I tell my personal Barry Bonds story fairly regularly. It's a story about remaining willfully naive. It goes like this:
I was the last person to accept that Barry Bonds took steroids. His sudden, unparalleled production was so exciting and tantalizing that easily surrendering those precious commodities to resigned cynicism felt like the actual crime. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, as Bonds endeavored to wrestle control of such a hidebound sport away from the long-secure clutches of Ruth, Mays, and Aaron, he presented a sports fan with the kind of transcendent athletic performance that affirms one's faith in science. Like a Usain Bolt, a Michael Jordan, a Michael Johnson, or a Tiger Woods, Bonds appeared to be something different and better than the rest of us mere humans. He was evolution. Casting aside a rare phenomenon as just another cheap illusion felt wrong.
Bonds was everywhere to me back then. Blissfully living a college lifestyle composed of all-nighters just for fun, far too much soda just because I could, and enough Napster to break a university ethernet, I never thought that making time to feel mesmerized by the same highlights on a loop was a bad choice. So I watched Bonds all the time, and I felt as though I was living through a historic epic with every home run, every .OPS point, and every walk. Oddly enough, it was the walks that usually did it for me--those were the plays that would get my voice intermittently squeaking with excitement. Bonds had transformed--and, sadly, that was a word far too appropriate--into such a devastating offensive force that the rules of baseball no longer applied. He had surpassed the sport, itself. That's fucking cool, and I probably uttered some profane exclamation like that multiple times a day. What else but such a simple, expansive figurative shrug, or the occasional excited shriek sent up to the high heavens, could accommodate the magnitude of the moment?
When I could no longer deny that Bonds was far from a natural force of change, I was stung by the disappointment. Don't get it twisted: my hero hadn't been exposed as a villain. That would have required an investment in Bonds as a role model, and I never went that far. Rather, I felt as though I had lived a lie. I had invested tremendous emotional resources in the notion that I was curating an unmatched moment in human development, only to find out that I'd really just devoted myself to a common failing of the species. I remain rueful of Bonds not for using drugs, breaking a law I don't care about, or dishonoring baseball, but for misleading my propensity to celebrate the uncommon. He extracted something I guard closely and cherish.
Spending those formative years with Bonds animated a concept to which I often return, particularly as a sports fan. His deception was unsettling not for what it was, using steroids, but for what it meant, betraying my wonderment. I remain indifferent to the specifics of his transgression but still feel the wound he left by cheating history to begin with.
I feel the same way about the University of North Carolina as the details of its corrupt football program emerge. Of course, I have no personal connection to UNC. No one in my family went there, and I've only been in the state but three times. Nor do I pay close attention to Tar Heel football. However, I grew up in a household where Dean Smith was not just a basketball deity but a civil rights hero; I have spent my life rooting for Tar Heel basketball because it seemed disrespectful to do otherwise; and I have met enough UNC alumni to reasonably suspect that Chapel Hill might have offered me the sort of revered experience I found in Ann Arbor. The UNC football scandal hasn't upset me for what it is. To paraphrase Roy Williams from an earlier time, I could give a shit about North Carolina players getting money. Instead, I am upset by what it means, because I had clung to a quixotic notion of UNC. But if even North Carolina is breaking rules, I can no longer enjoy the insulation of willful naivete.
This really isn't about the money. Given the revenue that college football and basketball generate, the players should probably be paid. Especially since recruiting an elite prospect is often tantamount to a spending contest, with schools competing to show off shiny new buildings and whatever other NCAA-sanctioned baubles they've amassed. Given the not-so-apocryphal stories about Terrelle Pryors driving around in brand new Corvettes, or proven scandals ranging from the Fab Five to Reggie Bush, the influence of money, of agents, of street runners, of handlers, and of everyone else barely registers. Amateurism ain't shit. But breaking the rules is, and for a long time, despite the expansive terrain across which misdeeds of all varieties festered, I was able to believe that in some ivory towers, the righteous rituals of college athletics, no matter how hollow or changed, persisted without the taint of cheating.
