{"id":672201,"date":"2026-05-29T13:32:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T13:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/672201\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T13:32:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T13:32:12","slug":"rich-rodriguez-says-taking-the-michigan-football-job-was-a-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/672201\/","title":{"rendered":"Rich Rodriguez says taking the Michigan Football job was \u2018a mistake\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

About a week ago, I took to The Feed on Maize n Brew<\/a> to ask readers who they thought the worst head coach is in Michigan Football history. While it was a pretty tight vote, 43 percent of you chose Rich Rodriguez.<\/p>\n

Taking over for Lloyd Carr would have been difficult for any coach, but especially one like Rodriguez that had a completely different view on how to run a college football offense at the time. Ultimately, things never fully clicked and Rodriguez was fired after just three years in Ann Arbor \u2014 compiling a 15-22 record and having never beat Ohio State.<\/p>\n

Rodriguez \u2014 who is coming off his first year back at West Virginia \u2014 has spoken about his time at Michigan in the past, like last year<\/a> when he told Josh Pate that his tenure could have ended differently if he had been given one more year. He reiterated that point in a brand new interview that was released this week, but he also revealed another pretty strong opinion he has \u2014 that taking the Michigan job in the first place was a mistake.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I kind of learned is that \u2014 I probably didn\u2019t evaluate what we had at West Virginia as well,\u201d Rodriguez said on Next Up with Adam Breneman<\/a>. \u201cWas it a mistake going there? Yeah, it\u2019s easy to say that now. But I also learned a lot from coaching at Michigan. \u2026 They\u2019ve got obviously a name brand that is pretty special to coach at. I would never take another job without visiting it, probably, because if I would\u2019ve visited there, I would\u2019ve realized, \u2018Gosh we had some better stuff (at West Virginia),\u2019 like in the weight room, whatever, than they had.\u201d<\/p>\n

While he said taking the Michigan job was a mistake, he also shared that he learned some things while making that decision, like making \u201cthe right hires, choose the right things, you\u2019ve got to still be yourself. \u2026 That was just an interesting time in my journey, I should say that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, everything always works out at the end of the day \u2014 Michigan eventually hit a home run with Jim Harbaugh, and Rodriguez got back to go to West Virginia. While all that took 15 years to take place, it\u2019s safe to say that both parties ended in a much better place.<\/p>\n

What do you think of all this? Would things have been different for Rodriguez if he returned for the 2011 season? Do you think it was a mistake for him to take the Michigan job? Let me know what you think down in the comments section below!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About a week ago, I took to The Feed on Maize n Brew to ask readers who they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[210197,1607,399,579,102902,398,396,397,99],"class_list":["post-672201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-big-ten-football-news","tag-college-football","tag-football","tag-michigan-football","tag-michigan-football-analysis","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}