was the first thing i thought of when i heard Givens had originally committed to OSU. I don’t think that someone could really say that we broke it. While i don’t subscribe to all the recuiting websites, I doubt we really ‘tried” to steal him. Most likely Givens had his Nike Camp visit planned for a long time. I think even non-psu recruits attend those lots of the time anyway. Hopefully it was just a change of mind by the kid himself without much pressure. Lets just hope that he doesn’t change his mind again

...none of our coaches were present at the Nike camp, so no one there could’ve really forced his hand.

The lengths that you will go to in order to justify your belief that Rodriguez did something wrong are incredible.

Just admit the the gentleman’s agreement was nothing more than something made up by Tiller when he lost a recruit to a school that he absolutely despises, and you don’t have to make these ridiculous rationalizations when Penn State does the same thing.

Isn’t Bo Schembechler the guy that fired the basketball coach on the eve of the NCAA tournament because he was thinking about taking another job? So, maybe, just maybe, your boy Bo might have thought it was more than a little “untoward” that the new guy bolted on his own school in the run up to a BCS game. He might have also thought the fact that his team mailed it in against their arch rival was more than a little bit disconcerting as well. Lack of loyalty, crushing loss to arch rival, so far Rich Rodriguez really sounds like Bo Schembechler’s kind of guy.

There is nothing but fact there. No hearsay, no venom. Facts. The guy did what he did. Read your own message boards, what are your people saying about the kid who left to go to Ohio State. Judas was one of the nicer bits I read. So loyalty is only required of Michigan Men? Everybody else can do whatever they want, so long as it benefits Michigan?

He screwed his own alma matter, then tried to steal the top recruit in the nation from them. He made certain that there was no possible way Pryor would go to WVU. No hearsay, no venom. Facts. Untoward my ass, that is the lowest of the low.

You guys are simply ignoring these facts because you think Rodriguez is going to get you over the hump against Ohio State. That, is also a fact.

You’re right, the guy took the open job at Michigan, to call it “bolting” or “screwing” his own school is hardly a matter of fact.

I think this is laughable, I’ll gladly admit that you’re entitled to your opinion, but to claim anything you’ve said as “fact” is simply a farce. Anyone who has paid any attention to this whole process knows that there was a falling out between both Rodriguez and WVU.

Leaving WVU for Michigan hardly seems an illogical move no? West Virginia’s “Bo” (Don Nehlen) was all in favor of the move… of course what would he know, he was only on Bo’s staff… That’d be like saying why on earth would someone leave Rutgers for Penn State? Both are far bigger jobs on much bigger stages.

Trying to compare leaving West Virginia (alumni or not) for Michigan to leaving Michigan for Ohio State? Suffice it to say, it’s not even comparable.

I’m not ignoring any “facts” and you betcha I hope he has more success against the Buckeyes than our recent track record. I can sit here plenty comfortable because I know that if he has even the slightest misstep, he’s gone, period, end of story. Like I said, I trust in the hiring process we used (you guys should take notes) and have confidence that we’ve got the right guy.

I imagine it’d be very similar at Penn State in that regard, don’t worry you’ll get to go through all of this soon enough.

You can argue with the descriptive terms I used "bolt", "screwed" etc., but change those descriptors to the generic "left", and every word I said is true (every word I said was true regardless, but I digress), whether you find it laughable or not. You’ll notice I didn’t get into shredding documents, whether or not he had contact with Michigan before the Pitt game, or the multi-million dollar lawsuit he’s involved in with WVU. I’ll grant that there is a lot of innuendo in those accusations, but I stuck to public record facts. If you assume that where there is smoke there is fire, well, Coach Rodriguez goes from villainy to "cartoonish super villainy" pretty quick.

Maybe you’re right. Perhaps Rich Rodriguez is a hooker with a heart of gold, and Michigan is Richard Gere. But if Michigan is such a great job, what are you doing messing around with hookers?

I haven’t prejudged your coach; I’ve judged him, harshly, by his actions. I don’t need to wait for him to screw you guys too to verify what clearly already happened. In my mind it has nothing to do with Michigan, it has everything to do with Coach Rodriguez acting dishonorably toward the people West Virginia to whom he gave his word.