No place was as mythically pure as North Carolina. (I hate that the preceding sentence sounds like a Win Butler lyric.) From a distance, I could venerate the entire university. Not only has the basketball program been a canon of my life's ideology, but so much of what I know (I've chosen to "know"?) about the university has suited my romanticism. Everything from the quality of the education and mission as a public school to the university colors and infectious fight song. I've always understood that much of my perception was projection, but so long as I could trust in UNC's quintessence as an idealized American university, I didn't really concern myself with the specifics. Again, why would I? It was a symbol. The symbol has been undermined by this scandal, though, because the emotional sports fan in me who fights off my usual skepticism is disappointed by again confronting an underwhelming reality. That is the real loss element for me. Butch Davis, John Blake, Marvin Austin--those are just names.
As I've read about North Carolina, my sense of loss, and my sense of entitlement to that low moment, has been amplified by two conversations I had yesterday. At this point, the two people with whom I discuss sports most openly, emotionally, and viscerally are my father and Shoals. Each provided a tonic to the North Carolina story while encouraging my unadulterated moment of feeling.
My father excitedly texted me earlier this week that Kim Jong-un loves the NBA. Always inclined to a droll conflation of the serious and the absurd, my father and I instantly took up the subject with enthusiasm, each of us recognizing that this revelation was fodder for a few months of schtick, at least. (We are, after all, the "men" who thought it would be funny if my ne'er-do-well cousin tormented my ninety-plus Jewish grandmother by converting to Islam and changing his name to Matush, the guy on The Sopranoswho was dealing drugs at the Crazy Horse and stabbed someone.) Soon, the text led to a phone call during which we speculated about whether my dad could beat Jong-un in a one-on-one; whether Jong-un was prone to that choppy, hacking street ball that my father and I ascribe to non-European foreigners (no one said we were perfect); whether Jong-un might replicate my forays into America's heartland by coming stateside for a tour of second- and third-tier NBA cities like Indianapolis and Oklahoma City; and, of course, whether, Barack Obama and Jong-un would play each other in some kind of high-stakes basketball diplomacy. Only after Jong-un becomes supreme leader, of course.
And then, finally, there was an email exchange, during which we decided that no player was a better embodiment for the North Korean spirit than Anthony Mason. (Twitter was so amused that the internets came up with this.) I can only imagine that Mase is in Pyongyang as we speak, showing Jong-un how to box out with malice. In sum, our new-found focus on Jong-un's rising basketball star was the kind of whimsical sports digression which regularly replenishes the wonderment jeopardized by the Carolina scandal. So I guess that means I'll be back?
As I sort that out, I'll arrive at some new stasis informed by an ensuing conversation with Shoals. As I bemoaned the damage that Carolina's brand would incur, the taint, however subtle, that would attach to the basketball program, and my wounded innocence, Shoals reminded me that the Carolina incident may inflict greater harm to college sports than to UNC. After all, if even North Carolina is being investigated, what hope is there? Our dialogue then wandered into various other niche topics, but dejection was quickly replaced by indignation as I remembered a crucial point that Shoals encouraged:
I don't condone rule breaking, but as the NCAA invades Chapel Hill instead of East Lansing or Gainesville, it's difficult to maintain much faith in the system's purported morals or much ire for a relatively benign agent scandal. I'm not sayin', but I'm sayin'....
Team Name: New York Knicks Last Year's Record: 29-53 Key Losses: David Lee, Al Harrington Cherished Additions by Subtraction: Chris Duhon Key Additions: Amare Stoudemire, Raymond Felton, Anthony Randolph, Kelenna Azubuike, Timofey Mozgov, Roger Mason, Ronny Turiaf Weird Draft Picks: Andy Rautins, Landry Fields Perpetually Looming Reacquisitions: Isiah Thomas, basketball executive
1) What significant moves were made during the off-season? New York started the summer by drafting shooter Andy Rautins, who was awful in the Summer League, making nothing, and more-athletic-than-he-appears-but-less-athletic-than-that-would-imply Landry Fields, who spent Summer League running, jumping, and trying harder than most everyone else. I hope he finds minutes in the rotation against other teams' backups. He'll get rebounds. And den...the Knicks signed Amare Stoudemire to a maximum contract. Aaannd dennn...the Brickers signed David Lee and traded him to Golden State for Randolph, Azubuike, and Turiaf. Aaaaaannnd deeeennn...they signed Raymond Felton to a two-year deal. Aaaaaannnnnnd deeeeeeennnnnnn...there was a lot of noise about people named Jerome Jordan, Earl Barron, Timofey Mozgov, and other assorted tall people of either meager athleticism, limited skill, or extreme mystery. Mozgov emerged as the Knicks' best chance at a real, not-fat, not-crazy, not-heart-conditioned center. Aaaaaaaannnnnnnddd deeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnn...the guy who made a notable handful of critical jump shots for the Spurs but who never really made anyone believe he was reliable or terribly good ended up on the team once the frothing over free agents had ended. His name's Roger Mason; he gets buckets. (Kind of.)
