With that said, you also must take into account the fact that Michigan was playing this year with first-year head coach Rich Rodriguez---fresh off great success at West Virginia. As everyone knows, Michigan fans have very high expectations for their football team, and as soon as it was apparent that this was a lost season, some extreme heat started coming in--directed at RichRod.
This season, RichRod has endured an incredible amount of criticism and let's just say he hasn't dealt with it so incredibly. Last week, Rodriguez blurted out a statement to the media that in my opinion brought into question the true meaning of sport.
"It's amazing some of the things that people would say (on a message board) or yell at you of a personal nature," Rodriguez said Monday. "You almost want to tell them, 'Get a life'...There's a whole lot bigger problems. Look at the economy."
After hearing this, I was outraged at Rich Rodriguez. I mean really? Telling his fans to get a life and focus on the economy? I guess somewhere in his ascension to making millions of dollars a year coaching football he forgot the reason people care about sports in the first place. Americans daily lives are enveloped with the crumbling economy and the constant stress of maintaing their jobs. Their release from stress? Sport.
Rodriguez is being paid to put a good product out on the field. His job is to satisfy hundreds of thousands of fans that need Michigan Football to do well in order to take their minds off their daily struggles. How do you think those people are going to react when their coach that is clearly underachieving tells them to "get a life."
If Rich Rodriguez is ever going to be successful as a coach at Michigan, he needs to recognize and accept what his job entails. Not only does he need to put forth a good product on the field, but he also needs to tell fans what they want to hear. If the shenanigans we have all witnessed this season continue to fester deep within next year, I wouldn't be surprised if the calls for RichRod's head were coming from the Athletic Department along with those rabid Wolverine fans.
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Granted he never should have made such opinions and statements public. However, don't you feel that the media ran away with what he said and in a way clipped the context and the statement in a way to appear towards every single wolverine fan out there? Bringing the economy to the table was also a big no-no. Nonetheless I cannot fathom what this guy is going through. He essentially divorced the state of which he was immortal in and acquired an insanely young and scarcely talented team (especially amongst quarterbacks). I find that most people in his shoes may have done a lot worse and I admire that he is not running away from this and once he starts winning people will do a complete 180 on the positives of his emotions and attitude.
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