The Coach Springer Show

There’s a foul stench drifting down from Ann Arbor these days, and it has nothing to do with nearby Detroit. Take a deep breath. Can you smell it? It’s dirty laundry. Ripe, stinking, lost-in-the-back-of-your-locker dirty laundry. And it’s making me sick.

When Michigan hired Rich Rodriguez to be its next coach, we all knew big changes were afoot, though we expected them to revolve around the spread offense. Instead, we got the Jerry Springer Show.

In less than a month as coach, Rodriguez has managed to bring more melodrama to Ann Arbor than Gary Moeller after three cocktails. The headlines are relentless, and have nothing to do with football. I’ve now read more than I care to about bad blood between Rodriguez and his former university, the meddling (or not) of West Virginia’s governor in the affair, lawsuits over buyout clauses, and recently released email squabbling between the university and Rodriguez’s agent.

Rodriguez’s agent? Here’s a challenge, Michigan fans: name a story—any story at all—in the last thirteen years that discussed Lloyd Carr’s agent.

Yes, things have changed in Ann Arbor.

As a Buckeye fan, I view these changes with a sad and wary eye. In the long, storied history of our rivalry with Michigan, we’re used to having coaches on both sides focus on just two things: honoring tradition and winning football games. Sure, there are occasional controversies. Sometimes a player just needs to get in a bar fight or solicit a prostitute after class. Sometimes a spectator feels the urge to light an opponent’s car on fire. These things happen in a sport featuring prima donna athletes and lunatic fans. But our coaches? They remain above the fray.

I can think of two exceptions, and both led to the termination of the coaches involved: Gary Moeller nipping a little too much grandma’s cough medicine and chewing out a cop, and Woody Hayes punching a kid in the throat. Okay, that last one was pretty bad, but at least Woody was trying to fire up his team when it happened. If anything, he went down because he loved the game too much.

What’s at the heart of the Rodriguez controversy? Money and power struggles. Petty things. Things that sound ugly and out of place for a man now serving as custodian of one of the nation’s greatest football traditions.

To be fair, all of the controversy stems from Rodriguez’s tenure at West Virginia, and has nothing to do with his new job at Michigan. Nor is he necessarily to blame for all the bad press. For all I know, West Virginia is run by crazy, spiteful, petty people who just want to bring a good man down and will conjure up any story to do it, knowing the press will leap on it like a Michael Vick pit bull on a three-legged cat. That’s beside the point. The stories are out there, and they’re distracting.

Where are the stories about what Rodriguez is doing at Michigan? How is he building his team to replace the enormous loss of talent to the NFL? How is he reaching out to returning players? How will he tweak both his program and his offense to get the best fit? How is he endearing himself to the Wolverine nation?

Unfortunately, only one article concerning Rodriguez’s actual job in Ann Arbor has made headlines. Know what it was about?

His salary.

So now, all we really know about Rich Rodriguez as head coach of Michigan is that for the next six years he’ll be making $2.5 million per year—a million more than Carr, who maybe should have had a better agent.

That’s some really expensive laundry to have stinking up the back of a locker. I hope someone gets that cleaned up real fast.