mojodean's quick thoughts

Rich Rodriguez was a good man and a good football coach who failed to live up to the standards set out before him. His failed tenure was the sum of everything that has happened over the last three years, good and bad. There just seemed to always be a little bit more bad than good.

There is no grand takeaway from Rich Rodriguez’s time in Ann Arbor. No villains or heroes—save perhaps one young quarterback, but more on him later this week—and no morals or life lessons. Rich is simply a man who isn’t perfect who was put into a situation that wasn’t perfect either. Mistakes are just as fundamentally human as the stories we tell ourselves.

Regardless of whether you liked the man or wanted him run out of town, one thing any Michigan man should be able to agree on is that Rich deserves a hearty thank you from the entire fan base. Not for what happened on the field, but for giving himself fully over to this team and university. Rich Rodriguez devoted himself 100% to the program, cared about his players like family, and did the best he could every day. In the end that is all we can ask of anyone, standards or performance be damned.

That is, until we decide to see if someone else’s best might be good enough. But that’s the next story to be written. Let’s hope it has a happier ending.