Lynn Henning

U-M's lack of success under Rich Rodriguez is mystifying

Ann Arbor -- What still needs to be explained as coach Rich Rodriguez's football production evolves at Michigan is why this "process" he cited several times Saturday ever was necessary at a school where football was fairly successful for 40 years ahead of his arrival.

Rodriguez's team dissolved Saturday at Michigan Stadium in another semi-mysterious defeat, 38-36, to a Purdue team that played stubbornly but should have been beaten.

Michigan's defense remains a mess. The Wolverines had three separate breakdowns on the right side of their secondary Saturday, not to mention way too many companion miscues. Purdue turned the defensive backfield mix-ups into three touchdowns that destroyed U-M's 24-10 lead and very likely ended any bowl opportunities for the Wolverines.

"We're not good enough to make big mistakes," Rodriguez said afterward, and not many among the 108,543 who sat in the afternoon sunshine would have argued. "We're not there right now in our program. It's a process. It's painful, but we've got to move on."

What's painful for much of the Michigan camp is realizing where Michigan was two years ago, which is pretty much where Michigan was 10, 20, 30 or 40 years ago.

The Wolverines were an elite national football program, and the key word there is "were." Michigan owned, in one man's view, the most amazing statistic in NCAA sports: a run of 39 consecutive seasons without a losing record.

In college football, particularly after 85-man scholarships arrived, the 1969-2007 streak defied any reasonable thoughts on what a college football team should have achieved during four tumultuous decades.

Everyone else ran into trouble along the way: Notre Dame, Southern Cal, Oklahoma, UCLA, Nebraska, Alabama, Texas, even Ohio State. But not Michigan, which won and won and won.

At least until last season. Not coincidentally, 2008 meshes with the arrival of Rodriguez, who presumably was obliged to polish a program that for 38 years had been under the stewardship of Bo Schembechler, Gary Moeller, and most recently, Lloyd Carr.

No rebuilding needed

Not much about Michigan football needed fixing, although enhancement was welcome. And that's why this year's effort, which has the Wolverines sitting at 5-5 and a numbing 1-5 in the Big Ten, is as stupefying as last year's 3-9 disaster.

Had there been the usual rebuilding effort in store for a new coach when he came aboard 23 months ago, a lot of what has happened in Ann Arbor the past two years would make sense.

But the Wolverines were 9-4 in Carr's final season, 2007. They were 11-2 the previous season. On and on the good years had rolled at a school that has won more football games than any other American university.

In keeping with the triumphs and the bowl-game string that ended last year, Michigan's recruiting was top-tier -- as steady as its won-lost records after Schembechler arrived to set in motion the most amazing self-perpetuating football program in America.

On this point, a divide seems now to be splitting some within the Michigan football galaxy. There is a campaign at work insinuating Carr somehow left the cupboard bare.

And it is pure baloney.

No question, since Rodriguez came aboard, there has been serious attrition that has pushed walk-ons into the starting lineup.

But who was responsible for the attrition? Who was in charge when various athletes either didn't like the new culture or didn't fit a new offense?

And why was this "cleansing" any more necessary than two seasons of losing football on a campus that made winning so natural and habitual?

This comes as a blindside punch to those of us who thought Bill Martin, the Michigan athletic director, awkwardly pulled off a master stroke when, late in the game, he hired Rodriguez two years ago. Anyone who knew intimately the coaching landscape in NCAA football understood Rodriguez loomed as an icon. It is why Alabama, which had done its homework, pursued Rodriguez so boldly ahead of hiring Nick Saban.

But what has happened since in Ann Arbor has shaken those of us who never believed Michigan football had to deconstruct in order to reconstruct.

No defense for defense

Granted, Rodriguez didn't have a quarterback last year for his spread offense. This was the mulligan some of us gave him for a 2008 season that was otherwise inexplicable, right down to a Wolverines defense that disintegrated.

But now, at least, he has Tate Forcier and Denard Robinson, freshmen who at least gave Rodriguez the triggermen he fundamentally needed for his spread. Next year, perhaps more significantly, he will welcome the super-talented Devin Gardner of Inkster.

What he hasn't come close to answering is why the defense remains in shambles. There were enough athletes when Rodriguez got here to have allayed anxieties there.

But too many of them are no longer around, and those who are on hand -- Saturday's blown coverage in the secondary was a revolving breakdown generated by Troy Woolfolk, Stevie Brown and Jordan Kovacs -- are too often confused or left to point fingers.

"I think we're in the process," Rodriguez repeated after Saturday's tumble. "It's frustrating, because everyone wants it right now.

"We're closing the gap. But we have a ways to go."

Undeniably, Michigan has a ways to go.

What some of us can't understand is how, at a school with such pronounced strength, this football chasm could ever have been created.

lynn.henning@detnews.com