Wermers leaves, has nasty comment about RR

Haven't we known that Wermers was leaving for a while?

If you're annoyed by the Young Jeezy and Lil Wayne playing in the weight room, Kurt, just turn up the The Fray on your iPod real loud. Jeez, what a weird statement to make. Not your kinda crowd? The fuck? What kinda statement is that? I never hear recruits play that angle - bitching about their own new teammates. When you consider the makeup of the recruits since RichRod arrived, it's pretty easy to read through what Wermers is saying. I just wonder why it bothered him that much.

This article is bad for us because, like most bad PR, it creates public perception. And we can bitch all we want about reality vs. perception but the fact is, as has been said before, perception creates it's own reality. This will be fuel for the haters and the media, which influences parents, which influences kids, which influences recruiting. This is not the first comment we've heard about "business" for the RR administration, and while I have nothing against that, for some that is code for "treats players like athletes only and doesn't care for them as people." The only cure is a winning season, which will push these types of articles towards irrelevance. Let's hope that happens soon.

If Wermers wasn't comfortable here, he probably wasn't going to help much. Good thing is, it came from somewhere we can afford a bit of attrition. The 08 OL class had six guys. We're down to four. That's still a good recruiting class. Mealer, Omameh, Khoury, Barnum..let those four go to work!

That's pretty damn inflammatory. Basically he said that "RR's bringing in really bad people" without being remotely specific. So, is RR bringing in child molesters, drug dealers, white slave traders, gun runners, heroin addicts, gang-bangers, Mafia hit men, bad check passers, and Al Queda operatives, or offensive linemen who were just much better than he was? It's interesting we get the whole family values crap again at the same time that a high school principal and his wife praise RR and his staff to the hilt for the way they went about recruiting their son. There have been numerous comments by other recruits and/or their parents about the family-friendly atmosphere under RR and his staff. Eliot Mealer is one of them, just as a fr'-instance. I've done this before, and recently too, but I'm going to quote Bo again: "I came in and instituted an extremely rigorous summer training program–there had been none–and everyone told me it wouldn’t work, that people wouldn’t go for that in Ann Arbor. The team had a reputation for having good talent, but being soft. I did have some attrition, but the real football players stayed. I was harder on that first Michigan team–which included Dan Dierdorf–than I ever was on any other group, partly because I was so driven by my own ambition. I killed them. I ran them into the ground." "I was prepared for some attrition when I became Michigan's coach. I can honestly say we did not lose a guy who really could have helped us. I didn't lose any sleep over anyone who quit that spring of 1969." If Bo's first season was in 2009 instead of 1969, the internet tubes would be full of people howling for his scalp for "driving off" all those quality young men that Bump recruited. Rob Parker would be moaning about the loss of family values. Some idiot sportswriter down in Ohio would be speculating about Bo being fired and becoming the coach at Akron. I ain't saying that RR is Bo reincarnate. They're very different people and coaches, and Rodriguez obviously still has a lot to prove here, but this family values stuff is comical.

Wermers left months ago -1 for header. As for his comments, who gives a fuck?? Leaving for Ball St and Western tell you all you need to know about these guys. Buried on the depth chart, don't want to get tortured for 4 more years and not play, asta la vista baby. I can play in the MAC hopefully. I'm leaving don't want to sound like a quitter or admit that I blow so I lash out with some BS. It's so SOP by now I find it comical anyone pays attention.

I'm trying to figure out how he knew that Carr's team was like a family when he never played for Carr. And to say, "But if I'm not happy every day that I wake up, why keep doing it?", shows that he does not have the character to play for this team. Dear Mr. Wermers, there are bigger problems in this world than anything you are going through (football related). Thousands of kids would trade anything for the opportunity you had.

I don't get some of the comments these players give when they leave. You see it in every program across the country when a kid decides to transfer. It seems like each kid tries to blame their former school in making them leave, but is that always the reality? Good luck to you Wermers, but maybe you just were not good enough?

1. "But if I'm not happy every day that I wake up, why keep doing it?" As Blue42 noted, even the best/most dominant/happiest/Tebow football players do not wake up happy every day. You tear your rotator cuff. You sprain a finger on your throwing hand. You don't see your friends or your girlfriend for two weeks. Four straight road games. You don't go to school because school is fun; you go because it leads to better things and because you feel a sense of accomplishment when you've finished it and new opportunities arise because of your dedication. 2. "They were bringing in a lot of different kids that were not my kind of crowd." This could mean one of two things. Either Wermers saw the leaner, spread-ready players entering the program and he decided it wasn't the right fit for him, or he is making a really shitty remark about the collective character of his teammates. The last thing I want to do, though, is put words in Wermers' mouth, so we have to assume nothing more than "he did not fit in (in whatever capacity he meant) with the incoming football players." Whatever the case, good luck to him in his future endeavors, football and otherwise. I don't revile anyone who earned a scholarship to play football at Michigan; I certainly won't start with Wermers.

I realize that playing football in college is not the same thing as working at a real job, but there are plenty of similarities nonetheless. I learned the hard way a long time ago that bashing a former employer openly in an public interview is virtually never to your own benefit. It's always much better to keep your yap shut if you can't say the expected polite things about where you worked.

Wermers hatred of black people is sad. Hopefully he can find help for his blatant racism.

It's in his personality whether he promulgated it or not. He appears familial, sage-like. I'm not sure a program he ran could not have appeared 'family-like'. Coach Rod's 'aura' is one that has been described as 'aw-shucks' and 'open'. A straight-forward personality that doesn't have a familial feel to it. Coach Rod was hired to do the job and he's getting things together the way he knows how to do things. I think that's what Weimers senses when he says the program is less 'family-like' and more of a 'business'. Also the fact Coach Carr was an assistant at Michigan for like 17 years before he became a head coach lends to Coach having that family feel; he's about as Michigan as a guy gets. Coach Rod has just arrived; I'm sure in time he will feel like family and perhaps he too will become 'Paternal'.

His parting comments do appear pretty nasty. "I figure I'd get out while I could" is something that you say when you have a very low opinion of the place that you are leaving. Let's not kid ourselves. Losing offensive linemen hurts. Each guy that leaves makes the margin of error for the remaining guys that much smaller. The guy was just a true freshman last year, so any speculation that he never was going to see the field is just that -- speculation. He got offers from UCLA, Notre Shame, and Purdue, so the guy wasn't a complete scrub. The program will always be bigger than one guy and it's not the end of the world, but let's not pretend that losing all of these players has made the program better. Bo may have lost a lot of guys in his first year, but he was taking over a losing program and went 8-3 in his first year. RichRod took over a winning program and went 3-9 in his first year. I want to see Rodriguez win the Big 10 before I declare that everyone who leaves the program is a loser who is going to regret it later.

Man, between Dave Poe and Wermers there's so many sour grapes going around lately we could start a whinery.

I am surprised by this news. I was under the impression (from GBMW) that Wermers was a workhorse and that he was impressing the staff with his commitment. I was led to believe that he would have a chance to start this year. OT: Did Ann Arbor get 3G coverage (T-Mobile) today? My phone shows 3G, but maybe it's wrong..I haven't tested the internet speeds yet. Can anyone confirm?