Published: July 14, 2008 10:39 pm         

4 million reasons, a football lesson learned about winning

There didn’t seem to be much doubt in this layman’s mind that at some point, former Mountaineer football coach Rich Rodriguez would have to pay the pied piper for ditching his job at West Virginia University and scurrying north in the middle of the night to become a Buckeye-hunting Wolverine.

That particular brand of head-coaching karma is rarely rewarded and now Rich Rod and his cohorts at the University of Michigan have 4 million reasons to ponder the negative financial consequences of ignoring contractual obligations.

For those keeping score at home, Rich Rod and company last week agreed to fork over $4 million to WVU, thus ending the lawsuit originating from the buyout clause in his old Mountaineer contract.

Hopefully, the only state newspaper headlines left for this sad saga will occur when Michigan signs the $2.5 million check later this month and Rich Rod pays off the remainder of the $1.5 million in three annual payments beginning in 2010.

To the bitter end, and despite the huge payoff, Rich Rod and Michigan still remained adamant that they did nothing wrong. The Associated Press reported University of Michigan athletic director Bill Martin saying Rich Rod “continues to disagree with the validity of the terms” and “the rest of us at Michigan felt it would be best to get this distracting issue behind us.”

Hidden within that quote is the fact that Martin and UM president Mary Sue Coleman were on the verge of being dragged into deposition hearings where they would have been forced to “tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” But a quick $4 million in blood money has squashed that opportunity forever.

So will “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” ever really be told? I think it already has.

Regardless of the arguments by Rich Rod that WVU broke its contractual obligations first by not giving him a personal Web site and foregoing perks on Mountaineer tickets for high school coaches — two reasons he said he believed negated the contract — and regardless that in the eyes of the law that Rich Rod doesn’t have to verbally admit any wrongdoing, the fact still remains that WVU got its money. Exactly the way the contract was written. End of story.

And remember, Rich Rod will be pulling down plenty of money at Michigan to pay off his debt to WVU. The New York Times reported that Rich Rod is expected to be making “well over $2 million a season” as the head coach of the Wolverines. Plus, with his agent Mike Brown at the ready, I’m sure Rich Rod will have several other opportunities to make some dough.

Provided, of course, that he doesn’t break the $4 million buyout clause that Michigan put in his contract.

If I were Brown — now there’s a disparaging visual image — I would begin shopping “Product Rodriguez” around as a spokesperson for his own line of cologne with catchy titles like ... Oh well, I will let you insert your own joke right there. There’s plenty of material to choose.

The biggest story left to be told will be played out in front of hundreds of thousands of Wolverine fans who will pack into “The Big House” to watch how their new football coach fares against Big 10 opponents. Now that’s going to be a major pressure cooker for Rich Rod and will pale in comparison to when he choked in the Pitt Panthers debacle last year which ended the opportunity to play for a national championship.

And will his players respond to his brand of coaching? Does leaving another university through the back door — and all the negative publicity that’s gone with it — have any effect on whether he can demand respect and inspire his players to greater heights? This we will see.

My prediction is that the University of Michigan will not have a great year. No matter who you are or where you are playing, rarely does a coach step into a program and immediately win championships without a few rebuilding years. Remember when Rich Rod took over at WVU?

Given that, I have a wager to bet with my beloved fans of this column. If Rich Rod wins a national championship for the coming football season, I promise to shave my head. Carpe Diem, everybody; have a great week.

— Christian lives in Greenbrier County.

E-mail: cgiggenbach@register-herald.com