RichRod likely to be hired as HC at Jacksonville State
For anyone curious, looking like this will be announced in next 24hrs or so:
https://footballscoop.com/news/sources-jacksonville-state-targeting-rich-rodriguez
The man has certainly had an interesting career arc. Best of luck!
November 29th, 2021 at 1:40 PM ^
Good for him.
Nothing personal, but, Who cares?
A new Michigan Football chapter is upon us.
Onward to Indy and 1,000 victories.
November 29th, 2021 at 1:44 PM ^
And his circle is complete.
Go Blue!
November 29th, 2021 at 1:44 PM ^
He was the worse coach ever at Uof〽️.
Good luck but I really don’t care about DickRod.
November 29th, 2021 at 2:10 PM ^
Reading some of these posts is just the worse!
November 29th, 2021 at 1:48 PM ^
Happy for Coach Rodriguez.
Go Blue Beat Iowa
November 29th, 2021 at 1:51 PM ^
moving closer and closer to the florida job
November 29th, 2021 at 2:24 PM ^
Still a ways away, though. Jacksonville State is in Jacksonville, Alabama.
November 29th, 2021 at 4:14 PM ^
He meant Alabama, for when Saban retires and he decides he should have took that job years ago.
November 29th, 2021 at 10:21 PM ^
Or Miami hurricanes
November 29th, 2021 at 1:54 PM ^
Once previous coach ascended by wins every year he was here for three years and one previous coach descended in wins every year he was here for four years…it’s amazing how the two are remembered here. Thank God for Jim Harbaugh.
November 29th, 2021 at 2:00 PM ^
I don’t buy this narrative that Hoke is more fondly remembered than he should be, nor that Rich Rod got a raw deal. He went up in wins because he cratered the program. Don’t even say that Lloyd sabotaged it, not buying that either. Rich Rod was 15-22, Hoke was 31-20. Both got fired for not being good enough. At least Hoke was a good person.
November 29th, 2021 at 2:10 PM ^
Hoke is remembered more fondly here. You can look at most all posts that talk about one or the other. I agree, neither was successful here. Lloyd didn’t sabotage it, he sure as hell didn’t help a transition either. I’m not a RR apologist because as time has went on I think he caught lighting in a bottle with White and Slaton at WVU and never got any better from there. He’s shown over time that he was ahead of his time but never adapted with the times. Hoke is a lower tier head coach and yes he’s a much better person than RR. I’m still glad we have Harbaugh over both of them!
November 29th, 2021 at 6:32 PM ^
Hoke is remembered fondly here because besides being a good dude he recruited well, won a BCS bowl and beat Ohio State. If Rich Rod would have done those things he would be remembered more fondly as well. Unfortunately, the team went 7-6 in his best year, including a 37-7 loss to Ohio State, and the most lopsided bowl loss in program history, a 52-14 loss Mississippi State. You are delusional if you think the team was on its way up, or that Hoke didn't have anything to do with defensive turnaround and overall success the team had the year after Rich Rod got canned.
In addition, Rich Rod was an underwhelming 43-35 in his six years at Arizona, and Hoke is 11-1 in his second season back as head coach. I think if anything, we didn't give Hoke enough time to turn around the disaster that were the Rich Rod years.
November 29th, 2021 at 3:18 PM ^
The program was already cratered. Carr bailed out just in time, though he should have left a year or two earlier probably. Rodriguez was left with a roster full of holes, and not at all suited to what he wanted to do. It was going to be a complete rebuild no matter what. Had he received the FULL support of the fanbase, and "power brokers" in the UofM community, things may have been different. There was intense discord from day one, and it never stopped. Add in an AD like DB, and RR's stubborn adherence to the 3-3-5 defense... it was a bad marriage from the start.
I don't fault RR for how things turned out here, though he certainly played a part in it all. His conduct since then, that's another story. But one thing shouldn't affect the other.
November 29th, 2021 at 3:52 PM ^
Hoke was a mediocre HC at best and a nice dude. RR was just a disastrous hire. I read the book and followed the program, but that was the wrong guy at the wrong time for the wrong program…and it has taken years to recover. I mean this is the first year I felt like we have a real Michigan OLine and real Michigan back(s) again.
November 29th, 2021 at 2:05 PM ^
I agree with this. If Rodriguez could have fielded just a functional defense in 2010, I think he would have gotten another year, because the offense was steadily improving.
