Three and Out Read Free

field but in the weight room and in the classroom, too. I followed quarterback Denard Robinson for one day, which started at seven a.m. with treatment for his swollen knee, followed by weight lifting, classes, an interview with ESPN Radio, more treatment, meetings, practice, a third round of treatment, dinner, and film. When he walked out of Schembechler Hall after ten p.m., two middle-aged men who had been waiting all night for him in the parking lot asked him to sign a dozen glossy photos.
    I went home exhausted, and all I’d done was follow him around and take notes. But working out with the strength coaches proved to be far tougher. In just six weeks, they doubled my bench press and tripled my squat. They also showed me you could puke from running or lifting weights (I hadn’t known that). After each workout I collapsed on my couch—not to nap, mind you, but to whimper in the fetal position for a couple hours.
    How those players got any work done after their morning workouts was a mystery to me—and thanks to Michigan’s self-imposed penalties, the Wolverines actually worked fewer hours than the NCAA allowed.
    If Robinson—or any of the 124 other players—did any of these things poorly, or not at all, that was Rodriguez’s problem. And whenever such missteps hit the papers, the talk shows, or the blogs, they quickly became much bigger mistakes before breakfast the next day.
    This beast Michigan has created is just about the biggest, strongest, and fastest animal of its kind, but the coach’s job security and the athletic department itself still rest on kids who weigh three hundred pounds and can squat twice that but can’t grow respectable mustaches.
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    Everyone knew Rodriguez was on trial in 2010—not least Rodriguez, who hadn’t had a single good night’s sleep since he had moved to Michigan.
    What seemed to get lost in the endless discussions about him and his future, however, was that Michigan was on trial, too.
    Michigan has long been considered one of the game’s “destination jobs.” It is not the means to some greater position but an end in itself. When you accept this job, you’ve arrived once and for all.
    Only one head coach in Michigan’s long history went on to become a head coach anywhere else. That coach, Gary Moeller, left only because he was fired for one bad night at a restaurant. When the NFL’s Detroit Lions later hired him, it was considered a demotion. They fired him after only seven games, perhaps because he had become the only Lions coach to post a winning record since 1972, a no-no in the Motor City.
    Michigan has a lot to offer a head coach—as much as any college program in the country—but, like most elite programs, open-mindedness, flexibility, and patience are not among its selling points. Because the Michigan family had not needed those attributes in decades, they had atrophied by the time Rodriguez arrived.
    Rodriguez shared many of Michigan’s blind spots, including his soaring ambition and admitted impatience, which occasionally created secondary problems. He made his share of mistakes, no question, but Michigan was hiring him, not the other way around. Its very constancy meant it had no recent experience accepting an outsider and preparing him to succeed.
    The last time Michigan did so, in December 1968, Bo Schembechler asked his new athletic director, Don Canham, how many years he had. Canham, characteristically, pulled no punches. “You’ve got the same tenure I have. I think we have about five years. If you guys don’t succeed [by then], we’re all going to be out of here.”
    Schembechler knew where he stood, and Canham’s word was good.
    But by December 2007, Schembechler was gone, Canham was gone, and so was their way of doing business. Thanks to a century-old tug-of-war between Michigan’s presidents and athletic directors, which had turned