Rich Rodriguez Is Vindicated, but Will He Be Lured to a Big Program Again?
We like our happily-ever-afters in sports. The final gun and the final score. Rich Rodriguez has won the vindication war with Michigan. The end. You know the story: He was never accepted and then was thrown out for not being a true Michigan Man. And while Michigan now collapses with its once-beloved Michigan Man in place, Rodriguez is on top of the college coaching world again out in the desert.
Arizona is undefeated and ranked No. 10 with a signature win over then-No. 2 Oregon. Going into Saturday's big game against USC, it is in strong position to make the first College Football Playoff under RichRod. Is this the big I-told-you-so moment for him?
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
| 2001 | West Virginia | 3-8 |
| 2002 | West Virginia | 9-4 |
| 2003 | West Virginia | 8-5 |
| 2004 | West Virginia | 8-4 |
| 2005 | West Virginia | 11-1 |
| 2006 | West Virginia | 11-2 |
| 2007 | West Virginia | 11-2 |
| 2008 | Michigan | 3-9 |
| 2009 | Michigan | 5-7 |
| 2010 | Michigan | 7-6 |
| 2012 | Arizona | 8-5 |
| 2013 | Arizona | 8-5 |
| 2014 | Arizona | 5-0 |
"Well, I don't know," Rodriguez told Bleacher Report. "I think that's left up for everybody else. Everybody said the experience was so bad [at Michigan] and, 'You didn't fit up there.' I always said there was a lot of BS. It's been talked about, and there's some that hasn't even been out there [written about].
"We thought we'd fought through it all. And had we had a chance to see it through the fourth or fifth year, we thought we'd have a chance to compete for championships. But that didn't happen. We didn't get to year four, and that was unfortunate. But we're going to get to year four at Arizona."
That was a pretty good I-told-you-so, but was it the end of the story? Arizona surely hopes so, but it was only six or seven years ago that Rodriguez was one of the hottest college coaches in the country. And now that he's back, it only means other schools are going to come calling again, going to consider his problems at Michigan to be the fault of Michigan's dysfunction.
Enjoy the moment, Arizona fans. Because these things turn fast in college football. Rodriguez will be courted by the end of the year. Count on it.
Big schools will call with big budgets, big recruiting bases and big histories. Those aren't things Arizona has. And the question for Rodriguez is going to be whether he wants to jump back in to the traditional big-time football powerhouse schools with all the same pressures and politics, resources and responsibilities. Or can he reach his goals at Arizona?
"Two things: I'd much rather have a coach in demand than a coach you're indifferent about or wanting to make a change," Arizona athletic director Greg Byrne, who hired Rodriguez, told Bleacher Report when asked what he'd do when schools come calling. "And we've invested in our football program heavily, as much as ever has been here. Do we have the same revenue streams as all the big programs out there? No, we don't."
Let's be honest: Florida is most likely going to have an opening. If it was to come for Rodriguez, should he really ignore that for Arizona?
Yes, he should. Rodriguez has already gone that route, and it was the one failure in his career. He can turn Arizona into his own personal football palace. At Michigan, he had to try to wipe away generations of football, Michigan style, to put in his modern no-huddle spread offense. At Arizona, the canvas was blank, the fans were looking for his signature. And it fits in well in the Pac-12.
But that's far too simplistic. Rodriguez told me last year the reason he left West Virginia for Michigan in the first place was he didn't believe the school's new president was willing to make the financial commitment to make it a national championship contender. That's what he wanted. And remember, he left shortly after signing a contract with West Virginia, where fans thought they had their man for the long term.
Byrne points out that Arizona has spent heavily to improve its stadium and football facilities in the past few years. It's new and it's nice. But it isn't a palace like the University of Nike, er, Oregon has.
Meanwhile, Rodriguez, according to Sports Illustrated's Andy Staples, makes $2.2 million and has, basically, an annuity—in the form of equity in a donor's company—currently worth about $6 million waiting for him if he stays at Arizona five more years.
But while Arizona is a basketball power, is it really able to be one in football? USA Today recently reported on the 2013 revenues of the nation's athletic departments. Texas was No. 1 at $165.7 million. Florida was No. 6 at $130 million. Arizona? No. 42 at $68.5 million.
ESPN recruiting expert Jeremy Crabtree told Bleacher Report that Arizona does have a solid recruiting base. He said high school football has improved dramatically the past 10 years in the state and the university is well regarded in Southern California. But still, he said, Arizona comes in behind USC and UCLA in the pecking order for recruits there. He said Arizona can beat out the likes of Oregon State and Arizona State for California kids and might be surviving on, say, the 10th-best players at certain positions instead of the top two or three.
So that might make it hard to compete for national championships regularly. At Florida, he said, Rodriguez would have a shot at landing any recruit.
Yes, but couldn't Arizona and RichRod lure kids from the Midwest, who are all ignoring the Big Ten and heading South or West to play in the warm?
And an even bigger issue is fit. It's something you're starting to see college basketball coaches pay attention to, as coaches from mid-majors don't just automatically jump for the next biggest job. You can accomplish plenty from the mid-majors; even the Boston Celtics hired their coach from Butler.
At Florida, fans would immediately be wondering why Rodriguez isn't winning national championships the way Urban Meyer did. At Arizona, he was welcomed immediately and given the chance to do his thing.
"Well, I've heard a lot of talk about fit and who's the right fit and all that kind of stuff," Rodriguez said. "And I think sometimes that's just talk. If you've got a plan and a program you want to put in place and you're allowed the time to install that and see it through, then you'll be the right fit.
"People say, 'Well you weren't the right fit at Michigan.' I'm the same guy I was at Michigan, [and] I was at West Virginia and the same before that. Sometimes people see what they want to see as far as are you the right fit or not. That to me is kind of silly."
I could not disagree more. Everyone knows what it's like to take a job working for the wrong boss with the wrong co-workers in the wrong environment. It is miserable. And it just about ruined Rodriguez's career.
Rodriguez told me last year that he was undermined at Michigan, and theoretically he was talking about his predecessor, Lloyd Carr. For most of his career, Rodriguez had been the folksy guy telling folksy stories, such as how he invented parts of his offense. He was known as one of the game's true offensive innovators. But he'd say that the only reason he started having his offense hurry up without huddles was because he thought it was strange how two-minute offenses always seemed to move downfield so easily, but his regular offense didn't. He makes jokes about how his band didn't know the victory song.
Anyway, he'd say he installed the shotgun only because his quarterback way back when was too short to see over the line from up close. And all that stuff just stuck.
By the time he left Michigan, perception was that he was just the failure who violated NCAA practice rules and used language that was too harsh.
Byrne said that when he hired Rodriguez, he decided that the West Virginia RichRod was the real one, not the Michigan RichRod. He said he thought Tucson would be the right environment for Rodriguez, his family and even his staff.
He was right.
Rodriguez, who's 51, doesn't have to go anywhere else to reach the top. It took him until this past week's win over Oregon, nearly four years, to fully live down his last attempt at the top. The lure will be strong again, but if anybody should know by now, he should know this is the place for his happily ever after.
Greg Couch covers college football for Bleacher Report. He also writes for The New York Times and was formerly a scribe for FoxSports.com and the Chicago Sun-Times. Follow him on Twitter @gregcouch.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
