimed how embarrassed he was. Then, a week and a half after that crazy SEC Championship Saturday when all hell broke loose, there was Miles talking to Michigan and passing it off as--no joke--altruism. Imagine that.

In his messy Macarena with Michigan, Miles revealed that--as is the case on the football field--he's basically sincere and refreshingly blunt, but astonishingly stupid as well. Like Rich Rodriguez one year ago, Miles ultimately preserved a basic measure of credibility but still came away with a scarred reputation. Miles--like Rodriguez--showed himself to be far better than Saban and that other serial liar, Bobby Petrino, but the LSU coach nevertheless showed why the college coaching business (in football or in basketball) is such a sorry and sordid realm that often feels like a gambling racket. Now that the Miles saga is finally over, courtesy of Rodriguez, it's worth catching your breath and reflecting on what the college coaching business (in football and basketball) has been reduced to.

Rich Rodriguez ultimately preserved his credibility on a certain level last December, much as Les Miles preserved his. But with that said, it would be dishonest--and quite laughable, as a matter of fact--to say that Michigan's new coach and Michigan's almost-coach are pillars of integrity within the coaching profession. Rodriguez and Miles are merely not as bad as the real snakes in this business.

It's commendable that they told more truths than a number of their colleagues did, but let's not use that fact to then praise Rodriguez and Miles from the rooftops, as though they are god-like figures who have the right to boast about how truthful they were. The necessary tonic for all college sports fans is to do just the opposite: people who care about collegiate athletics need to stop treating these coaches like messiahs. Removing hero worship from the equation--and school colors from one's glasses--will enable fans to see the world with a clarity and sobriety that have been absent from the college coaching carousel (football or hoops) for a long, long time. It can't be stressed often enough: coaches finally need to be held to higher moral and ethical standards, even if prevailing market forces and cultural pressures seem far too overwhelming for anything to change in this profession.

With respect to Rich Rodriguez, West Virginia got used and abused, plain and simple. One year ago, West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin intervened with some university donors to sweeten Rodriguez's financial package and keep the WVU alum from bolting to Bama. Rodriguez never got caught in the great lie told by the likes of a Saban or a Petrino, but that still doesn't mean Michigan's newly-minted coach revealed the best behavior possible. Rodriguez emotionally expressed his loyalty to West Virginia a year ago at this time, but twelve short months later, that loyalty evaporated. Governor Manchin, university boosters, and a wounded state that lives and dies with its football team were never betrayed in a specifically technical sense, but they were certainly lied to on an emotional level. Rodriguez never soiled his reputation the way Saban or Petrino have done in recent years, but Michigan's new head coach nevertheless wrote a familiar story in a dreary moral landscape. One year's loyalty to the ol' Alma Mater was just a prelude to the next year's dash for increased glamour and stature. The West Virginia native and alum--in the midst of a successful tenure in Morgantown--felt precious little connection to a school and state that are left to deal with the pronounced emotional fallout caused by his departure. Rich Rodriguez isn't quite a snake, but he's certainly no saint.

The same can be said for Les Miles, even though--true to his word--the Michigan alumnus will certainly remain the LSU coach for 2008.

Miles's statements were more truthful than a lot of pundits were willing to believe, but with that said, let's spare the righteous indignation on the part of Miles loyalists or anyone else who is always quick to rip the press in situations like this. Yes, there were premature reports made about Miles's job status at Michigan (much as there were premature reports about Rodriguez going to Alabama a year ago). Yes, journalists still have a problem with getting stories right, all because they're much too worried about getting stories first. Yes, the profession of journalism has its own serious internal conflicts to resolve. However, none of this even begins to justify what has become of the coaching profession and its achingly awful December carousels that throw ethics into the gutter.

Les Miles--while better than some of his rival coaches in the SEC West, and more truthful than a lot of people gave him credit for over the past few weeks--is nevertheless a primary example of the collegiate coaching business at its worst. The world of collegiate coaching is such a corrupt enterprise because coaches will always maximize their leverage in times of success, but will (almost) never take pay cuts in moments of failure. Leverage--for college coaches--always deserves to be increased, but somehow can never be reduced. How utterly convenient, eh? This sense of entitlement--which spun out of control a long time ago--is what enables men like Miles to play politics behind the scenes but then make the typical public statements about loyalty, integrity and honor.

These public statements from coaches, often made with more than a little defiant anger (as was the case with Miles just hours before the SEC title game against Tennessee on Dec. 1), are tiresome--and, instructively, hard to accept at face value--precisely because they substantially if not completely contradict private actions in which power, wealth and prestige are so ravenously sought. Miles--like Rodriguez--was never caught in the great (Saban/Petrino) lie, but LSU's coach is certainly no angel. He only looks good in comparison with the orchestrators of intrigue at Alabama and Arkansas. Miles is a classic moral and ethical victim of the "cry wolf" tale: he was somewhat disingenuous with his private actions, so when he did tell the truth in public, it was hard for rational observers to fully believe him. Rich Rodriguez never told the great lie himself, but the fact still stands that a lot of his public pronouncements didn't mean a whole lot to West Virginia fans in the end. The man Michigan got, just like the man Michigan nearly obtained, preserved some credibility in this process, but surely not enough to create a glowing ethical reputation.

The instructive postscript to this whole soap opera--now that Michigan finally has its man and the college coaching carousel is winding down--concerns West Virginia, but not in the way you might be thinking of.

