Three and Out (46 page)

The crowd also heard from longtime assistant Jerry Hanlon, and Moeller himself, who flew up from Florida for the occasion.

“As I look at it and see what Coach Rodriguez is doing, I have all the confidence he's going to do it. But again, everybody—you're in, or you're out.”

With that, Moeller had publicly declared himself in.

Of course, Rodriguez was the one everyone was waiting to hear.

“I knew it would take a special place to leave my comfort zone,” Rodriguez said of his alma mater and home state. “When you have an opportunity to play or coach at a place like Michigan, you have to listen. And even though the last couple years haven't gone nearly like everybody wanted, I'm still glad I made the move, because I know what's going to happen in the future.

“What is a Michigan Man?” he asked. “I've heard that a lot. I'm not from Michigan. How do I become a Michigan Man?”

He then said, as he had heard it described, “If you work hard and you're passionate, you give everything you got to the cause, which is having the best football program in America, to developing young men who will represent you right on and off the field, and you're a good guy and you have good guys around you and you believe in the university and its ideals, then you can be a Michigan Man.

“Well, I think I'm a Michigan Man.

“I don't know if I can express in words how much I appreciate the opportunity to coach here.”

This marked a shift from his introductory press conference, when he had joked that he hoped being a Michigan Man was not a prerequisite for being the head coach. He was getting it, and reaching out.

*   *   *

The difference between Martin's strengths and his predecessor's was immediately apparent in Brandon's press conference two days later when he, Rodriguez, and Coleman addressed the latest report from the NCAA investigation. The NCAA said it was looking into five findings, regarding the number and involvement of the quality control staffers, whether Rodriguez promoted “an atmosphere of compliance within the football program,” and if the department “adequately monitor[ed] its football program.” There would be plenty more to say about all of those concerns, but Brandon's performance was the story that day.

The crime novelist Scott Turow has written that a good trial attorney knows how to send a message to the jury without coming out and saying it. Brandon has that skill.

He said all the right things—Michigan takes great pride in the sterling reputation of its program, and therefore any allegations are taken seriously—but he also managed to hint that “major” is a misleading adjective, and back in his day, Schembechler had no problem punishing players any time of year for missing class, which was one of the violations the NCAA was investigating.

The message: We're on top of the situation and handling everything by the book, but it's clear we're not looking at a wanton disregard for the rules here, or a sinister exploitation of our players, contrary to the original story. Given the state of Michigan's athletic department at that time—financially flush but getting publicly trashed—the timing of such help couldn't have been better.

What Brandon's hiring would mean for Rodriguez, however, was less clear. On the one hand, if there was one area in which Rodriguez needed help, it was public relations. Brandon could also help Rodriguez build bridges with the regents and President Coleman. On the other, Martin had hired Rodriguez and his own legacy as AD was wrapped up in seeing Rodriguez succeed. Brandon, however, hadn't hired Rodriguez and would be less reluctant to pull the plug.

Rodriguez would sink or swim on his own.

 

33   MAKING IT

A little sunshine broke through the clouds camped out over Schembechler Hall that spring, however, when Brandon Graham and Zoltan Mesko entered the NFL draft.

Graham had transformed himself from an overweight underachiever to a lean, mean pass-rushing machine, bursting from the middle of the pack to become the Big Ten's co-MVP and the MVP for the Senior Bowl. High honors for anyone, and especially for a defensive player, which would draw a half dozen NFL executives and coaches to Ann Arbor at a time for the sole purpose of testing the defensive end for themselves. As one NFL executive told me, “If you're prepared to write a check for a few million dollars, you should probably spend a few thousand first to make sure you're getting what you pay for.”

The tests were very specific; they knew exactly what they were looking for. Graham excelled at all of them save one: The Big Ten co-MVP cannot throw a football for his life. He doesn't hold it properly, his motion is atrocious—“throws like a girl” came to mind, though I didn't dare say it out loud—and the results make Garo Yepremian's infamous effort look like Tom freakin' Brady. There isn't a twelve-year-old kid playing backyard ball who can't throw the ball better than Brandon Graham.

