He’s in Michigan, Chief. Michigan fans and some neutrals refer to Michigan head coach Rich Rodriguez as RichRod while people from West Virginia and East Lansing prefer DickRod. At the risk of enraging Bucktown Skins Fan, we’re going to go with DickRod. I’m not sure if he’s at the Petrino-Saban level but he’s pretty close.

If it were up to Rodriguez, he would probably say he’d like to be called Coach Messiah or RichGod. He recently had “the apostles” over to his house for a little bonding session.

“I had a handful of players that we call ‘the apostles’. It is a group of guys that the players pick as their leaders, some from each class … we always do that in the summer. I will meet them every week and we talk about issues and things that they would like to see and all that. It is really a kind of communication not that you have to be one of those guys to talk to me, but those guys are kind of the voice of players on certain things.

The apostles aren’t supposed to be a religious thing.

“It’s not in biblical nature,” Rodriguez said. “The definition of an apostle is one that leads a new way. I’m not looking for them to change the world. That’s a description of it. … I don’t want anybody to take it the wrong way.”

“Since I was at West Virginia,” he said. “I had a version of it, too, at the small school, Glenville State. I’ve always had a group of leaders that I let the players pick. We had a lot of fun with it. Sometimes it’s as simple as picking pregame music or that kind of thing. It’s not like they’re making major decisions. They’re not going to say, ‘Coach, we’re going to run the wishbone this week.’ They’re making suggestions, not decisions.”

The word apostle can mean one who pioneers an important reform movement, cause of belief. Those don’t sound like apostle-like activities. What exactly is the reform, cause or belief that makes the chosen players apostles? Shouldn’t Rich/DickRod lead by example since he is the head of the Church of Blue? If we had to guess, it would gimme the money or fuck the kids.

Players were not allowed to participate the annual Heroes for Kids benefit last Wednesday. The benefit “raises money for Saginaw youth recreation”. The team used the excuse of a mandatory strength and conditioning workout.

“It’s a big disappointment for all of us,” [Event Director Larry] Preston said. “The (U-M) players always have said how much they enjoy Heroes For Kids, and the strength and conditioning coach (Mike Barwis) said he wants to work with us on this next year.

“But this workout is mandatory, and all players must attend. It’s coach Rod’s call on that. This is his first year (at U-M), and he’s doing everything he can to make sure his team is successful.”

Doing everything like not even waiting until the season starts to start violating NCAA rules?

(2) Summer Conditioning Period. [FBS/FCS]
In football, between the start of summer conditioning and the start of preseason practice period, an institution shall conduct its out of season conditioning period as follows:
(a) Institutions shall count back nine weeks from the first permissible reporting date for preseason practice. During this nine-week period, institutions shall designate one week as student-athlete discretionary time.

(b) During the remaining eight weeks of the summer conditioning period student-athletes and prospective student-athletes who have signed a National Letter of Intent or, for those institutions not using a National Letter of Intent, a prospective student-athlete who has signed an institution’s written offer of admission and/or financial aid, may be involved in non mandatory weight training and conditioning activities that are conducted by the institution’s strength coach for no more than eight hours per week.

The charity event was scheduled months in advance. Was it really that hard to reschedule the NCAA rule violation to a different time or day?

Michigan State players attended the event in force and were autographing everything in sight including babies.


Go Blue finally claimed that the players “didn’t inform [DickRod] about participating in [the event]“. Blame the players for the mandatory workout which I’m sure we’ll find out wasn’t mandatory after they realize they messed up.

It’s going to be even easier to root against Michigan this year.