Watching Michigan the past two years has been disappointing. You watch them get off to fast starts, get someone in the Heisman conversation and watch everything fall like a house of cards. The defense mad no improvements and the 3-3-5 was a paper scheme. I might go to my grave defending Greg Robinson because I know it’s not his fault. He’s just the bagman for the defensive shortcomings. He couldn’t help it if he couldn’t take pork chops and make fillet mignon out of it.
“We saw the light at the end of the tunnel,” he said Tuesday in a 30-minute interview with the Associated Press.
“Heck, we had 24 starters coming back, and the player of the year in the league — he’s a sophomore and still learning. Recruiting, we thought it was going really well even with all the drama.
“That’s the frustrating part about it is we didn’t get a chance to finish the job.”
It’s true Rodriguez was doomed from the start, but some situations he handled badly, such as the Demar Dorsey situation. He never was going to be afforded a chance to finish the job unless he went undefeated. He wasn’t an old blue and the alums never warmed up to him.
He felt it wasn’t fair that Athletic Director David Brandon left him twisting in the wind. This I do agree with. I feel Brandon knew he was going to fire Rodriguez after the Ohio State game and should have done it then instead of waiting until after the Gator Bowl debacle. By the way, Mississippi State just scored again.
“Whatever I say in that regard is probably going to sound self-serving,” Rodriguez said. “Would it have been better for the staff to know a month a head? No question about it. When jobs come open in the college level they come open in December.
“And had I been able to get on somewhere, that could have happened, too. I may have been able to get another head coaching job then. But I still had the belief we had things going to the point where we were going to be pretty good. Like I said, the worst was behind us.”
If Rodriguez had been allowed to stay there might’ve been National Guardsmen headed to Ann Arbor. Michigan simply couldn’t wait for things to get better and had to go in a different direction.