Reports of this event are unfailingly reminding Americans of the fact that Michigan has now hired its football and basketball coaches from West Virginia. John Beilein left Morgantown to coach hoops in Ann Arbor, and now Rich Rodriguez will succeed Lloyd Carr at the Big House. Okay, okay. Nice little connection there. We get it. But what should really stand out in the wake of this development, especially for the wounded folks in West Virginia who care so deeply about their beloved Mountaineers, is that one sport's abuse victim is (or can be) another sport's abuser. This simple yet undeniable reality is, in many ways, the core evil at the heart of the college coaching game, a cutthroat process in which many human beings get treated very poorly, especially the kids who are left to sift through the emotional wreckage. (Note to NCAA President Myles Brand: Can we finally institute a rule which gives collegiate athletes just as much freedom of movement as coaches? Players should not have to sit out a year if they transfer--what message does it send to allow coaches to snag new jobs, while young kids have to stay on the sidelines for a whole season? Enough already.)

West Virginia, you see, while victimized by the viciousness of the coaching carousel in both football and basketball, was nevertheless a willing participant in the wounding of another university and its own athletic community.

Yes, the Mountaineers were backstabbed in basketball when Beilein, the former WVU hoops coach, tried to weasel out of a full buyout payment before arriving at a settlement last spring. The abrupt yet messy departure--a typical leverage-enhancing cash grab by a coach on the rise--left West Virginia's basketball program in the lurch. A state that so closely identifies itself with the success of its sports teams got stomach punched, just as it did yesterday when Rodriguez moved to Michigan.

But once Beilein left, West Virginia--ironically, doing what Michigan didn't manage to pull off with Les Miles--brought home an alumnus as its next basketball coach. The move was good for the won-loss record of the program, but tell the good people of Manhattan, Kan., how good it was for West Virginia to be on the giving end of a cutthroat move, and not the receiving end.

Bob Huggins was a disgraced man after his drunken and wayward behavior brought shame upon his life and the Cincinnati program he coached for years (all while presiding over a basketball factory that witnessed disgustingly low graduation rates). Huggins was an individual in desperate search of a fresh start for his stained career, a figure brought low by bad decisions who--as a "homeless" coach--needed a college basketball equivalent of a compassionate housing program. Kansas State University gave Huggins his chance, rescuing the humiliated coach in his hour of despair.

But forget about loyalty to the doer of a good deed. When Huggins watched West Virginia's basketball coach make a Beilein for Ann Arbor, the Morgantown native and WVU alum bolted for Appalachia. In the kind of move that would make Dennis Erickson proud (the nomadic Erickson used Idaho as a one-year pit stop to revive his own flagging career in 2006 before rushing to Arizona State), Huggins dashed up to Morgantown and left Wildcat fans in a (Kansas) State of shock. Sure, Huggins didn't get caught in the great lie, but the lack of loyalty to a place that saved his very career was a betrayal that registered on the Richter Scale. West Virginia has had to endure the antics of John Beilein and now Rich Rodriguez, but the Mountaineers aren't 100-percent victim in this business. Bob Huggins is a reminder of that reality. Everyone, sooner or later, gets emotionally and situationally ambushed by the ins and outs of the college coaching carousel, in both football and basketball. The years come and go, but young athletes and eager fans always get the shaft. When one considers how poorly human beings are treated in this business, it's no wonder that all sense of perspective has been lost throughout the collegiate sports industry. West Virginia fans can't be blamed for wanting the next big hire--even if it is a Bob Huggins--only because they got betrayed just hours earlier by a John Beilein or a Rich Rodriguez. Such is the nature of a beast that consumes not only dollars, but the ethics and morals of the men who sell their souls each year to the coaching devil.

It doesn't have to be this way. College football and basketball coaches can wait until certain points in time before pursuing jobs they're interested in. Moreover, coaches can be open and honest about the process instead of making premature or overly grand proclamations about their loyalty to a school... proclamations that become disingenuous when the next great job comes along just a year later, as was the case for Rich Rodriguez and, for that matter, Bob Huggins. It's not shameful to want more money or power; it's shameful to want more money and power when one's behavior or job performance demand a little humility. It's not shameful to be interested in a bigger or more coveted job; it's only shameful to publicly claim a lack of interest in a job when private actions so clearly reveal a different mindset or agenda. It's not shameful to tell the truth in public, but it is shameful to tell the truth in public after being less than fully honest or forthcoming in private. It's not shameful to play things close to the vest and hide some of your moves or motives, but it is shameful to display inconsistency in pursuit of a coaching job, and then lecture everyone about how stupid they were to have doubted your truthfulness at previous points in time.

So while one hopes that the NCAA will finally give athletes the same freedom of movement (without sanction) that coaches currently enjoy, one can only hope that college sports fans--at Michigan, West Virginia, and everywhere else--will finally remove their blinders... if they hadn't been removed a long time ago. A healthy dose of irony--which runs throughout the Rich Rodriguez story and other coaching dramas that mirrored it--needs to create an equally healthy dose of skepticism among the nation's college sports fans. If the people who pay good money to watch big-time sports finally treat coaches as moral beings and not as otherworldly messiah figures, we might see some sanity in the worlds of college football and basketball. This might mean thousands more empty seats in stadiums and arenas, as people realize they don't have to feed this runaway beast, but it might also translate into smaller coaching salaries which, in turn, will reduce the amount of ugly power grabs that always seem to crop up at this time of year.

Rich Rodriguez merely continued an all-too-familiar pattern in the college coaching business, but his hire at Michigan--and all the unseemly realities that attended it--might usher in a new appreciation for the corrupt nature of the college sports industry. One can only hope.