Don’t hold your breath. All your emails were tightly filtered and placed neatly in the virtual circular file. Excerpt from MLive’s recap of the post press conference interview with Bill Martin: Q: What took you by surprise? Anything? MARTIN: The passion of Michigan fans. The absolute passion. I had to put filters on my e-mail, because of the number of e-mails I got on this search. Anything that said football was dumped and put into a bucket, and ultimately deleted so it couldn’t be FOIAed. It’s all gone. Gee thanks man. I hope no one wrote him to “donate millions to the football program”.
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Post press conference audio from Carr
For those of you waiting from some comments from Coach Carr, here’s some audio posted on MLive of Carr addressing questions after the Rich Rodriguez introduction press conference. Sounds like all the big Michigan beat writers were on it, Chengelis, Albom, etc: [display_podcast] Carr: “I’ll be there if he needs me.” Carr: “I’m happy for Bill Martin.”
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Shades of Yost: Is Rodriguez a Meechigan Man?
Rich Rodriguez isn’t the only West Virginian to walk the sidelines for a Michigan football team. Many of you may know that the great Fielding H. Yost was born in West Virginia. A quick scan of Google maps determined that the old coach’s birthplace of Fairview is a mere four miles down the road from Grant Town, where Rodriguez was born. [Ed 11/28/08: Per John U Bacon, Bo’s Lasting Lessons author, this is completely false. I read this in several places but apparently, Rodriguez was not born in Grant Town. Bacon interviewed Rodriguez, here’s a note from Bacon to a few folks that challenged Bacon’s assertion of RichRod’s correct birthplace: No matter how many sources list Grant Town as Rich Rodriguez’s place of birth, he was born in Chicago, and raised there until the middle of second grade. (I’ll take his mom’s word on that.) His family did leave their home late at night, and suddenly, and Rodriguez had not heard of West Virginia until they were leaving for the state that night, as the article says. Yost brought so much to this University, from starting a legacy of dominant football to building Michigan Stadium. Fans of great Michigan announcer Bob Ufer may know that Ufer referred to the Wolverines as “Meechigan“, a tip of the hat to old Yost…
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Rich Rodriguez Era Starts today, WVU coach Hired
Reports breaking minutes ago, Rich Rodriguez has accepted the Michigan job. As speculated here, looks like this was locked up on Friday. So what happened? 1. Martin went to Toledo to close the deal and not let Rodriguez out until he accepted. Looks like that happened. 2. Something happened after the Pitt game that turned Rodriguez against the WVU officials, not sure what. He kept them in the dark during this whole process. 3. Assume they worked out the details of the $4M buy-out, just like they did with Coach Beilein. If this money is also going to the West Virginia Foundation that campus is going to have some Thornton Mellon phat facilities soon. So what’s next? 1. Looks like Carr will of course coach the Capital One bowl game but Rodriguez won’t be coaching the Fiesta. Will Carr need to pull an Al Haigesque ‘I’m still in charge’ plea? 2. Should be interesting to see how Rodriguez uses the current players, especially Mallett. 3. Jim Carty has a Big East background and there’s talk (just talk) of some questionable recruiting incidents related to Rodriguez. If true, you can bet Carty will be looking into it. 4. Hopefully talk of assistant coaches will occur soon. I’d like to see him keep Fred Jackson, possibly Ron English but without knowing how…
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Michigan Memorabilia Vault: 1920-1939
A gallery of Michigan athletics memorabilia from around the web. Do you have anything from this era to share? Scan it in and send it over to me. Click to see full size:
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Rich Rodriguez not talking Saturday (audio)
Yes, I understand the irony of the title. Here’s audio from his press conference Saturday. You’ve got to love those beat writers. He instructs the media to that he only wants to talk about practice, the bowl game, opponent or recruiting. Check out how the writers try to push the envelope on Rich’s Rules.
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Reporters grill Rich Rodriguez, get nowhere
From WVmetronews.com, looks like reporters had a chance to ask Rich Rodriguez about the rumors Saturday morning but it sounds like he told them he flat out wasn’t talking about it. No denials, no nothing really: “It may be disappointing to you, but I’m not going to talk about any rumors or innuendos or jobs or whatever else is floating out there. I’m not going to talk about that at all,” Rodriguez told reporters. “I’m not talking about anything other than this year’s team, this season and this year’s bowl preparations.” The reporters did lock onto Michigan transfer Ryan Mundy and other players, but they have nothing so far: Ryan Mundy, who played at Michigan before coming to WVU offered a unique perspective to the rumors. He tod reporters that at Michigan there is a lot of pressure on not only the coaches, but also the players. Mundy said at Michigan a national championship is a “reachable goal” every year. The only relevant new info is that apparently, Rodriguez has not yet talked about it with his WVU bosses, another good sign if you want him coming to Michigan: Meanwhile sources tell MetroNews that both athletic director Ed Pastalong and WVU president Mike Garrison have been trying to reach Rodriguez to talk about the reports.
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A Fab Five Christmas
There are thousands of Michigan football-related items on the eBay and this time of year including all kind of items for on or for under your tree. This one has to be top of your list, Juwan Howard in Fab 5 gear dunking on your face: A while we’re on hit, how about this beauty of Jim Harbaugh:
