Rich Rodriguez knows the gravity of U-M’s situation

August 31, 2009

By DREW SHARP
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

Rich Rodriguez looked like a beaten man — and the season hasn’t started yet.

“There’s nothing there,” he told me Monday, regarding an impending investigation into alleged wrongdoing in his program.

“There’s nothing there,” he said, staring down and slowly shaking his head. “It’s disheartening because you want to create a program where the kids are self-reliant.”

Apparently there is crying in football.

With his program under attack, Rodriguez seemed overwhelmed at his weekly news conference when pressed to defend his actions and integrity. Words lodged in his throat. And suddenly the coaching machine looked human. He looked sincere. He looked scared.

But saying he loves his players won’t save Rodriguez if U-M’s internal investigation validates player allegations raised in an exclusive Free Press investigation.

Rodriguez knows he’s in trouble. NCAA investigations are the antithesis of the American criminal justice system. You’re guilty until proven innocent.

Overworking players through the vagueness of what’s ruled mandatory and what’s ruled voluntary isn’t as sexy as academic fraud or as damning as boosters providing players with luxury SUVs and baked goods with one-hundred dollar bills as frosting.

But these accusations cut to the core of the NCAA’s biggest hypocrisy — the idyllic illusion of the student-athlete, at least as it pertains to football. And that should be Michigan’s greatest worry at the onset of the any inquisition.

The NCAA might have no alternative but to stain the sainted image of Michigan football if it means protecting the greater fallacy of major college football as a part-time academic diversion.

Football is a full-time job at Michigan. It’s a full-time job at Michigan State.

But it took a possibly poisonously divisive Michigan football family to finally bring this pretense into the national spotlight. Eventually, the NCAA might need to weigh the merits of tossing the football program with the most victories under the wheels of its morality bus.

Don’t bore me with justifications that everybody fudges the 20-hour-a-week or that every coach has somebody from his staff monitoring off-season workouts that are supposed to be at the discretion of the players.

How many times have we told the cop who pulled us over for speeding that everybody on the freeway was motoring at least 10 miles over the speed limit? Yet you got caught and got the ticket.

If it’s proven that Rodriguez broke NCAA rules, regardless of their practicality, Michigan has no alternative but to fire him — or risk exposing an internal hypocrisy of wanting to win the self-proclaimed “Michigan way.”

They can’t have it both ways.

Contact DREW SHARP: 313-223-4055 or dsharp@freepress.com.