Ever heard the song, The End, by The Doors? Minus the Oedipus Complex and homicide it’s a great song … slightly vulgar … nevertheless great. I digress.

The song popped into my head earlier today and I got to thinking …. you know what?!? The hiring of Richie Rich Rodriguez symbolized the collapse of ‘Michigan Man.’ You know Michigan Man …. he was given a public face and personality in March 1989 when Bo decided he had to fire then men’s basketball coach Bill Frieder who had accepted the head coaching position at Arizona State just before March Madness kicked off.  Schembechler stated that, “A Michigan man is going to coach Michigan.” Whoa.

Fairly, the men’s basketball program has largely gone by the wayside in both terms of talent and competitiveness since those days. One could say since Tommy Amaker was brought in Michigan basketball was no longer run by a Michigan Man.

Football, however, was a whole different story. Michigan has not effectively had a coaching regime change since 1969, the first season of legendary Bo Schembechler with the Wolverines. Things changed when Coach Lllllloyd Carr announced his retirement this past November. Sure AD Ed Bill Martin could have went the easy route and hire Mike DeBord or Ron English (which would have been perfectly appealing to us Buckeye faithful) but he chose to go a different route.

After running what was probably the most embarassing coaching search in the history of modern day big-time college football Martin settled on Rich Rodriguez of West Virginia fame. Wait, there is such a thing as West Virginia fame? Sure, ask Bobby Bowden. Plus, my mother was born there and albeit she is only famous to us Godfrey’s I’d like to believe that makes her pretty special.

I’ll say this one more time becuase I want to make sure it settles in …. the hiring of Rich Rodriguez ends the mystique of Michigan Man. Michigan Man is no more.

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

The song fittingly continues on to say ….

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need…of some…strangers hand
In a…desperate land

Face it, and this shouldn’t be anything hard to swallow Michigan fan, Michigan made a dangerous hire because they were desperate. It was a desperate time in a desperate land. With the exception of 2006 the Wolverines have been mired in mediocrity since 1997. It was time for a change and that meant meandering away from Michigan Man.

I understand that players and folks associated with the university and it’s athletics will always be Michigan (wo)Men but that isn’t the point I am trying to make. No longer is a Michigan Man the face of the two largest revenue generating sports for the university. So be it, that’s fine. I don’t see a problem with it.

Quite frankly, it’s about time Michigan attempts to become relevant on a routine basis and walks away from a tradition of hiring that was holding them down.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 9:34 pm and is filed under Michigan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.