Three and Out (37 page)

“Oh, yeah!”

“You better tie your shoes a little tighter!”

“HELL yeah!”

“Put a little more tape on!”

“BRING it!”

“YEAHHHH!”

“And put a little more air in your helmets! And—”

“STRAP IT ON!” they yelled.

“Because Michigan's coming! Let's go!”

They ran down the tunnel looking for trouble, their hoots and hollers echoing the entire way to the field. He still had them.

*   *   *

They showed the nation on Iowa's second play, when Ricky Stanzi dropped back and threw a perfect strike—right to Donovan Warren, who caught it cleanly, then dashed 40 yards straight into the end zone. 7–0.

The sidelines erupted.

But a few plays later, Stanzi floated a pass right over the defensive line to his tight end, Tony Moeaki, who all but walked the rest of the way. 7–7.

The Iowa fans, well lubricated from a full day of tailgating in the cold, leaned over the railing close enough to touch the players.

“Review
that
, bitch!”

“I slept with your mom last night!”

“Ann Arbor's a whore!”

The Hawkeyes added a field goal before Forcier led his offense on a 12-play, 72-yard drive to pull ahead 14–10. On the other side of the ball, Michigan's defense reverted to its 2008 form, forcing the Hawkeyes into repeated third-and-longs, only to let them off the hook, most egregiously on a third-and-24. That drive led to another touchdown to give Iowa the lead again, 20–14.

“We got this shit!” Barwis yelled to his guys as they ran up the tunnel for halftime. “We got 'em, Blue!” Tony Dews agreed.

But they were outraced by Rich Rodriguez, who barged through the players. “We should be kickin' their ass!” he yelled. “We're better than they are!
We're better than they are!
”

Back in the coaches' room, he told his assistants, “Tate's not looking downfield. He's looking at the rush—every time! And can we play some defense? Can we get a fucking stop? Third-and-fucking-24—are you
kidding
me?”

Coach Robinson started to respond but was quickly cut off—rare, for Rodriguez.

“Everyone's got a fucking answer, everyone's got a fucking excuse. Can't everyone just fucking coach? If Williams can't cover his man, put someone else in there!” He punctuated his complaint by knocking a chair against the wall.

Rodriguez's final words to his team were simple: “We're in great shape. The only thing beatin' us … is us! We're strikin' 'em. If we keep strikin' 'em for thirty more minutes, this son of a bitch is ours! Let's go!”

The idea of another heartbreaker, followed by a late-night flight home, wasn't appealing to anyone in that room.

*   *   *

Forcier continued to miss his marks, but Brandon Minor covered 44 yards on seven carries to close the gap to 23–21. But the mistakes piled up. Mike Williams roughed the punter. Troy Woolfolk let his man run straight at returner Greg Mathews, who dropped the fair catch, which Woolfolk's man gobbled up. And then Michigan's defense made the exact same mistake it had in the first half—leaving Tony Moeaki wide open in the middle for his second scoring jog. The drive took exactly one play, ten seconds, and 42 yards to give Iowa a 30–21 lead with 12:56 left in the game.

The Wolverines still had plenty of time, but Forcier took so long to take the first snap of Michigan's next possession that he was called for delay of game, followed by more bad reads and off-target passes. When Forcier got to the sidelines this time, Rodriguez finally let him have it. “We are a
spread offense
! We're supposed to be
fast
! And on our
first
play from scrimmage, we get called for delay. This is just
embarrassing
!”

Rodriguez's outburst was, naturally, captured on national television. While Forcier sulked on the sideline, ESPN's Lisa Salters asked Paul Schmidt, “Is Tate hurt?”

“Just his pride,” he said, and as usual, his diagnosis was dead-on.

Rodriguez looked down the sidelines, found Denard Robinson, pointed at him, and yelled, “Get ready!”

“I've
been
ready—all year!”

He was about to get his chance to prove it.