In contrast, Brady Hoke was the opposite: he understood defense but could not field a functional offense, except when he had Denard, the QB that Rodriguez had recruited.
November 29th, 2021 at 1:54 PM ^
This is a perfect demonstration of the rot inside college football. How bad of pond scum to you have to be before people stop hiring you to lead and set an example for young men?
November 29th, 2021 at 2:06 PM ^
Damn this seems harsh. You do know the lawsuits from his time at Arizona were dismissed, right? I’m not trying to defend him or his character but people make mistakes. Must be nice to be perfect.
November 29th, 2021 at 6:48 PM ^
A dismissed lawsuit does not mean that Rich Rod was not guilty of what he was accused of. The lawsuit got tossed based on technicalities, such as not filing the complaint in the 300 day window, and not going through the university's sexual harassment reporting office. All the while, Rich Rod was still cheating on his wife with another woman in the department, so in my book he's still a piece of shit, even if the charges of sexual harassment were dismissed.
November 29th, 2021 at 1:56 PM ^
An interesting tidbit here is Jacksonville State is jumping up to the FBS level, joining Conference USA, in 2023.
November 29th, 2021 at 4:38 PM ^
I read this and thought to myself “no way he will be there in 2023” and then remembered it’s about to be 2022. Time is going by too fast.
November 29th, 2021 at 1:56 PM ^
Best to him. Hope he has learned that 1.) you have to play defense too, and 2.) don’t screw with the Title IX folks
November 29th, 2021 at 2:05 PM ^
I wish him luck. I suspect he's going to need it. His tours at Arizona, Ole Miss, and Louisiana-Monroe didn't seem to indicate he had developed much past his tendencies from the mid-2000s.
November 29th, 2021 at 2:06 PM ^
RR will start his Swan Song In one, probably two years at WVU. That’s what this is all about. He will probably do pretty well there again!
November 29th, 2021 at 2:59 PM ^
Are you suggesting Rodriguez will go back to coach the Mountaineers as his last coaching stop? I'd be surprised if that happens. I spend 7 months a year in central WV, and there's not a person I've come across in the last six years who likes him. They felt betrayed when he left in 2007. There also don't care for him as a person.
November 29th, 2021 at 2:33 PM ^
Interesting to see Richrod's career arc. Definitely seems like a guy who benefitted off the early days of the spread and didn't have a next step once the rest of CFB caught up. Hope he does well down there
November 29th, 2021 at 3:00 PM ^
In a couple or three years he'll be where he started out: Glenville State.
November 29th, 2021 at 3:03 PM ^
Right where he belongs.
November 29th, 2021 at 3:23 PM ^
Best of luck to him. Hope he hires a good defensive coordinator.
November 29th, 2021 at 3:29 PM ^
Look, we need to save bandwidth here. I propose instead of rehashing this every time, we save precious bytes by just saying "certure".
"Certure" is short for "Certainly RichRod was not a nice guy but people didn't welcome him with open arms and the cupboard was kind of bare but he was a bad cultural fit and probably he should have gotten one more year since Hoke had his guys for 2011 and Hoke was a good guy but over his head and he did recruit well and let's just support the current guys and look to the future"
November 29th, 2021 at 3:30 PM ^
What a career
To think he was minutes from being Alabama's head coach. I want to see that alternate universe just for curiosity.
November 29th, 2021 at 5:15 PM ^
My sentiments exactly!
November 29th, 2021 at 3:31 PM ^
The Athletic lists Mike Hart as a candidate for the Temple job, but that is based on their speculation.
November 29th, 2021 at 5:41 PM ^
I was never a huge fan, but I wish him well.
Ironically, for someone who was revolutionary in his time, he has become the example par excellence for saying, "The game has passed him by."
November 29th, 2021 at 5:43 PM ^
He might be good there. The Big Time was too big for him. But he has his strengths as a developer of offenses and as a playcaller.
November 29th, 2021 at 7:49 PM ^
I have to admit, when he was first hired, people were criticizing him for not playing "manball" and that the spread was too weak to work in the B1G.
Enter Urban Meyer, who basically stole RichRod's playbook and used it against us, save for minor tweaks, and beat Hoke's "manball" teams into the ground with it.
November 29th, 2021 at 9:01 PM ^
Definitely hope to see him do well!