But then, as one team official told me, “quarterback is the one position we know he will
not
be playing.”

They left the field pleased and impressed.

Six days later, however, another team, the Philadelphia Eagles, would select Graham with the thirteenth overall pick—ESPN captured the explosion in Grahams' hotel room crowded with friends and family. The Eagles would offer him a five-year, $22 million contract, obviously more than enough to move his mom and his sisters out of their dangerous neighborhood.

He had made it. His family had made it. He would never have to go back.

Mesko's story might be even more unlikely. He spent Christmas Eve 1989 ducking on the floor of his parents' apartment in Romania to avoid getting hit by cross fire during the revolution. After his parents, both engineers, moved to suburban Cleveland, he got lured into playing football by accident—literally—when he smashed a ceiling light with a kick ball in his junior high school gym. His teacher gave him a choice: pay for the light or join his football team.

Easy call.

Zoltan's parents didn't believe him when he explained you could earn a college scholarship by kicking a pointy ball in the air—who'd heard of such a thing?—but after Lloyd Carr gave him a full ride to Michigan, they believed. Five years later, he had set school records for gross yards per punt at 44.5, and net yards per punt at 41, and earned two degrees with no debt.

While teammate Brandon Graham was wowing the scouts at the Senior Bowl, Mesko was blowing his chance with the same people thanks to a horrible performance in a mini-tryout a couple days before the game. But he refocused and redeemed himself at the combine. His stock bounced back.

On Saturday, April 24, Zoltan Mesko watched the third day of the 2010 draft with his friends and parents. During the fifth round, Mesko's cell phone rang. “Unknown Caller” is all it said. When he picked it up, he found himself talking to the New England Patriots' head coach, Bill Belichick, and the owner, Robert Kraft. While they talked, ESPN announced, “with the 150th pick, the New England Patriots select Zoltan Mesko of Michigan.” The room burst into cheers.

On July 16, Mesko signed with the Patriots for the minimum wage. In the NFL, that's not $7.25 an hour but $325,000 a year, and they tacked on a bonus of $187,250.

He might have been the poorest player in the NFL, but probably the richest kid from Timisoara, Romania.

There was another success story developing down at Schembechler Hall. It wasn't big money or big news, but it was very big to the players on the Michigan football team.

Brock Mealer was not a Michigan football player. He wasn't even a Michigan student, attending Ohio State, of all places. But he had become as much a part of the team as any man wearing the winged helmet.

On Christmas Eve, 2007, twenty-three-year-old Brock Mealer was riding home with his family from their cousin's house. Brock's younger brother Elliott had just accepted a scholarship from Lloyd Carr to play on the offensive line at Michigan—which Rodriguez honored when he took over a few weeks later—and Elliott and his girlfriend seemed headed for the altar.

But on the way home, a ninety-year-old driver ran a stop sign and struck the Mealers' SUV. Elliott's girlfriend and the Mealers' father were killed instantly. Brock was paralyzed from the waist down.

Doctors gave Brock less than a 1 percent chance of walking again. Rodriguez told Brock he should come to the U-M hospital's world-class rehab unit. But after a few months, a nurse there told his mom to consider buying a specially equipped van for about $100,000 and to be prepared to change her son's diapers. Hope was officially discouraged. They had their reasons. In most cases like Brock's, there really isn't much chance of walking, and to pretend there is can often set the patients up for a demoralizing return to the reality of their situation.

But Brock's will to live hinged on walking again. With little hope for improvement, he had fallen into a deep depression, made worse when his insurance company cut him off in the fall of 2009.

He still had family, though, and Michigan football. Near the end of the 2009 season, strength coach Mike Barwis invited him to work with them.

The guy had no idea what he was in for.

Barwis turned the job over to Parker Whiteman, who gave Brock his daily lunch hour, but not an inch of slack, especially when the going got tough—which it did, every day. Within a month, as Christmas approached, Brock had relearned how to stand up—just for a second, at first, and then for a moment, and then for a minute. Then he started walking with arm crutches. And then, by the time Graham and Mesko were drafted, just canes.

