The Rest of College Football

[Jamie H]

Yes I am. Good f'ing grief, I can't remember a man getting so many excuses for why he was a complete failure.

He was undercut by certain people
He wasn't given enough time
The cupboard was bare
He wasn't given enough money for coordinators
And on and on and on.

I'm tired of all of the lame excuses. All I saw out of 3 years of Rodriguez were HORRIBLY coached teams who had no concept of basic fundamentals like ball security, tons of idiotic penalties, complete chaos on defenses that looked more confused than a poor high school team, absolutely no adjustments to what the opposition was doing, special teams that couldn't have been worse if you had randomly pulled FG kickers from the stands on every kick, and just general dipshittery that you expect at a place like Indiana or Minnesota, not at Michigan.

The man was an utter, unmitigated failure. He is probably the worst coach in Michigan history, and may remain so forever. And he's gone. All the excuses for him are lame. There IS no excuse. He sucked, and I couldn't be happier that he is gone forever.

[Jamie H]

As for Carr, tarring and feathering him based on a bunch of innuendo is bullshit. He is a Hall of Fame coach, and the only Michigan coach to win a national title in the last 50 years. He was far from a perfect coach, but the idea that Michigan fans are crapping on Carr while defending Rodriguez is just mind-boggling to me.

Carr is the 3rd winningest coach in Michigan history. He was the first UM coach to win 4 consecutive bowl games '98-'01. While he certainly struggled in the latter years against OSU, he dominated Penn State (9-2) and Sparty (10-3). His actions off the field speak just as loudly with all the work he puts in for Mott's Children's Hospital, the Special Olympics and the United Way.

He was a great coach for Michigan for 27 years. If people want to dump on him for a bunch of innuendo and conjecture, I think that is horseshit. Think about that. Carr was here for 27 years. I can't even imagine working at one place for 27 years. And yet people want to defend Rodriguez, who was here for 3 with nothing but negative results.

I refuse to buy into all of the Lloyd Carr hate and speculation about how he "undercut" Rodriguez. Rodriguez was given one of the best jobs in college football and f'ed it up. Blaming Carr for the failure of Rodriguez is ridiculous, as one year of Brady Hoke has shown us. Amazing how with the changing of a coaching staff a team goes from being the keystone cops to being a solid team huh?

[hardtimesjake97]

Rod teams tackled poorly, committed foolish penalties and for the most part beat themselves. Rich Rodriguez is a great offensive mind but a bad coach, kind of like Norv Turner. But Rod DID give us some great kids, he really did so I'll slightly forgive him for not being able to really get much out of them.

Lloyd Carr's teams never did the stuff Rod teams did. But there was no doubt in my mind and there isn't today that Lloyd Carr was pretty tired of coaching when he walked away and for a year or 2 prior to that. Not that there's anything wrong with that either, no matter how much anybody loves their job there's always a time to walk away. Unfortunately nobody wanted one of his guys to get the job at the time and to be fair, there wasn't really one of his guys that really had the experience to take over yet. I don't think Debord would have done any better than Rod did. Hoke probably would have but how were we to know? I wanted Ron English to get the job and he is gonna be a burr in our saddle someday but hey greatness breeds greatness. I can deal with that, Woody Hayes did. (Hate him all you want but he made a coach for Michigan THE coach for Michigan).

[hack]

He did suck. But it doesn't take Stephen Hawking to figure out that he would have sucked less if he got the support and budget Hoke has. In the end, it probably worked out for the best in this particular instance that Ann Arbor has so many ``Michigan Men'' who fail to live up to all of the things that moniker supposedly means, because it made RR's time here short.

[Jamie H]

Rodriguez should have gotten more support. But, outside of the one book, we really don't know exactly what did or didn't happen between Rodriguez and others that might have precipitated the problems. Maybe Rodriguez did stuff to rub people the wrong way? Or maybe he did nothing and was done in by people pissed that he was hired.

I don't buy the staff compensation thing though. Carr didn't have a big budget for his staff and seemed to do ok. He never had amazing coordinators, but he never had the disaster that Rodriguez did.

