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It’s no surprise that many Michigan football fans are up in arms this week. After it had appeared that the Wolverines had turned the proverbial corner, both on the football field and in the in-state rivalry vs. MSU, the team squandered the good faith of Big Ten Week 1 by losing to the Spartans after entering as a three-score favorite.
The aftermath has seen a lot of fans taking to social media proclaiming that it’s head coach Jim Harbaugh’s time to go.
However, Harbaugh does have one unlikely ally in his corner at the moment: former Michigan head coach Rich Rodriguez.
A hot hire back at the culmination of the 2007 regular season, Rodriguez struggled to gain any kind of footing in Ann Arbor, having gone 3-9 in 2008, 5-7 in 2009 and 7-6 in 2010. Hearing the uproar from the fans as well as the national media, Rodriguez is more than a little familiar with those sentiments in a job like Michigan.
But, the way he sees it, the issues that Michigan faces aren’t a Jim Harbaugh problem, they’re deeper than that. He explained on his Hard Edge Podcast:
“Boy, I have a lot of thoughts – I wonder why!” Rodriguez said. “Something wasn’t a surprise, and Michigan was a three-touchdown favorite. I don’t think the homefield has anything to do with it – there’s no fans at the game, anyway. But, despite maybe what many fans may be saying or people that follow college football, I do not think Michigan has a coach problem! It’s not a coach problem. It’s different than that.”
He continued, speaking more on why it’s not a Harbaugh issue:
“He’s 48-18 going into that game, he’s won a lot of games,” Rodriguez said. “Certainly he’s had struggles against Ohio State – who hasn’t, right? Michigan State’s beat them a few times. But Jim Harbaugh is not your problem, Michigan. He’s got an outstanding coaching staff. I think he’s an outstanding football coach.”
‘RichRod’ had to dig deep now that it’s been 10 years since he was let go from U-M to recall some of the issues he faced as a head coach.
Now, most observers will realize that the offense was becoming formidable, but the defense was backsliding significantly. In his final year in Ann Arbor, Michigan fielded the No. 110 defense nationally, and it was then just out of 120 teams. Since he departed, the Wolverines defense has only finished outside of the top 20 once — in 2013, when it was No. 41.
But outside of that, RichRod sees it as being more systemic issues in Ann Arbor, whether it be the administration or even the mentality that exists within the football program. Compared to West Virginia, he noted there was a little more entitlement and a little less — well — of a hard edge.
“We’re going back 15, 13 years, or whatever – but I do remember, we had left West Virginia where we had some success,” Rodriguez said. “And we had some good players at West Virginia, but they also had a little bit of an edge about them – they had a need to prove themselves every day. Both in the weight room, the offseason program during practices – every practice and certainly every game. So they played with that hard edge and they had a – they wanted to earn success.
“When we went to Michigan, I thought we’d instill that same attitude. There was some resistance, a little bit. And it’s funny: the guys that played for Bo Schembechler, when they came to practice there, said that! They said, ‘Coach, this is what we had. We had some tough, good, athletic players that played with an edge. A toughness and a need to prove themselves.’ And I think that’s what Michigan, when they’re very good – and any program that’s very, very good, they practice with that type of mentality.”
And that’s not even mentioning the institutional limits that the program faces in terms of recruiting.
Take Demar Dorsey, the nation’s No. 5 safety in the 2010 class, according to 247Sports. Getting Dorsey to sign with Michigan was a huge, unexpected coup. But, he never made it to the classroom, his application rejected by the university.
Michigan has higher academic standards than perhaps any other school in the conference, save for Northwestern, and higher than most schools, with the exception of Notre Dame or Stanford. Players that Alabama or Ohio State can recruit aren’t necessarily those who can pass admissions in Ann Arbor.
Those same shackles are placed upon the Harbaugh administration as it was during Rodriguez’s tenure.
“There were some guys we fought to get in,” Rodriguez said. “Our thought was, if they’re NCAA eligible, we should be able to get them in if we can vouch for their work ethic. Sometimes guys didn’t get the same kind of high school education because of where they lived, but they’re gonna have success in college with all the help they can have and the type of mentality – you know who they are. And we had to fight for a lot of guys. And there were some guys – I’m not gonna mention their names – there was no way that Michigan was gonna let them in. They met the NCAA standard, but they didn’t meet the so-called Michigan standard.
“And I think a little bit was, ‘Oh, they’re not from here, they’re not in-state.’ They were from out of state. And I said, ‘I know these kids, I know their work ethic. Trust me: they’ll make it.’ And you know what? Every one of those kids we asked to come in graduated and had great success there. They stayed after we were gone, but they graduated in four years, got a Michigan degree, and are doing very well to this day.”
As for Rodriguez and his failures at Michigan, personally, the administrative battles mounted. Small changes became huge battles — whether it was for captaincy or who got the honor of wearing the No. 1 jersey.
“We felt, too, that there was some battles within that we shouldn’t have to battle,” Rodriguez said. “You got enough to work to do to battle the people outside who are trying to beat you every day in recruiting and in the games and all that kind of stuff. So the administration, everybody within should be, ‘Coach, what do you need to have success? What do you need to win?’ But instead it became about, ‘Boy, you’re – this is not Michigan tradition. If you’re having game captains instead of a permanent season-long team captain, that’s not tradition.’ Well, they did that before. Those are little things that are a big deal. We weren’t disrespecting tradition, they had done it before, but that was the kind of thing – golly – we wanted to have a bunch of captains, not four captains. So it was little stuff like that that became more of a pain in the (expletive deleted) than it needed to be.”
That might sound like minutiae, but for Rodriguez, a lot of small things added up to a lot. He feels that it stymied his progress at Michigan.
“It slowed the growth,” Rodriguez said. “I think you can overcome that and I think we were. I think every year it was getting a little better, a little better. The third year, there was a lot less of that, and certainly, in the next couple years, we would be completely – not completely, but have the right type of mindset. ‘We’re gonna earn success!’ We had the right type of guys that wanted to prove themselves. The system was in place, but more importantly, the attitude was starting to come into place. There were good players, and – young guys don’t know what they don’t know, right? Once they grow up – I always say this Raquel – once they grow up in a system, then the only guys you have to worry about every year are the new ones that come in. The 25-30 new players that are coming in. And hopefully, the upperclassmen will teach them that type of mentality of how we’re gonna earn success. When you’re a new coach coming in, they all have to learn it, and that takes a little bit of time.”
Whether or not the same issues are plaguing Jim Harbaugh at Michigan remain to be seen. Certainly, he isn’t facing a lot of the same battles, as he’s had full support from the school administration, the donors and the alumni — for the most part.
The recruiting aspect is real, but perhaps the biggest impediment could be the culture in Ann Arbor that’s been in place arguably since Bo Schembechler stepped down. In Schembechler’s 21 years leading the program, he had 11 double digit-win seasons. In the 31 years since, Michigan has only equaled that, with exactly 11 more double-digit win seasons — three of which have come in Harbaugh’s first five years.