Do we even know if we made a bunch of phone calls to him or anything. He called the OSU coaches, decommitted and then he called PSU. He told the media before anyone at PSU knew he was coming here. Any chance he changed on his on volition. And another thing, I read on RUTS that Shaw said he was coming to PSU on signing day and then left later for UM. I think that is an extremely different situation from this one given that Givens senior season hasn’t been played yet and OSU will have tons of time to reload on corners. You UM people deal in absolutes rather than trying to find the differences between the situations.

You know what I’ve never have to do? Go on some other teams message board and defend Joe Paterno’s integrity. It’s a nice feeling.

Other than Coach Paterno. there is not a single coach,ever, that I respect more than Lloyd Carr. To bail on a guy like that, and replace him with Rich Rodriguez, well, it says something. Pretend it dosen’t all you want, but it does. He Retired! Whatever, keep telling yourself that. You ran him out, and you know it.

I like Michigan. Once upon a time, you guys were alright. It’s sad that Ohio State has you all in a twist like this. I speant the first ten years in the Big Ten wondering why Ohio State was so insecure, now I’m wondering how Michigan could get so desperate so fast. I serisouly don’t understand.

Hire Rich Rodriguez, good luck, just holster the moral superiority. You’re just another school chasing Ohio State now. Just like the rest of us.

It’d probably be much more comfortable to sit around on nothing but Michigan sites where I could offer an opinion and get 100 Maize and Blue “agree!” responses right back at me, silly me trying to see other perspectives (flawed though they may be!).

I’m not here to defend Rodriguez’s honor, I’m simply pointing out flaws in your crusade to paint him as some doer of evil cloak and dagger type of guy. If you’d care to make a solid point rather than stating your opinion of actions that you clearly have read very little about, I’d be more than happy to actually sit back and consider it. Sadly, you’ve done nothing but throw out every blanket stereotype that most people who only read headlines about the guy have. It’s one thing to have a little fun and poke at the guy, it’s another to try to say that Michigan looks desperate, has stooped to a new low, yadda, yadda, yadda when that’s simply not the case.

Rich Rodriguez was a home-run hire, especially after a search that brought up names including Kirk Ferentz, Brady Hoke, Al Groh, etc, etc… for us to get a guy like Rodriguez was a big deal to the Michigan fan base and to our program. Has it been an ugly transition? Sure it has, I’m as tired of reading about the buyout stuff as anyone else, but to sit there and just blast Rodriguez without any regard for fact or context is pretty myopic if you ask me. Some of us are going to see how this whole lawsuit plays out before we throw our 2 cents into the ring. This isn’t like Indiana bringing in Kelvin Sampson who had violations and baggage. Like I said, look back over Rodriguez’s career and show me a violation that should have me worried for my program, I’ve yet to find one. Perhaps you can show me something I’ve missed?

You have absolutely no reference for the Carr situation… ran him out? Bailed on him? You must not know much about our program or how it handles things. Carr would never have been fired, and he would never have been “run out”. The people who are in the position to have any kind of influence over something like that all were huge supporters of Carr… much to the consternation of the “vocal minority” of people who were calling for his head on message boards, etc. Lloyd could’ve continued to coach for as long as he wanted, but you know what, he hung it up and called a career. He himself talked about wanting to walk away after the ‘06 campaign… but hey, whatever works for you Jesse, if it works better for your vision of us as the “villain” then go right ahead and imagine us pushing some guy who gave 30 years to the program out the door and out of the way. While a vocal section of the fan base certainly would light the torches for the guy, there is also a large part of it that really respects Lloyd Carr and all that he has done for our program. Ran him out? You couldn’t be further off. It’s stuff like this that really detracts from the entirety of your post.

A Penn State fan telling anyone to holster the “moral superiority”?? That’s solid! That should go in the “Stuff Blue and White People Like” right there. Weak sauce.

Also, I’m definitely looking forward to seeing Datsyuk and Zetterberg go up against Crosby and Malkin… hopefully it’ll be a better matchup than either of the current series have given us so far.

I never said Michigan was a villain. I said that Rich Rodriguez treated West Virginia dishonestly. He has. I pointed out that Michigan hired him. They did.

You’re telling me that Lloyd Carr was not encouraged to “retire” then claim that I have no prospective? That is just crazy. It’s like you assume that I don’t get the Big Ten Network, and never watched a single Michigan game last season. Michigan handled the Lloyd Carr situation with a lot of class, and he deserved that. But to say Coach Carr was not going to be replaced after losing to Ohio State however many times in a row it is, and the App. State game is what detracts from the entirety of your post. Beating Florida (a great win by the way) did not erase your entire regular season.