And that's when Rich Rodriguez called Brock into his office and told him they wanted Brock to help open the renovated stadium for the rededication game.

Leading up to the big day, Brock was as nervous as any player on the team—maybe more so.

 

34   STRAW POLLS AND BIG BETS

The Griese/Hutchinson/Woodson charity golf outing for C. S. Mott Children's Hospital is one of the many events Carr's former players—and Carr himself—attended that raised millions for the hospital. You'd be hard-pressed to find another college football program that made the effort these Michigan Men did for charity.

But, as always during the Rodriguez era, there was an undercurrent to the event. Held at Michigan's golf course on May 15, it played out like yet another Rorschach test. The buzz that day—even with all the parties, including Rodriguez, on the course—was the now familiar subjects of cultural fit and Michigan Men.

Depending on who was talking, Rodriguez either didn't fit the mold or the Michigan Men wouldn't let him—though, if you polled the people on the course, the former probably would have won handily. Either answer put you on one side of the divide or the other, with the middle ground shrinking every day.

For those who felt Rodriguez simply didn't belong, there was a follow-up question: What did he need to do to keep his job, and if he didn't, who might replace him? The most common answers among the bad-fit crowd that day were eight wins, and Brady Hoke, who had coached the defensive line on the 1997 national title team. Carr had earned his players' loyalty by handling a deluge of criticism with complete restraint—he could be abrupt, abrasive, even argry, but never gave off a whiff of self-pity—then proved his critics wrong. Hoke couldn't claim all that, of course, but the players he coached in the mid-1990s were the ones leading the charge. He had earned some loyalty, too.

Hoke was hardly a national name. Whenever fans and pundits discussed replacement candidates, Jim Harbaugh came up most often that spring, and Les Miles second. The lesser-known Hoke seemed like a long shot at the time, but among this influential group, he was the clear favorite.

How much sway the Carr contingent held over the process was entirely debatable, but no one could deny that some of Rodriguez's problems were his own doing. As spring turned to summer, Demar Dorsey was becoming one of them.

For all the hits Rodriguez took on signing day for taking Demar Dorsey, by June it appeared he would not even get the payoff of having the fleet-footed five-star phenom in his depleted defensive backfield. The sticking point, it turned out, was not Dorsey's checkered past. That could be rationalized as something he'd learned from, an argument Michigan had used a few times over the years with the occasional reformed player. No, the sticking point was Dorsey's academic present.

The night before National Signing Day, Rodriguez, Chris Singletary, and Brad Labadie went up to the Hill to meet with director of admissions Ted Spencer, newly hired provost Phil Hanlon, and, by phone, Dave Brandon. They met to discuss five academic risks Rodriguez was recruiting, including Demar Dorsey.

Brandon and the people on the Hill might have been a bit uncomfortable, but they gave Rodriguez permission to offer all of them scholarships, though that did not guarantee admission. Brandon let it be known, however, that at Michigan such candidates should be the exceptions, not the rule, and the unofficial cap going back to Schembechler's regime had always been kept at about four or five. Rodriguez's first two full classes had had about twice that, so Brandon made it clear this would be the last year. Rodriguez accepted that.

For just about everyone involved, there were risks. If Rodriguez didn't get some players who could help on defense—fast—he would have great difficulty getting the seven or eight wins most people thought he needed to keep his job. Of the four players on the table that night besides Dorsey, one played quarterback and the rest played linebacker. But Rodriguez also knew if they embarrassed the program, the problem would be his. He was betting on his ability to get the best out of borderline candidates, which had already resulted in a few of them achieving 3.0 GPAs, but a few of them dropping out, too.

As the spring unfolded, the players tended to determine their own fates, with only Jake Ryan making it to the fall in uniform. Two failed to meet NCAA requirements, so they enrolled in prep schools to improve their grades and scores. (One signed for Marshall in 2011, and another for Miami, Florida.) Another was admitted but flunked out of school by the end of summer term.