By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
October 8, 2014

My official position on collegiate sports has been posted on this websight™ (Terry Foster) plenty of times in the past. I really don’t care about the NCAA for many reasons.

Here is a partial list:

1) I believe college athletes are taken advantage of by the schools they represent. They should be PAID for risking severe injuries that can debilitate them for the rest of their lives. Is there anything more distasteful than Tom Izzo and Nick Saban living in mansions while these inner-city “students” have to scrounge up money for Taco Bell?

2) I went to Eastern Michigan. We suck at sports. Like, really, really bad. The only time we are in the news for athletics is when one of our football players gets murdered for wearing nice clothes. The damn program needs to be contracted.

3) Because I went to EMU, I feel really gross for caring too much about Michigan. If I wanted to be a diehard fan of the Wolverines I would have studied in high school. Or went to class at EMU and attempted to transfer down Washtenaw Boulevard. I didn’t.

The closet I came to U of M was waiting in line at the Tower Records store on University for Guns ‘N Roses Use Your Illusion I and II albums at midnight the night they were released.

There is nothing worse in this world than Walmart Wolverines who dedicate their entire life to the University of Michigan. Even ISIS members don’t post a picture of the Block M as their Facebook photo. Seriously, these people are awful and yet they aren’t even the WORST portion of that fanbase. That title goes to the actual alumni who believe “Michigan Man” means something other than Bo Schembechler not wanting the basketball coach at Arizona State to guide the Wolverines in the NCAA basketball tournament.

4) When the Wolverines are playing football I am usually betting on horses and not even paying attention to the game.

Look, my default school IS Michigan, but I support them from afar and really don’t care too much. Really, my main interest is rooting against Michigan State just to piss off my sister.

Anyway, last Thursday night I found myself rooting harder than I ever have in my life for a collegiate sports event. It might have had something to do with the ten Jack Daniel’s and Diet Cokes I had ingested, but I was cheering on Arizona football and Rich Rodriguez like my life was on the line as they defeated the Oregon Ducks.

Why? Because I like RichRod. I believe he got royally screwed over at U of M by Lloyd Carr and his minions which led to his firing. I mean, this poor guy was vilified in Ann Arbor while the beloved Lloyd Carr was sabotaging the program. Unless, of course, you think instructing recruits to attend class in Columbus instead of Ann Arbor isn’t treason.

And I am not going to get into that entire history today — just read John U. Bacon’s book, “Three and Out,” in which you will learn that RichRod was railroaded out of town by the Carr contingent and his weasel cunt henchmen Michael Rosenberg and Mark Snyder.

Hashtag Never Forget™ (Justin Spiro.)

As someone who really doesn’t care about college football, Arizona being ranked #10 in the country while a thousand students are marching in Ann Arbor for David Brandon’s dismissal is about as blissful as it gets.

I couldn’t have written this script any better unless there were a scene where former kicker Brendan Gibbons is being sexually assaulted by a 500-pound woman with horrible acne.

Anyway, why am I bringing this up today? Because of this great article by Ted Miller on ESPN.com discussing RichRod’s unbelievable coaching job Out West while Michigan continues to implode.

Yep, while Brady Hoke makes a total buffoon of himself — in a fourth year Rodriguez wrongfully never received — Rodriguez has the Wildcats in the playoff picture with a bunch of freshman and sophomores in key positions.

In a week that has seen Jim Schwartz’s defense stifle Matthew Stafford and the Lions at Ford Field, culminating in the Lions’ ex-head coach getting carried off the field, THAT hasn’t even been the biggest revenge dagger thrown by a former gridiron coach in this state.

This quote by RichRod even tops that Schwartz victory ride on the shoulders of his defensive players:

There was a lot of stuff [at Michigan] that people don’t know went on that we didn’t even know was going on — some BS, some non-football related stuff. It became more about the drama than it did about football, which is the opposite of what you’d think you’d get at Michigan. Had Bo Schembechler been there, I probably wouldn’t have had to deal with some of it.

We still thought, with all the BS that was going on, all the things that were happening — it looked like some people were trying to sabotage their own program that were working for the university — all that stuff we went through, we still thought we’d be OK by the time we went to Year 4 or 5, that we were going to have a chance to compete for championships. But guess what? We didn’t get to Year 4, we didn’t get to Year 5. That was the most frustrating part about it.

And I am sure some Michigan fans who still despise RichRod are reading this article and mocking my love for the former West Virginia head coach because the Wolverines’ defense sucked while he was here.

Miller addressed this in his ESPN ard:

While many would start with “fit,” as in the folksy Rich Rod is a far better fit in less patrician Tucson than in Ann Arbor, the more substantial Point A addresses Rodriguez’s most unambiguous failure at Michigan: defense. While Rodriguez was unable to hire his defensive coordinator at West Virginia, Jeff Casteel, at Michigan, he was able to lure him to Arizona. Casteel took over a unit with a severe talent deficit and made it respectable. No Pac-12 defense improved more from 2012 to 2013 than the Wildcats, and holding Oregon to 24 points at home — the Ducks scored 46 versus defensive stalwart Michigan State — is a major achievement.

Yep, defense. While Hoke was given a seven-figure budget to hire a defensive coordinator, RichRod was put on an austerity program.

Imagine a company hires you and another new employee at the same time and you both get a car allowance. Except the other dude gets $75,000 and your stipend is $25,000. And then you get ridiculed because you could only afford a Ford Focus while the other guy is driving around town in a Lexus convertible.

Actually, that analogy doesn’t go far enough. The Lexus IS C would also have to be a freaking LEMON for that comparison to work.

So here’s to RichRod continuing to rub Michigan’s nose in it. I know where I will be Saturday night at 10:30pm. Watching the Wildcats take on USC on ESPN2 and desperately rooting for Arizona’s “Basketball on Grass” offense to further humiliate Cardboard and Lousy Tomato Sauce Boy.

And the best part is there aren’t any horse races running that late to distract me from enjoying the aerial show put on by Anu Solomon, Nate Phillips, Austin Hill and Cayleb Jones.

Now, you will have to excuse me. I have to ask my Webmaster to remove the Wolverines logo from the DSR main page and replace it with this ….