No assessment of the Knicks at this point in the space-time continuum would be sufficiently fulsome were it to neglect the mid-summer dalliance with Isiah Lord Thomas. For a time, it appeared as though Isiah would return to the team in some kind of consulting role, and it likely would be the case had the NBA not had the temerity to remind the Knicks and Isiah that he purports to be the full-time men's basketball coach at Florida International University. No topic sends a Knicks fan into a hysterical tailspin like Zeke. Witness. So I'll stop here and lie down for a few minutes.
2) What are the team's biggest strengths? Apositional players neither qualified to play point guard nor big enough to guard opposing centers. Raymond Felton is a point guard. So is Sergio Rodriguez, I guess. (Doesn't matter what he is; he's in Spain.) Mozgov is a center. Eddy Curry is an expiring contract in a center's body. That's it. The rest of the roster is unintentionally participating in the much-heralded PositionalRevolution. No one else on the team is a classic anything. Some don't have the bodies for what they do. Others don't have the skills for their bodies. And then some more are uniquely situated. Amare, for example, can block shots like a center, rebound like a power forward, and shoot that pick-and-pop jumper like a small forward. Similarly, Toney Douglas has the size of a point but the game of a shooter and is sort of just a guard. The roster is composed of these players almost indiscriminately: starters like Danilo Gallinari and reserves like Bill Walker will be deployed across multiple lineups. On offense, this will be a boon for the Knicks, as the roster appears versatile enough to threaten nearly any defense. This is the kind of flexible outfit with which Mike D'Antoni has had success in the past. These Knicks will far exceed the recent predecessors in their scoring potential, offensive execution, and aesthetic appeal.
3) What are the team's biggest weaknesses? Defense and rebounding, with no player a better microcosm for the team than Amare. For all of his shot-blocking and rebounding ability, Stoudemire has not consistently applied himself in dedicated service of those ends. He is a below-average defender whose blocks belie his general defensive indifference, and he is a surprisingly mediocre rebounder. This is true for many of the Knicks, though some of the other players' inadequacies are logically aligned with their limited physical talents and player dispositions. Gallinari will never be particularly fleet or rugged; Randolph still may not weigh 200 pounds or know how to play basketball; and so forth.
Teams working with lower-quality raw materials have produced better defense and more consistent presence on the boards, however. A primary source of the Knicks' problems is the coach. Though celebrated for his offensive enlightenment, his acerbic humor, and his enthusiasm for the basketball lifestyle, D'Antoni can't coach defense for shit. His teams never play it, despite annually renewed rhetoric protesting otherwise. The passivity and malaise extends to rebounding. While there may be no data to support this conjecture, it is easy to imagine that improved rebounding, which would elevate the defense to some extent, might be encouraged by an overarching philosophy that espoused defense and rebounding as substantive ends unto themselves, not merely pleasant but voluntary vehicles for more frequent offense. Sadly, New York will remain inferior on both accounts until D'Antoni changes who he is or ceases to direct the Knicks.
