I was talking to the late Mark "Doc" Andrews, then a member of Dick Purtan's radio chuckleheads, back in the early-1990s. This was when the Tigers were in search of a new radio team, with the forced retirement of Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey still fresh in everyone's minds. I knew that Andrews, for several years, was the Pistons' radio voice in the late-1970s to early-1980s.
"Are you going to throw your hat in the ring for the Tigers job?," I asked Andrews. There were many candidates at the time.
He frowned. "I won't be the guy to replace Ernie," Doc told me. "But I'll be the guy who replaces THAT guy!"
Indeed -- an easier act to follow.
With all due respect to Lloyd Carr, his emergence as the head football coach at Michigan in 1995 was, frankly, made easier by the circumstances under which it happened.
His predecessor, Gary Moeller, had lost the job in the wake of a very humiliating, drunk-in-public ordeal in a Southfield restaurant. Bootlegged audio tapes of Moeller's arrest made the airwaves, in which his loud, slurred, emotional words were heard, and he's lucky it was a time before the Internet got hopping, because we'd probably all own a copy on our computers by now.
So in stepped Carr, and while he was definitely qualified, expectations were a little stunted, considering the distraction that Moeller's fall from grace had caused. But Carr made things easier on himself, and the program, by guiding the Wolverines to a 9-3 record and a berth in the Alamo Bowl.
Before Carr, there was Moeller, of course -- and Mo had to fill the shoes of Bo Schembechler, no less. But Moeller was another whose resume qualified him for the job, and he was that quote-unquote Michigan Man that seems to be so desperately needed.
Ironically, it was Schembechler himself who wasn't a Michigan Man, when he arrived in Ann Arbor in 1969 to take over after the uneven Bump Elliott Era. In 1968, Bump's last year, Ohio State beat Michigan, 50-14. That didn't go over too well in Ann Arbor. Elliott's overall record at U-M was 51-42-2, so Schembechler wasn't exactly replacing a coaching legend. You couldn't last anywhere near 95 games at Michigan nowadays with such a winning percentage.
Rich Rodriguez is on the scene now, and he comes with so much baggage, he needs his own conveyor belt.
Rodriguez has endured, before he's coached one football game at Michigan, more off-the-field distractions than any U-M coach has for his entire career, almost. Most of them have been legal, and have involved his acrimonious departure from West Virginia. But some have involved messing with Michigan tradition (read: the great "Who wears jersey no. 1?" controversy), and players fleeing the team (Justin Boren). Then there's following Carr, who might not cast as great of a shadow as Schembechler on campus, but who was pretty darned good, and certainly respected. The fact that Michigan's last National Title was 11 years ago hasn't lessened or lowered the expectations. Any Michigan coach has to win, and he has to win now. And Rodriguez must do this, regardless of the challenges posed by the transition from one coach to the next.
Rodriguez arrives in Ann Arbor under, perhaps, the strangest conditions ever for a Michigan football coach. Some of it was inevitable, coming from the natural drama that ensues when you don't hire from within. But there were no clear-cut candidates already at Michigan to take over. Carr didn't really groom anyone. Mike DeBord and Ron English, the offensive and defensive coordinators, respectively, weren't deemed fit for the job, for one reason or another. There was Les Miles with his Michigan ties, but Miles rightly looked at the Michigan job and listened to his mind rather than his heart, and stayed at LSU -- the proper decision, from a purely football perspective.
Rodriguez also doesn't have anywhere near the trust factor from the fan base and alumni, yet, that Carr and even Moeller enjoyed. Again, you have to go back to Schembechler in 1969 to find a comparable situation in this regard.
All this, and R-Rod must win, and win now. What helps his cause is that expectations, from the national scribes, is relatively low -- although Michigan does find itself in the pre-season Top 25. Yet there are three Big Ten teams, sometimes four, picked above them. Not too many folks think all that much of Michigan's Big Ten title hopes, but that hardly matters, when it comes right down to it. Even in a so-called transition year, six or seven wins won't be acceptable. Losing to Ohio State, despite the fact that Michigan will almost certainly be considerable underdogs, won't be acceptable, even if it is expected. Michigan fans will recall what new OSU coach Jim Tressel said when he was hired lo those many years ago: We WILL beat Michigan this year! And Tressel did, and he hasn't really stopped.
Michigan fans might bemoan the fact that their school didn't hire that elusive Michigan Man to coach the football team, but who would you have hired, Miles excluded?
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