If you read what I wrote carefully, you’ll see that nothing that I have said about Michigan has been bad per se. You could say hey, we lost to Ohio State several years in a row, there were some flaws in the way we did things, it was time for a change. We treated Coach Carr fairly. Rich Rodriguez handled the situation with West Virginia poorly, but for its part, the University of Michigan didn’t do anything wrong. To the extent Coach Rodriguez did, he got sued by WVU for four million dollars; the Courts will sort out what he owes them. Bang, the discussion is over, the fair point is made, and reality is acknowledged.

But no. You say that Rich Rodriguez never did anything wrong and Lloyd Carr could have coached at Michigan for as long as he liked. Talk about “weak sauce”, that’s borderline delusional sauce.

Yes I’m telling you (again) that Lloyd Carr was not encouraged to retire, and YES had he decided he wanted to stay, he would still be there. Period, done, end of story. Why on earth do you think Lloyd reworked all of his assistants contracts prior to the season to ensure that they would be paid even if he stepped down? And we’ve lost to the Buckeyes 4 times in a row now just to put the number out there (7 of the last 8 as well).

I’ve asked you repeatedly to show me one violation that Rodriguez has committed, I’m still waiting.

At least you’re finally able to make statements like “Rich Rodriguez handled the situation with West Virginia poorly,” that at least is a point that you can provide reasoning behind. I can’t really disagree with this, the separation from West Virginia has been ugly but it’s been ugly on both sides, I do think that this whole buyout stuff has done nothing but give him a big black eye and it really needs to be taken care of. Now then, where the leap occurs is that “Rodriguez has handled this WVA seperation poorly” to “Rodriguez is a sleazeball and Michigan was desperate to beat OSU and took him anyway”.

That’s one step too far in my opinion, but perhaps we’ll just have to agree to disagree for the time being.

For me personally, I can’t think of anything sleazier than screwing over Penn State. And I’m a divorce lawyer for Christ sake. Maybe I’m alone on this, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night, not even on a pile of cash, if even thought even for a second that I did something that hurt Penn State’s chance to win a national title. That is why I think Rich Rodriguez is a sleaze ball.

Unfortunately, being a sleaze ball is not in and of itself an NCAA violation. To my knowledge, he has never committed an NCAA violation; I’ve never accused him of that. I’ve accused him of being a sleaze ball. He is.

Coach Carr was certainly contemplating retirement after the 06 season; again, I’ve never said anything differently. Where you and I disagree, and where I very much think you are wrong, is that if Coach Carr had not voluntarily stepped aside at the end of last season, he would have been replaced. Michigan (and Coach Carr) handled the situation in a way that you’ll never have to admit this; I guess that’s good for you. But to say that Lloyd Carr was not under tremendous pressure from your fans in 2006 and 2007, and that this did not contribute to his desire to retire is disingenuous.

The original point, several posts ago, was Michigan has made wholesale changes to it’s program in the last nine months. They have. Another of my points was that I don’t think that Bo Schembechler would have hired Rich Rodriguez for the reasons I have stated. I think I’m right on that, everything I’ve ever read about that guy leads me to believe that he felt about Michigan the way I feel about Penn State, and that he would have had no respect for a guy who dealt with his alma matter like Coach Rodriguez did, even if you view his actions in the most favorable light. I don’t think that he’d hire a guy he had no respect for. Maybe I missed my read on Coach Schembechler.

What happened at Michigan in the last nine months seems way out of character for you guys. It does look desperate, and beating Ohio State is the primary driver behind it. A little desperation is good sometimes. You’ll find a lot of people here that think Penn State should get a little desperate, but to date we haven’t. Our record is what it is.

I think that one of the reasons that you’ve been so defensive in this debate is that I hit it much closer to the mark than you want to admit. You know how pissed you’d be if somebody pulled a Rodriguez on you, and you know that it’s a shitty thing to do. It’s beneath you guys to be caught up in that shit storm, and you get defensive when somebody points out your role in it, and why you’re in it. If the roles were reversed I probably would too. But the statement in my last post is the way you get out of this mess, not by denying that anything bad happened.

Is that Michigan sold out. They had class and a reasonable amount of success. They traded it for less class but someone who in my opinion has a good chance of taking advantage of some stodgy big ten coaching tactics once the talent comes in.

Personally, I’m wholly endorsing RRod as a coach, but you still sold your soul to beat OSU, i hope its worth it to you.