Dick Rod To Pull Another Disappearing Act?

Take this with several grains of salt because it involves something coming out Mark May’s mouth, but Mr. May himself was on some sports talk radio show yesterday suggesting that word on the street is that not only could Rich Rodriguez (aka “Dick Rod”) leave Michigan to take either the Tennessee or Clemson vacancies but that Michigan would actually help him to broker a deal with one of the aforementioned schools.

May’s reason for suggesting such a scenario basically sum down to the “wine and cheese crowd” at Michigan with their “Mercedes in the parking lots” who expect to win every year aren’t warming up to some guy with a southern drawl who changes the playcalling system and oversees the worst season in the program’s proud history.

May then goes on to suggest that Clemson fans would embrace Dick Rod because that’s where he was a well-liked offensive coordinator during the first couple years of the Tommy Bowden era before bolting to West Virginia to become their head coach.

Certainly, nothing that’s being said about Dick Rod should be considered “far-fetched” and I wouldn’t be as shocked as you think if such a rumor were to end up true.  Dick Rod isn’t exactly a well-liked figure amongst the Michigan fan base and his style and demeanor are a deep contrast from what the fans are used to.  That is usually not a good sign with a program for which winning is a birthright.  We could potentially have another Bill Callahan at Nebraska-type scenario playing out in Ann Arbor, unless Michigan’s athletic department decides to pave Dick Rod a path to Clemson or Tennessee.

Anyway, here’s the link to the aforementioned talk show appearance.  You’ll have to fast-forward to a little bit beyond the halfway mark before the Dick Rod talk begins.

Michigan Late Night Bullet-Points

How's it taste, Dick Rod?

Yeah, it’s late (past 2 AM here in State College) and I will probably pass out the moment I shut my eyes for more than a few seconds but I feel the need to get a few things off my chest:

• Everything that could possibly go wrong, did go wrong, and I’m not just talking about Clark’s fumble, Kelly’s kick hitting the goal post, or PSU’s run defense magically disappearing.  The bad omens were plenty visible during pre-game when the “Blue Sapphires” baton twirler dropped her baton and the drum major fell flat on his ass during his first flip.
• The team faced more than its share of adversity, trailing by 10 points in the first half and trailing at halftime for the first time this season.  This could very well pay off in the long run because it likely brought our players back down to Earth and made them realize that just because they sport a #3 ranking and are putting up mad stats doesn’t mean that opponents are going to suddenly bow and worship us, they have to bring their A-game every week or they will find themselves on the “no fun” end of an ass-whooping.  Look for a more focused team to show up to Columbus next weekend.
• Words cannot describe how goddamn frustrating it was to see Brandon Minor and Steven Threet run in the same fucking directions (up the middle and off tackle, respectively) over and over again and yet continued to pick up hefty chunks of yardage.  It took a couple personnel changes (i.e. substituting Josh Hull and Tyrell Sales out for Michael Mauti and Bani Gbadyu) before we finally put an end to their shenanigans
• Nick Sheridan is every opposing defense’s gift from the football gods:  The kid wasn’t even good enough to start at QB for his HIGH SCHOOL team and he’s the second string QB at THE University of Michigan?  This would be the equivalent of JayPa seeing significant playing time during his days as a PSU QB.  Needless to say, Sheridan looked every bit like the high school bench warmer that he is by allowing us to get a momentum-shifting safety that allegedly prompted Dick Rod to grab him by the collar and start calling him a “dumb motherfucker.”
• To be fair to Sheridan though, Steven Threet didn’t fare any better when he was put back in to replace Sheridan and subsequently committed the much-awaited for costly fumble that Michigan has given up in every game this year.
• Note to the coaching staff: STEPFHON GREEN IS NOT EVAN ROYSTER.  The kid is not made to run up the middle every fucking time, his strengths lie in off tackle runs and screen passes.
• Speaking of Stepfhon Green and screen passes: I have to wonder how many people in Vegas were slamming their drinks on the table in disgust and screaming at the televisions when Green scored on that 80-yard screen pass late in the game to push PSU’s lead from 22 to 29, covering the 24-point PSU spread in the process…
• It’s also quite apparent that Dick Rod has no idea how to play with a lead.  I’ve lost count of how many times this season I’ve seen Michigan jump out to a quick start and lead by 10, only to completely shut down and end up suffering a thorough beating.  I realize he doesn’t have his type of players yet to fit his system, but one has to wonder if he is the kind of guy Michigan will be able to count on to get it done in the clutch because he sure as hell couldn’t get it done with all his uber-talented West Virginia teams in a far weaker Big East conference.  Something tells me that Dick Rod is going to become the Big Ten’s next John Cooper (and even more of an ass, if you can imagine that).

