University of Michigan head coach Rich Rodriguez entered Saturday’s Gator Bowl game with his future very much in doubt. It’s clear that the 52-15 thrashing at the hands of Mississippi State did nothing to encourage Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon to keep Rodriguez, and that Rodriguez appears to have concluded that he’d better polish his resume.
While Brandon has not shown his hand on the issue, our analysis of Rodriguez’s behavior after the game appears to provide definitive clues to the coach’s fate. During the post-game press conference, three behavioral indicators in Rodriguez’s commentary jumped out.
1) Rodriguez made a veiled plea for more time at Michigan by pointing out the number of freshman who are playing, and who need more time to be competitive: “It’s not excuses. I’ve said this many times to the folks that follow us at home. But when you play true freshmen, true freshmen, as many as we play on defense in key roles, it’s going to take a while before we can raise the level of play where you need it. They need an off-season. They need to get bigger and stronger and faster and understand the speed of the game better, and they will. They’re a good group of young guys, they just had to play before they were ready and they weren’t good enough.” Rodriguez sounded like a litigator in a courtroom trying to persuade the jury not to find him guilty.
2) Rodriguez also tried to convince the jury that he and his coaching staff have done everything possible to put winners on the field, and in doing so, implied that no one else could have done any better: “We just come to work. I mean, one thing I’m proud of the players and the staff is we have not cheated the University of Michigan a day of work, and I wouldn’t allow it and I wouldn’t let our staff allow it, wouldn’t let our players allow it and never have in my entire coaching career. And we’re paid to do a job, and we did it as hard and as well as we could with some obstacles, but everybody is going to have obstacles. And that’s the one thing that even though the season certainly didn’t shape out the way we wanted it to and there’s a lot of things that happened, we fought through it, and the team got closer. This team is closer today than it was a week ago and three weeks ago, and sometimes there’s some hard lessons to learn for all of us. But there was nobody cheating our school a day of work … trust me on that.” Rodriguez’s lengthy stream of convincing statements is very behaviorally significant, and underscores his total lack of confidence that he will return to Michigan next year.
3) Finally, when asked directly if he believes that the devastating loss to Mississippi State would influence the athletic director’s decision to keep him, Rodriguez’s statements and accompanying behavior were far from encouraging. Here is that exchange:
Reporter: Do you get any sense because of the way this game unfolded that…any sense at all that this will affect Brandon’s decision about you? Did you think it was about this game and that this could impact it negatively?
Rodriguez: You’re asking the wrong person.
Reporter: Do you think you’ll be back next year?
Rodriguez: You’re asking the wrong person. I do.
Our analysis of that exchange shows that Rodriguez is fully aware that the situation is no longer in his hands. He failed to answer the question, and his comment to the reporter that he was “asking the wrong person” clearly seemed to be an effort to get the reporter to back off and move on to other questions, which is a tack often taken by individuals who are disinclined to be candid. Also, his failure to say anything positive at that point about himself, his staff or his team speaks volumes and underscores his expectation that despite his arguments, he and his staff will be found guilty of failure. Rodriguez appears to be convinced that he’s gone.
Rodriguez’s comments about playing true freshmen, and the university not having been cheated of hard work, appear to have been made to save face. They will also likely become the core of his pitch to the next athletic director that might consider hiring him. At this point in the story, what is perhaps of most interest is who Michigan will hire to replace Rodriguez, and where Rodriguez will land.
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