4) What are the goals for this team? You play to win the game. Get busy living or get busy dying. Pick your slogan. The goal for any sports team is winning a championship, and that's why Straight Bangin' is so consistently in uproar over the Knicks. For a decade, the Brickers made decisions that were hostile to such a sentiment, routinely mortgaging the future, and the steady path to a title, in service of the present, and usually an imperfect one at that. Thus, the goal for this team remains a championship, although nothing short of an apocalyptic miracle would be required for this roster to reach the promised land. A secondary goal, then, is to finish with a winning record and make the playoffs. The Knicks haven't done that in years, and it would represent progress. Fleeting progress, perhaps, as no team so inadequate on defense can harbor realistic title aspirations, but finishing in the East's top eight would be a nice change.
More practically, the team's goals also must include exchanging Eddy Curry's expiring contract for an additional star, and preferably one more suited for crunch-time leadership than Stoudemire is. Whether that missing player arrives in exchange for Curry, alone, or as part of some package is irrelevant. New York cannot accomplish its primary goal without such a player. And speaking of that...
5) So, how was The Summer? The Summer kind of sucked, to be honest. New York's two-year self-immolation yielded scorched earth, and no realistic championship hope can grow on the terrain left behind. LeBron and Dwyane went to Miami. Signing one of them--if not both--was the explicit raison d'etre for the franchise since Donnie Walsh arrived. Instead, the Knicks now have Stoudemire's maximum contract, a number of players who are good but likely cast one role too high on the marquee, a glaring need for first-round draft picks, and a deceptive salary structure. New York does not have enough money or assets required to assemble the elite talent that can challenge Los Angeles, Boston, Miami, or the coming threat in Oklahoma City. Worse, other teams have responded to New York hubris--real or imagined--by making big-boy moves of their own. While the Knicks are an improved team, they are not improved enough for the price they've paid.
Do not mistake this honest assessment of the Brickers for a results-based critique of the team's personnel strategy. New York desperately needed to get under the salary cap and to meaningfully shed the bad weight it was carrying. It did that. Further, the Knicks accomplished that goal as the unique Summer of 2010 arrived. With league cornerstones James and Wade on the market, along with foundational material like Bosh and Stoudemire also available, clearing cap space and pursuing elite players made sense. Miami, having not yet even played a game, is a devastating testament to this reasoning's efficacy. The Knicks only lost their way after the team failed to sign James or Wade. Then, in its haste and desperation to sell tickets and rehabilitate its image, New York abandoned the ruthless efficiency it had championed until this past July. New York's errors are tactical, not strategic. This is a critical distinction as revisionist historians like Bill Simmons now line up to wrongly perpetuate the recent narrative about the Knicks. A team that was mismanaged and incompetent for a long time finally got its mind right for a brief period of time, and it took an acceptable risk with clarity of purpose and conscience. Should Houston acquire Carmelo Anthony in exchange for draft picks that once belonged to the Knicks, that won't mean the trade for TMac last February was ill-begotten or poorly reasoned. It will mean only that New York was unfortunate and tactically inferior when juxtaposed with Miami. But clearing the cap space was never the wrong idea, and to suggest otherwise now, or that New York should not have pursued James and Wade as it did, is to tell a self-serving lie.
Over tactics, we can quibble, though. I continue to espouse an approach to team building that accepts temporary losing as a reasonable cost for high-value draft picks, roster flexibility, and reserve cap space needed to maintain a nucleus and fill in on the margins. It's the Oklahoma City model. When James or Wade failed to walk through that door, New York would have been better served to abandon its free-agency fetish. It didn't, and that's a poor tactical choice.
Predicted Record: 42-40. The Knicks will finally be able to outscore enough teams while playing that phantom D'Antoni defense respectably enough to win more games than they lose.
Guess what--62% of likely voters in battleground states support extending tax breaks for the middle class while restoring the tax rate for wage earners making $250,000 or more to pre-Bush levels.
And another thing--a new poll says that making the right decision on taxes would help the Democrats win elections. Good governance and winning politics!
The latest report from Greg Sargent suggests that Speaker Pelosi is getting an earful from members who fear the consequences of holding a vote on an Obama Plan tax cut for middle income voters and are pressing her not to hold any vote at all. In all likelihood the pressure is coming from folks on this list. This would be notwithstanding seemingly overwhelming public opinion data suggesting it's the best thing the Democrats can do to help themselves politically in advance of the November election.
