Michigan's hiring of West Virginia's Rich Rodriguez was everything that a stale football program needed. The move propels Michigan into the next generation of college offenses with the mastermind of the spread option at the wheel. This will be the first time in the Big Ten that the spread option be utilized with large scale talent. If the Florida victory over Ohio State from a year ago is any indication of the spread option's potential against Big Ten opponents, Michigan should be well on it's way to Big Ten dominance. The key to the college success these days is staying a step ahead of the competition and Michigan has done that by bringing the spread option and the man who created it into the conference. It should be a move that will be mimicked for years to come by other teams not only in the Big Ten, but around the country as well.
Rodriguez by far eclipsed any other option that Michigan looked at for coaching hires. Rodriguez more or less got the job due to his loss to Pittsburgh at the end of the year. Suppose for a second West Virginia had beaten their far inferior opponent and went on to the National Championship; Rich Rodriguez's shoe would now be on Les Miles's foot. Instead of Miles shaking off speculation of taking the Michigan job, and preparing his team for the championship against Ohio State, he would probably be interviewing for the Michigan job and/or becoming the coach of Michigan. Instead Rodriguez was the one who interviewed and has left West Virginia for Michigan. The outcome of all this is a blessing for Michigan who has picked the far superior coach.
The hiring of Rodriguez has brought upon a whirlwind of changes that are forthcoming. First and foremost West Virginia is without a head coach. The clear front runner seems to be Terry Bowden who was a former Mountaineer and grew up in Morgantown while his father coached there. Another potential candidate would be Jimbo Fisher who has an out clause in his new contract with Florida State to leave for West Virginia. Other than the coaching situation at West Virginia it would seem there will be some personnel moves at Michigan. It seems likely that Ryan Mallett will transfer seeing as he's not a typical spread option style quarterback. He's from Texarkana so it would seem more than likely he would transfer to pass happy Bobby Petrino's system at Arkansas. With the loss of Mallett it seems very likely that Michigan can land the nation's #1 recruit, Terrelle Pryor from Jeannette, PA who has been heavily compared to Vince Young.
All in all this is a great hire for Michigan and more than likely the top coach signing since Urban Meyer went to Florida. Rodriguez never had many blue chip athletes at West Virginia. It will be exciting (and scary to some) to see what he can do with the wealth of talent given to him at Michigan.
3 comments:
"This will be the first time in the Big Ten that the spread option be utilized with large scale talent."
Seriously? Is Drew Brees not 'large scale talent'? Is Kyle Orten not 'large scale talent'? Tiller brought the spread to the Big10 in 1997...ten years ago. Yes, this is new to Michigan, but the Big10 has had plenty of spread offense before Rich Rodriguez signed up. Big10 football is more than Michigan and OSU.
Boilerbugle, Purdue didn't start running the option until 2005 when Brandon Kirsch was the quarterback.
He's right. I'm talking about the spread option not the spread.
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