More related than one may think…

Fun With Facebook Walls: Rich Rodriguez

Courtesy of Dick Rod’s facebook wall, after Michigan began an epic futility streak against the MAC conference with yesterday’s loss at home to Toledo.  The happy expressions in the profile pictures of the flaming posters just scream “unintentional comedy gold.”

If you also look carefully enough, you can see one person getting desperate enough to leap onto MARYLAND’s bandwagon..and I doubt it has anything to do with basketball.

Dick Rod’s Final Disappearing Act

If I didn’t know any better I would think that Rich Rodriguez is trying to cover up a murder

West Virginia officials are wondering if assistant coaches aren’t all that Rich Rodriguez took with him to Michigan. They believe he may also have destroyed all or most of the paperwork files relating to every player on the current Mountaineer roster and virtually all of the activities conducted by the program over the past seven years.

Soon after returning to work after the Fiesta Bowl a little more than a week ago, the staff at the Puskar Center found that most of the files — including all of the player files — that had been stored in Rodriguez’s private office were missing. In addition, all of the players’ strength and conditioning files in the weight room were gone.

“It’s unbelievable. Everything is gone, like it never existed,’’ said a source within the athletic department, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Good, bad or indifferent, we don’t have a record of anything that has happened.’’

According to the source, the files in Rodriguez’s office that are now missing included everything from records regarding summer camps — financial and otherwise — to data on boosters, recruiting and most everything related to activities within the program during Rodriguez’s seven years at WVU.

Most disturbing, though, is the absence of all of the players’ personal files, which included, among other things, contact information, scholarship money awarded, class attendance records and records on personal conduct and community service, be it positive or negative.

As sleazy a person as Dick Rod is, I’ll actually be impressed if I find out that the destruction of the files resembled something straight out of the “boat scene” from The Usual Suspects.

Sunday Night

Just a few things to get off my chest:

• The basketball team blew out Denver with relative ease, but my god was it a snoozer. Denver shot the ball like pure crap, particularly in the first half when they only put up ten points., which is the lowest any PSU team has held an opponent to in one half since they enacted a shot clock in college basketball. According to our coaching staff, the purpose of scheduling back-to-back Princeton offense opponents was so we would be prepared for our Big Ten season opener at Northwestern but wasn’t one of these boring-ass opponents who can’t execute such a style of play enough? Besides, we should be preparing to face the other nine Big Ten opponents who should all finish higher than Northwestern.
• While I’m still on basketball, I’m currently 3-0 in my competition with RFTD, who sports 2-1 record himself. I realize the competition hasn’t been very exciting thus far since we’ve both been leaning the same way with our picks but I feel once Big Ten season rolls around, things will get a little more divisive.
• Congrats to Coach Russ Rose and the women’s volleyball team for winning their second national title in eight years beating Stanford in five games. This happened despite the fact that we blew a 2 games to none lead and looked like all the momentum had been entirely sapped out of us, until we somehow managed to regroup for the decisive 5th game and had our “Not now chief, we’re the in the fuckin’ zone” moment.
• My fantasy football team, “Kebert Xela” is the #1 seed in the Yahoo Fantasy Football playoffs. I’m currently up by 16 points in my first round game but my friend Bill, who is my competition this week, still has the Vikings defense and Ryan Longwell kicking tomorrow night against the Bears. The way scoring is done in my league, Bill very much has a shot at upsetting me if Minny’s D can shut down the Bears’ already lousy offense and Longwell nails a few field goals
• Rich Rodriguez – Talk about a backstabber and a half…The guy practically teased Alabama last year into getting himself a raise at WVU, only to ditch them a year later for the Michigan job. Good luck installing your spread-option style football at Michigan with that slow-footed QB Ryan Mallett, coach.

Smile, Mountaineer fans, you’ve just been DICK-RODDED!

• For some reason, I’ve been watching a bunch of old Saturday Night Live sketches on YouTube that people have managed to sneak past the NBC sensors. Most notably, the “Choppin’ Broccoli” song by Dana Carvey…Speaking of which, I’m starving. Time for my late dinner…