The argument these folks are using is that if Democrats vote only for the tax cuts on income up to $250k per year that Republicans will hit them with ads that say they "raised taxes" on income over that amount. And that's probably true, though most polls show that most voters are okay with that. But here's the question, since allowing tax cuts on income over $250k to expire means "raising taxes," how is it that allowing all the tax cuts to expire won't mean Republicans will run commercials saying that Democrats raised taxes on everyone? Everyone on the income scale. People making 30k, 50k, 100k, etc.
You know what? I'd rather get punched in the dick every day for a week than ever have to rely on these pusillanimous lightweights again. What are the right words to describe such cowardly, timid, scared, irrational, detached, vain, senseless people? Maybe I just used them.
Of course, we haven't even discussed that a large part of the problem is that Democrats don't know how to communicate reality to a general public far too susceptible to distortions and lies. For example, why hasn't this been all over the media?
According to the Washington Post, which obtained its information from House Democrats, some of the "small businesses" that could see a small increase in their marginal taxes are household names like accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers and Tribune Corp. -- privately-owned behemoths whose owners and managers dodge corporate taxes by reporting profits on their income tax returns.
It's those receipts that allow Republicans to claim, based on a recent report by JCT, that Obama's plan will ensnare 50 percent of all "small business income. JCT addressed this in the same report. "These figures for net positive business income do not imply that all of the income is from entities that might be considered 'small.'"
Over the last three decades, the numbers of these types of businesses -- both small, large, and enormous -- has exploded.
Seriously, someone tell me these things:
What does the Democratic leadership do all day?
What are its information sources?
Why does it appear incapable of learning from previous mistakes?
Why is it so scared of such a small percentage of the population? You know how many American households earn more than $250,000 a year? Three percent.
Is this motivated by the bullshit notion that Obama and the Dems are anti-business? People like this guy--all three percent of them--are defeating common sense and decency?
I shouldn't be so surprised and angry, I guess. This is nothing new. After all, the party is led by a lying political triangulator (new word!) who is so scared of the business community that he is going to anoint a corporate CEO to lead the National Economic Council. You know, because recent financial and economic history suggests that all Americans succeed when public policy readily favors corporate interests.
Murs's verse knocks. The cadence play is dope, and Murs drops a useful lesson in the craft of rapping.
Consider: At her most grating, which is pretty much all the time, Nicki Minaj plays around with her voice more than anyone. You know what I mean--the exaggerated bass intermittently mixed with that baby-doll pitter patter, and those moments when she accentuates a Caribbean diction. (She trots out the full routine on Kanye's "Monster.") She does this on pretty much every verse. Were these flourishes not so common, they likely would remain interesting, the sort of quirky distinctions that define artistic character and invite fan ardor. Method Man, by contrast, has perfected this mix of straight rap style and inventive color. Judiciously, he'll elongated vowels or purposely clip consonants to add dimension to his flows. Minaj, meanwhile, relies on these parlor tricks so often that they become irksome and distracting. Though, that might be the point. On "Monster," on the "Hello, Good Morning" remix, and on so many other tracks, Minaj's natural, nasally vocals sound small, commonly overmatched by the beat and whichever MCs are rapping alongside her. In response--and because she's been unduly anointed as rap's latest "it" girl--the entry-level showmanship is her best chance to compensate. (Let's not even broach her weaksauce rhyming.)
It's hard to blame Minaj her for her contrived schtick, no matter how insufferable it can be. She has been ushered to stardom by Lil' Wayne and Drake, two other MCs who receive perfunctory praise from critics for vocal experimentation. Wayne's bizarre excursions into all parts of the hip-hop ether have become celebrated, substantive ends unto themselves; Drake's song-after-song willingness to bleed his prosaic flow into his lilting hooks and echoes has kept them boppers critics going crazy for two years. Among such a cohort, Minaj would not be able to carry her own weight unless she, too, had perfected the compulsory elements of a deceptive facade. And for doing so, Minaj receives credit for craftsmanship. No one ever said life was fair.
