Rich Rodriguez, Michigan, Reality: Will Rich Rod Be Fired or Not?

Rich Rodriguez and the Victors Valiant are settled in down in Jacksonville, prepping for their New Year's Day Gator Bowl battle with the good old boys from Mississippi State.

Rich Rod, or should we call him Rich The Rumor Lightning Rod, never has a dull day, does he?

Will he stay, will he go? It's the never-ending conversation from the annals of Ann Arbor.

Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon has thrown up the standard disclaimer that Rodriguez and his band of merry men, the assistant coaches, "will be evaluated after the bowl game."

That sounds very much like, "we're giving him one more year."

It's beginning to look more and more like that will be the case for RR and company. One more year.

The Wolverines went 7-5 in their regular season escapades, one win better than the preseason prediction from FireRRod.com. So it looks like things were pretty predictable with the Michigan gang.

If you want the reality—and a good case for Rodriguez to get that 2011 season—simply listen to one of his assistants, defensive backs coach Tony Gibson:

"Let us get through the four years, the cycle of the program...It's hard to come in, especially with the drastic changes that we made. We've got to cycle our kids in, in the scheme and let it work."

Sounds very reasonable, doesn't it?

Keep in mind that Rodriguez didn't represent a tweaking of the program. His hiring meant a major overhaul and four years is not unreasonable when that is the situation.

An 8-10 record the first two years didn't endear anyone to the guy who came in from West Virginia. In this day and age, expectations are high, especially at one of those schools like Michigan with that 100,000-plus Big House of a stadium that becomes its own city on Michigan game days.

That is a lot of folks, paying a lot of money who have a lot of expectations for the product on the field.

Comes with the territory. Michigan with its history and resources should always be an elite program. No excuses.

A 7-5 mark is indeed mediocre by Michigan standards and certainly there's Scarlet envy involved here, you know, nothing worse than losing to those guys from the Horseshoe down in Columbus.

So Rich Rod stands at 15-15 after three seasons.

Sounds like he'd better come up with something big in 2011, doesn't it?

That will complete the "cycle" that Gibson talked about.

The big "M" supporters, in the meantime, have been making goo-goo eyes at Jim Harbaugh out at Stanford. The nerve of one of their own getting things done at an institution of higher-than-higher learning.

And there has been Les Miles envy.

Yes, they daydream about the guy down there on the LSU bayou. Perhaps that is just an extension of SEC envy by Big Ten followers. The nerve of that conference, winning all those national titles lately.

And here's another SEC team awaiting Rich Rod and his Maize Maulers.

Certainly this is not a make-or-break, do-or-die situation for Michigan's coaching staff.

Common sense says Rodriguez will be back on the sidelines in 2011.

But he also has to know that 7-5 won't cut it the next go-round.