Robinson got the ball on Michigan's 41-yard line with 7:42 remaining and went right to work, passing twice and running eight times for 58 yards. The last, a 3-yard dive over the goal line, put his team just 2 points down, 28–30, with 3:16 left on the clock.

There were 70,585 freezing people in Kinnick Stadium that night, and at that moment, probably every single one feared Michigan would get the ball back and roll down the field for a last-second score. They had seen what Michigan could do.

Rodriguez, his well-developed brinksmanship bolstered by the comeback, called for the onside kick—but his guy knocked it straight out-of-bounds, giving them no chance to recover it. With 3:16 left, Iowa needed only one first down to ice the game. But surprisingly, Michigan's defense held.

Michigan got the ball back on its 17-yard line with 1:30 left, no time-outs, and 3 points away from a stirring victory on national television,

Rodriguez had to make one big decision: Who should get the ball?

Forcier, who was 8-for-19 with an interception, a fumble, an unforced trip, and an unnecessary time-out, but had already performed the very same last-minute heroics three times that season? Or Robinson, who was two-for-two passing, a far better runner, and had just orchestrated a 59-yard touchdown drive in his only possession that day, but had never run a two-minute drill in college and didn't know the playbook? Rodriguez set his jaw, looked down the sideline, and barked, “Denard!”

Robinson didn't need to be told twice. On first down from the 17, Robinson found Odoms in the right flats for 14 yards and a first down, stopping the clock. A good read, a good throw, a good sign. On the next play, from the 31-yard line, Robinson dashed right for 7 yards.

Offensive lineman Mark Ortmann said the next day, “When I got down into my stance for that last play, I believed—hell, I was
convinced
—that we were going to throw the ball downfield once, maybe twice, kick the field goal, and walk off winners.”

But on the next play, with Odoms wide open again in the flats and plenty of room to get a first down, out-of-bounds, or both, Robinson looked past him, rolled out, and saw Junior Hemingway running up the right sideline. Robinson launched the ball off balance and from his right foot, creating a predictable floater, just as Hemingway pulled up, hoping Robinson would find him under coverage. Hemingway watched helplessly as the pass sailed over his head toward three Hawkeyes camped under the ball. The only question remaining was which one would catch it.

Two plays later, the game was over. The student section emptied onto the field like sand pouring out of a dump truck.

A minute later, Rodriguez addressed his team in the pink locker room.

“Men, we beat ourselves tonight. We could have won this one—we played hard enough—but we just made too many mistakes. We need to go watch the film and see where we can be better. That starts with the coaches, and that starts with me.

“The first half of the season is over, but everything we want is still in front of us. Follow me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Follow me?”

“YES, SIR!”

The assistants could all head to the steaming-hot showers, warm up, clean up, and change, but Rodriguez's day was not over. The worst part was ahead: the press conference. After a tough loss, such “gangbangs,” as they're called in the media, are probably the worst places to generate incisive reporting. It is less poker game than ritual, with the reporters trying to get the coach to say something,
anything
, and the coach trying just as hard not to.

The questions started right where Rodriguez knew they would:

“Why'd you pull Tate?”

“What did you say to Tate when he came off the field?”

“How did he respond?”

“Should you have put Robinson in earlier?”

“Why not use Forcier on the last drive, given his success?”

“Who's going to start next game?”

After each question, Rodriguez gamely tried to respond with a grin, defuse the situation, and say nice things about both quarterbacks. But one local reporter couldn't resist repeating the question: “Why not put Tate in at the end, given his history?”

Rodriguez turned to Bruce Madej, exasperated, but again managed to grin and give a benign nonanswer.

The tension between coaches and sportswriters has long been noted but little understood. Working on this project confirmed what I'd long suspected: The problem isn't that sportswriters are so insightful and ask the tough questions, as we'd like to think. No, most coaches don't hate sportswriters. They simply
dismiss
us as unathletic, pompous fools who have no idea what it's like to play a competitive sport, let alone coach one.