Oh, and Ron English is looking like a hell of a coach at Eastern. Given everything that has happened, we probably would have been better off getting him in 2008 than Rodriguez, though people would have blown a gasket if that had happened.

[WM Wolverine]

Martin, the penny pincher, didn't allow RR to hire who he wanted as coordinators and had to settle for less than WV/Big East quality coaches/coordinators. I had dreams of an all-star coaching staff supporting RR but because of Martin, RR was left with his buddies from WV who made a fraction of what M's competitors in the SEC and in Ohio were paying...

Casteel being brought aboard (it was a money issue apparently as there were negotiations between M and his agent) was one very critical mistake outside of RR's control...

Its difficult to quantify how much practice gate hurt RR's ability to succeed here but it was a factor, even if it was a small one. It certainly was very wearing for both RR and the team mentally in '10...

Lack of support by Carr and DB was another example, I thought it would've really helped the '11 recruiting class if these guys would've said anything. Even if I were DB and going to fire him after the season, don't you give your coach support publicly anyway? There was absolutely zero recruiting momentum after M lost to Ohio in '10. Tons of top recruits starting to drop M and commit to the competition. This in the end hurt Hoke and M more than it hurt RR.

[Chuck Mallory]

I wanted English in 08 as well. Less attrition and less fall off would of happened.

I for one think the same today as I always have about LC. Great Michigan coach, great leader, great man...personally, my all-time favorite.

And yes, Carr probably should of did a little more for Rich Rod. But we don't know the whole story behind it and I'm not gonna let some book make my judgement on the man.

[Hannibal]

Thank God we didn't hire Ron English. He would have been better than RichRod, but still a bad long term choice and much harder to get rid of.

[Chuck Mallory]

I think one reason the recruiting momentum waned b/c every recruit in the country saw how shitty our defense was and Michigan wasn't doing anything about it. What defensive recruit wants to come play for that?

[Chuck Mallory]

Hanni, just curious, but why do you think English would of been such a bad long term decision? I do know that he is a players coach as well and defensive players loved playing for him.

[Hannibal]

Dave Brandon should be publicly flogged for the way that he let the program twist in the wind for six weeks after the OSU game.

[Hannibal]

Hanni, just curious, but why do you think English would of been such a bad long term decision? I do know that he is a players coach as well and defensive players loved playing for him.

Personally, I think that he was a lousy defensive coordinator. He looked like a genius for 11 games when he had a defense bursting at the seams with NFL talent. But then he got exposed painfully and he was ultimately the architect of the defense that got shredded by Armanti Edwards. That was part of a string of four games in which the Michigan defense allowed 28+ points in a half.

[iam416]

Dave Brandon should be publicly flogged for the way that he let the program twist in the wind for six weeks after the OSU game.

His problem was he wanted Harbaugh. So he had to wait. Which works ok, if you get Harbaugh. As it turns out, he could have hired Hoke within a week of the OSU game and had him hit the ground running -- instead of robbing him and his staff of 3 OV weekends.

[Chuck Mallory]

Fair enough, although those were 4 very good teams with excellent offenses.

[Hannibal]

His problem was he wanted Harbaugh. So he had to wait. Which works ok, if you get Harbaugh. As it turns out, he could have hired Hoke within a week of the OSU game and had him hit the ground running -- instead of robbing him and his staff of 3 OV weekends.

He didn't have to wait for Harbaugh. Texas didn't wait for Mack Brown. Notre Dame didn't wait for Brian Kelly. Texas A&M didn't wait for Kevin Sumlin. LSU didn't wait for Nick Saban. He could have and should have forced Harbaugh to commit one way or the other. Imagine how much different OSU's 2012 recruiting class looks with Meyer instead of an interim Fickell.

The assumption that he wanted Harbaugh from the get-go isn't even a lock. Supposedly, Rodriguez almost begged his way back into the job after the bowl fiasco. That means that a decision hadn't even been made. All of the publicly available information about the coaching search process indicates that Brandon never had a grand secret strategy or a handshake deal for Harbaugh.