Murs reinforces that point. Prone to a conversational style of rapping, Murs's verses adhere to tempo but little else. He raps across breaks in the beat. He spits as though he were talking, commonly eschewing attempts at prolonged, deliberate gimmicks. Most Murs songs leave the impression that even had the microphone not been on, he likely would have said exactly the same things. (His Twitter work reinforces this idea. Try watching a sporting event "with" him.) Murs is a gifted performer and a hip-hop professional, but a good portion of his appeal owes to the fact that he never sounds like he's performing.
He performs on "ChampionNess," though, and he does so in a way that should embarrass Minaj. Departing from the usual languor, Murs seizes upon a staccato beat that briskly trots along in bursts, and he adapts. Murs's verse is sharp, tight, lean, and active, all the while measured. He boxes, in effect, adopting a Mayweather disposition. The words arrive in steady, resonant attacks as he stays balanced, picks his spots, and recoils into a safe position before again exploding out of his ready stance. With the precision of an effective jab, Murs chooses sharp syllables without sacrificing the integrity of the rhymes, delivering lyrics that perfectly complement the beat and his flow, all of these elements reinforcing the others.
Murs hits all of his spots precisely, an accomplishment all the more impressive because a lesser talent like Minaj would enter this ring hoping to bang against an opponent only susceptible to speed. Is there any doubt that she'd just clumsily growl and baby-talk her way through the end of the round, clinching at every opportunity while so out of sorts? Comparing Murs and Minaj is really not a fair fight, but the juxtaposition is a useful reminder of what it truly means to rap. Murs shows you how to do this, son.
Perversely, Greg Robinson seems to be showing Rich out.
When Rich Rodriguez is fired at the end of this season, he will only have himself to blame, and that's the unfortunate truth. Unfortunate for him, for Michigan, and for fans like me, who will hate to see him go but love to watch him leave.
It wasn't always going to be this way. Things were going to be great, if you'll recall. Back in 2007, Rodriguez was going to lead a revolution. Surviving back-channel communications, a suffocating fog of rumors, and a bitter coaching search that tore apart Michigan factions previously united under an M Club banner a banner of sustained success, Rodriguez emerged as Michigan football's next steward. Modern college football--transformed by spread offenses, ever faster players, and aggressive coaches--had passed by Lloyd Carr, and Michigan asked Rodriguez, a paragon of the new era, to restore a fading program to its traditional seat of power. The reputed father of modern spread offense was arriving in Ann Arbor prepared to update a staid, stodgy culture and reestablish the Wolverines.
Almost immediately, Rodriguez was impeded, of course. (Did you not just read the part about Michigan being staid and stodgy?) Former players grumbled loudly that he wasn't of Michigan. Then-current players transferred, using their final moments with Michigan's beat writers to declare that Rodriguez had sacrificed the program's family values and stubbornly insisted on asserting himself. West Virginia's hillbillies did the next best thing to burning couches and instead took up their torches and pitchforks in the press: Rodriguez owed money, shredded documents, betrayed a sacred trust, killed Jesus. The bad news, ugly side plots, and shadowy agents of Rodriguez's undoing didn't go away. Trumped-up nothings and distracting molehills became mountains. He curses too much! He is a bad tipper! He says "y'all" at press conferences! The athletic department's version of civil servants--the institutional employees who endured through a coaching transition--didn't universally embrace the new coach, either. Some actively worked against him. For proof, look no further than Michigan's impending NCAA probation, a fate brought on, to some extent, by recalcitrant athletic department functionaries who were happy to misconstrue facts, misplace documents, and mislead the new boss.
In the history of fairness, neither Rich Rodriguez's arrival in Ann Arbor, nor the early years of his tenure, will merit inclusion in the course materials. The pronounced hostility that greeted Rodriguez was difficult for many fans to endure. This outsider with a track record of success and an impeccable reputation for winning at college football's new game wanted to give himself to Ann Arbor, to revivify a program that for all its maize-and-blue-blooded lineage had noticeably lost some prestige. In return, at seemingly every juncture, he was met with the sort of self-defeating stubbornness and hostility that Michigan fans might normally ascribe to the imbeciles in East Lansing. There have been times since the end of 2007 when Michigan Fans--capitalized, as some kind of monolithic organization comprised of the impressions they leave across the football universe--have appeared to prefer the good ol' three-runs-and-a-cloud-of-punts that necessitated hiring a Rodriguez in the first place. I remain embarrassed by that sort of froward ignorance.