The late David Brinkley wrote that most senators had less respect for
The New York Times
's leading columnist than the local dog catcher—because
that
guy had the guts to put his name on a ballot, and the wits to win an election. Likewise, most coaches would rather talk to the offensive line coach from the local high school than the Pulitzer Prize–winning sportswriter.

Right when things were winding down, a reporter entered the back of the room, breathless, and said, “Coach Rodriguez, I apologize if you already answered this question, but when you made the switch to Denard Robinson—”

*   *   *

The ride to the airport, the flight home, and the ride back to Schembechler Hall were all completed in darkness and silence. The fact was, however, that Michigan had probably played its best game under Rodriguez. It wasn't perfect, and it wasn't enough, but if the Wolverines had played half as well against the struggling Spartans, they probably would have crushed them.

When everyone started looking for his car in the Schembechler Hall parking lot at 3:30 in the morning, all had the sheepish look of dogs who had just gotten into the garbage. They knew they were guilty of something, but they were not quite sure what.

The answer was simple: losing.

 

25   OF SLAUGHTERS AND SUMMIT MEETINGS

After spending weeks poring over films from Notre Dame, Michigan State, and Iowa—replete with future NFLers and professionally produced from three angles in great stadiums with packed houses—looking at film from Delaware State was like watching a two-bit high school squad.

Michigan paid Eastern Michigan $800,000 for the right to beat up on the Eagles but had to up the ante to $1 million for Delaware State, because DSU had been forced to forfeit a league game to make the date—another good argument against the superfluous and cynical twelfth game.

Delaware State earned every penny, losing 63–6. Every Michigan walk-on got in, including senior game captain Ohene Opong-Owusu—“The Big O!” as Rodriguez called him—who made his debut. All the starters stopped to watch when Ohene took the field, and he didn't disappoint, making the tackle on one kick return, and blowing up his man on another.

Rodriguez would honor Ohene's hits by replaying them at Monday's team meeting, where his teammates gave him their ritualistic lead-up—“ZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZ—POW!” It wasn't fifteen minutes of fame, just a moment, but Opong-Owusu would never forget it.

Beyond notching the fifth win, the game was almost completely inconsequential. But what happened off the field that day would have a much greater impact on Rodriguez, his staff, and his team.

*   *   *

Bill Martin, on his way to the Regents' Guest Area in the press box—where big donors and VIPs get schmoozed by President Coleman and others—was asked by a student security guard to show his pass. According to
The Michigan Daily
, Martin said, “I am the athletic director. I can go in.” Then he walked past the young man into the room. Whether he brushed by him, shoved him, or grabbed his shirt depends on who's telling the story. But no one disputes that, later that day, the student related the incident to a fellow student security guard, who told him of a similar incident earlier in the season.

The two students decided to file reports with U-M chief of police Ken Magee. As one regent told me, Magee might consider you a close friend, “but if one of his officers gives you a parking ticket, you're paying the full amount.”

The by-the-book Magee processed the complaint the way he would any other. Although no charges were ultimately filed, four days later, on Wednesday, the university sent out a press release announcing Martin's retirement. Whether the reports had any impact on the announcement is difficult to say, though the timing—midweek and midseason—seemed unusual. Martin has maintained throughout, however, that he planned to retire with the opening of the skyboxes in 2010, and there certainly is a logic to that.

Martin's already limited power to guide and protect Rodriguez would be all but eliminated, and whoever followed Martin would be less committed to a beleaguered coach whom he hadn't hired. For Rodriguez, it was just more snow on the rooftop, threatening to cave it in.

And it was against this backdrop that Martin, whose support for Rodriguez had always been sincere, sat down the very next day to a previously arranged lunch at the Michigan Union with Rodriguez and Carr. All three walked up State Street together, with horns honking the whole way up the hill, and fans shouting their names. When they made their way up the steps to the Union, Martin recalled, Denard Robinson happened to be walking out. Carr had never met him, so they had a brief chat. At lunch, they sat next to former Purdue quarterback Mark Herrmann, whose daughter was considering Michigan.