Rodriguez out at Michigan: The (college) coaching carousel continues

If you miss a day of college football, you might as well miss a week of noteworthy news. Today in Ann Arbor, Rich Rodriguez was finally let go as head coach at Michigan. This news may have come to the Wolverine fan base as a necessary move, but probably came much to the chagrin of Ohio State fans.

Athletic director Dave Brandon said, “I believe this is the best decision for the future of Michigan football. We have not achieved at the level that I expect.”

Rodriguez left West Virginia after the 2007 season and never really made it click in Michigan, where he compiled a lackluster 15-22 record in three seasons, with only one bowl appearance. It definitely wasn’t what Michigan fans thought they were getting after Lloyd Carr stepped down after the 2007 season.

Sure Carr couldn’t beat Ohio State and wasn’t delivering with the success that his sweatervest-wearing counterpart at Ohio State was doing, but Carr wasn’t doing a bad job either. Michigan seemed to panic and hire a guy who, by all means, was a great coach. Trust me, I’d seen his offenses take the Big East and my own team by storm.

That being said, I’m once again shocked by the fact that this college football world (and the NFL for that matter) has turned into the, ‘what have you done for me now’ type of world. Rodriguez endured some hiccups in his first season, and that was expected because he had to change offensive styles, and recruit young men to fit his spread system.

ESPN.com’s Big Ten blogger Adam Rittenberg noted, “There’s the counterargument, of course, that Michigan didn’t give Rodriguez enough time to get things on track.” It’s tough to disagree with that, but some athletic programs want to win, and they want to win now.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that college football’s coaching turnover is really, really irritating. And while I understand it, I wonder if Michigan made the right move. Of course if Brandon hadn’t dismissed Rodriguez, next season would have been the make or break season for Rich Rod in the Big House (where he was 11-11 in his three seasons by the way). The media scrutiny would have been just as bad as it has been in the previous few weeks for Rodriguez, and every loss would have been even worse.

When I flipped open the newest copy of Sports Illustrated this week, I read the back page article by Joe Posnanski. He mentioned Urban Meyer’s stepping away and Joe Paterno’s seeming endurance in this crazy world of college athletics. “Not only is Paterno different from Meyer, but he is also likely the last of a breed: the coach who built a life around a single major college-football program,” he wrote.

With constant coaching changes I believe Posnanski is correct in his assessment. Heck, it’s tough to find high school head coaches that stick around their programs for a long time (at least in the Cincinnati area). Doug Ramsey has been the head man at Elder High School since 1997, and although he will probably last another decade or so at Elder, he was once rumored to have looked at other jobs (namely the Mason opening a few years back).

Even high school seems to be full of coaches that are on the move for one reason or another. All the changes that occur with a coaching transition hurt student-athletes and other staff members who may end up having to look for new jobs when coaching transitions occur.

When Mark Dantonio left Cincinnati after the 2006 season, my current boss, UC video coordinator John Sells, told me he was worried about whether or not Brian Kelly would bring in his own video guy, or if Sells would get to keep the job he had just gotten in June of that year.

“You never know,” he told me. “You think, ‘Is the new guy going to bring in his own guy?’ Because some coaches have their own guy, and some don’t.”

Obviously the carousel of coaches will stop spinning here in a week or two, but plenty of jobs are still open, including Michigan, Pittsburgh and Connecticut, just to name a few. When the wheels stop spinning it’s anyone’s guess as to where coaches and assistants (video guys included—hey gotta keep a look out on the folks I work around) will end up.

I can’t wait for the carnival ride to stop, and honestly, if my life hadn’t been affected so strongly by our own coaching transition last year (albeit not the same as the head coach getting fired, in fact, quite the opposite) I wouldn’t feel so strongly about it.

My advice to fans, athletic directors and anyone else who will take my advice is, be patient, be calm, and maybe, just maybe, your head coach will raise your program up to walk on stormy seas. If you fire him before you get the chance to see if he’ll raise you up, then the onus is on you.