These factors--the probation, the sabotage, the fan antipathy, the backlash among former players--might all explain a prospective Rodriguez dismissal. So, too, might the fact that the man who hired Rich Rod, former athletic director Bill Martin, retired and was replaced by David Brandon, a former player from the Schembechler years. And were any of these reasons a motivating factor in Rich Rodriguez's ouster, a common-sense fan would likely be upset by the injustice. Firing a man without giving him all of the resources required to succeed is not right. Setting up a man to fail feels like a crass practical joke. Rodriguez, a giving, compassionate, committed man, certainly deserves better than a rigged trial.
Rest easy, then, because corruption and collusion will not be rendering judgment upon Rich Rodriguez. Rather, Rich Rod will be fired the old fashioned way: because he cannot do his job well enough.
Rich Rodriguez will be fired at the end of this season because his teams can't, won't, or just don't play defense. The Wolverines are 3-0, and they are led by the nation's Heisman front-runner, so today might seem like an odd time to contemplate a coming doom not yet even preset on the horizon. However, this weekend's Massachusetts-Michigan game revealed that past is prologue, and the Michigan story to be authored in the coming weeks is one that has become a sad cautionary tale.
Michigan has made nary an improvement on defense since last season, and that augurs for Rodriguez's dismissal. Since Rich Rod arrived in Ann Arbor, Michigan's defense has regressed from bad to terrible. The 2008 defense was ranked ninth in the Big Ten, surrendering 366.9 yards and 28.9 points per game. The 2009 defense was ranked ninth again, but it was even worse: it gave each opponent an average of 393.3 yards and 27.5 points. This year, the trend has continued--more yards, fewer points. Michigan is currently eleventh in the Big Ten's total defense ranking, surrending 439 yards and 23.7 points each week. The diminishing point yield is somewhat misleading, though. Through three games last year, Michigan surrendered 58 total points to Western Michigan, Notre Dame, and Eastern Michigan. Through three games this year, Michigan has surrendered 71 to Connecticut, Notre Dame, and FCS UMass. That indicates that the worst is yet to come once the Big Ten season starts and teams like Michigan State, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Ohio State get to pound away and pass through such a porous unit.
Numbers are only part of the story, however. The real evidence of Michigan's defensive woes is revealed through simple observation. Watch the Wolverines play. Defenders miss tackles, misread plays, fill the wrong lanes, lose containment, and fail to locate the ball. To be fair, Michigan's defense was expected to struggle this year, but not in the manner that it has. Before the season, the defense was decimated by transfers, departures, and the injury to CB Troy Woolfolk, leaving Michigan's defense somewhat talented but not nearly deep enough. Further, it was ceded that the defense lacked elite prospects like Brandon Graham. Accordingly, preseason prognostications from internets insiders always came with caveats about staying healthy and young players developing quickly. Yet, the same warnings were balanced by assured expectations that a simplified scheme and a general improvement in team speed would leave the defense competent, albeit not dangerous (to opponents).
The concerns about depth and talent have proved warranted, but they've not been accompanied by any of the anticipated good stuff. Michigan's defenders appear no smarter or faster. Worse, their best techniques and basic comprehension of the sport are tenuous when present, and those moments are rare and fleeting. The broken arm tackles, coverage breakdowns, misjudged angles, and faulty paths to the ball against Massachusetts all reinforced a sense of helplessness that has permeated the defense since Rich Rodriguez arrived. A coach cannot make a cornerback's hips terribly more flexible, and he can't heal broken ankles by rubbing his hands together. But he can teach his players the proper football techniques, he can teach them how to improve their skills, and he can create a replicable system that adequately trains class after class. Unless the "he" in that sentence is Rich Rodriguez.
Beyond scandal, defensive ineptitude has been a hallmark of Rodriguez's Michigan program, and the first three weeks of the season do not argue well for an anticipated improvement in the latter. Through two defensive coordinators, three schematic approaches, and a coaching-staff mutiny that got Scott Shafer fired, Michigan has been reliably terrible on defense. The culprits may very well be defensive assistants who can't impart technique or don't understand how to diagnose or correct the persistent errors, but that "answer" to the problem might only be worse for Rodriguez. After all, his defensive coordinator, Greg Robinson, is relatively new to the boys club, but the rest of the staff are Rodriguez cronies.
Isolating individual culprits is almost a fool's errand, though, because the product on the field is ultimately the head coach's responsibility, and Michigan's head coach tolerates this sustained failure. How else does one explain Michigan's willingness to consistently rush three defensive linemen while playing zone coverage, giving opposing quarterbacks and receivers ample time to find gaping holes in the secondary on play after play? How else does one explain Michigan's willingness to rely upon an undersized three-man front and a linebacker corps known to be inconsistent at best to stop opposing rushers? Supposed remedies like blitzing more frequently or changing alignments to put bigger bodies on the field might carry with them their own risks, but neglecting to even try them suggests a coach either comfortable with or forever confused by the every-down defensive problems. We should probably assume Rodriguez is not the former. (Limited personnel is another explanation, of course, but that, too, falls on Rodriguez. He is no longer primarily relying on another coach's players, and it is his recruits who appear to keep walking away.)
That, then, is why Rodriguez will likely not be back in Ann Arbor next season. Operating under an athletic-director mandate for improvement, Rodriguez simply doesn't appear capable of developing a reliable, consistent defense. (Let's not even discuss how low a bar that is, and how he still have not cleared it.) In the Big Ten, that fatal flaw has been exposed twice before, and there is little reason to expect that this third attempt will yield a different result. Sure, Michigan's improved offense and star quarterback may give the Wolverines a better chance of winning than they have had in previous years, but Michigan's awful defense almost allowed UMass to win in Ann Arbor on a day when the Wolverines scored 42 points. What happens when Michigan brings this defense to Columbus and State College, or asks it to hold up while hosting Michigan State, Wisconsin, and Iowa? Let us not forget, either, that under Rodriguez, Michigan teams have proved depressingly capable of losing to schools, like Purdue and Illinois, with inferior talent.
Past performance may not be indicative of future returns, but after Saturday, Michigan's season appears to closely resemble the previous two failed campaigns. Michigan is likely again headed down that awful path, and another bad season of 5-7 or 6-6 football will be the end of the Rodriguez experiment. Michigan's pride, athletics budget, and brand equity can't tolerate that kind of consistent losing. Rodriguez's departure would come at a high price: new anxiety and confusion about the future of Michigan football. But the alternative--bringing back a coach who is assembling a body of work that demonstrates his incompetence--would likely just delay, not avert, incurring the cost, anyway. Firing Rich Rod might also disappoint those Wolverines who have supported Rodriguez not only for his inherent qualities as an offensive innovator, but also for his symbolic qualities as an agent of change. In the wake of his failed tenure, would some establishment coaching candidate along the lines of a Mike DeBord resurface as a viable option? That would be terrifying, but it is a question for another time.
There will be few certainties at the end of this season, really, as Michigan concludes another disappointing year at or near the bottom of the Big Ten. But one will be beyond dispute--Michigan will need a new head football coach. Surely, that sentiment will strike some fans as asinine, alarmist, premature, mean, whatever. Others will not even summon a derisive adjective for it; they'll just laugh and ignore it. But the UMass game was a harrowing wake-up call about Michigan's program trajectory. Here is another one:
- Taking over a 6-7 team, Nick Saban won a national title at Alabama in his third year. - Taking over a 5-7 team, Pete Carroll won a national title at USC in his third year. - Taking over an 8-4 team, Jim Tressel won a national title at Ohio State in his second year. - Taking over a 7-4 team, Urban Meyer won a national title at Florida in his second year. - Taking over a 9-3 team, Les Miles won a national title at LSU in his third year. - Taking over a 5-6 team, Bob Stoops won a national title at Oklahoma in his second year.
- Taking over a 9-4 team, Rich Rodriguez has yet to even field an adequate defense at Michigan in his third year.
