Snake Oil and Wizard Hats

Is this man's record lying?

I troll the message boards with the trained eye of a killer. Every once in awhile, I find something of note, and pass it along to you in this space. The other day while fearlessly treading in the murky waters of an Ohio State board, something came to light that made me say "wait a second, there might be something to this." I immediately disregarded it, partly because I didn't want to believe it, but mostly because nothing insightful could possible come from a Buckeye. Slowly, it began to bore a hole in my brain until finally, I couldn't help but examine further. The post, in its entirety:

Again, nothing but baseless claims and concocted sucesses for your boy DickRod. You claim "There is no way you can dispute these numbers, especially given that when the team had the chance to play against the big boy conferences, they won." Yet I will provide you with the real statistics. Here is DR's combined record against teams who are currently not in the Big East: 11-18
Take Miami, BC and Va Tech out of the equation since they were in the Big East at one point in time and the record is 7-10. Where is all of this solid production against the "big boy conferences" as you call them?

You then proceed to claim that: "Sure, he may have been playing in the Big East, but he was also playing with Big East talent. Pat White was a 2 star. Steve Slaton was a 3 star. It would be one thing if he was at the helm of an established powerhouse, but he wasn't." What about the teams that he lost to that were not in the Big East? DR was 0-2 against Wisconsin. Is Wisconsin's roster filled with more talented players than WVU can get? If you were to go back and look you will see that the two teams get about equal talent. The only teams that he beat that were more talented than the Mountaineers were Va Tech (he was 2-3 against them) and Georgia. To DR's credit, he was 2-1 versus the SEC, going 1-1 against the Mississippi State power house before shocking Georgia (in a game that I rooted for Rod and the 'Neers). The statistics are pretty clear that he did not take his 2 and 3 star guys and beat the big boys as you stated.

You also say: "He was at west-freakin-virginia who hadn't sniffed football success in forever." When in reality, DR's predecessor at WVU had similar records against the stiff competition that VA TEch, Miami and BC brought to the Big East. And actually Nehlan went 11-1 in 1993, beating VT, BC and UM all in the same season, the only time the Mountaineers beat all 3 when scUM south was in the Big East from 1991 through 2003.

Throughout history, the Mountaineers have struggled to beat schools with more storied football programs. This was the same with DickRod. DR just got lucky that the best teams in his conference left. Replacing Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech with South Florida, Cincinatti and UConn seems to have more to do with DR's success than his gimmick offensive and defensive schemes.

The hiring of Rich Rodriguez has been widely accepted as a good hire for the Michigan program. After all, he had taken the Mountaineers to what would turn out to be two consecutive BCS bowls, and had his team on the brink of going to the National Title game before disaster struck in the form of the Pitt Panthers. Mgoblog has a great rundown of his accomplishments, which I would most assuredly link if I could figure out the weird system that allows permalinks at mgoblog to simply be "mgoblog.com." If you're interested, it's the post from December 17th 2007. Basically it runs through the particulars of Rich's accomplishments pre-Michigan. It looks impressive. It looks like what you'd expect from a Michigan blog.

But what about the claims of the Buckeye above? Besides the obvious ad hominem arguments, he does bring up some solid points about Rich's coaching pedigree. Rich was hired by West Virginia in 2001, where he proceeded to go 3-8. This can be chalked up as a transitional period, but should also send warnings via fax, batphone, smoke signals, and email to the Michigan faithful who expect immediate success. After this abysmal season, he proceeds to win more than he loses, but lose 3-4 games a season for the next three years. Incidentally, these three years are the years that the Big East includes Miami, Boston College, and Virginia Tech. Then - poof - those three teams bolt for the ACC, and West Virginia is suddenly winning Big East Championships. Brian at mgoblog - who is nearly always fair and balanced - does mention this in his write-up thusly:

Caveats should be mentioned: the Big East got a lot easier in 2004 when Miami, BC, and Virginia Tech took off for the ACC. West Virginia did not depose the reigning king, but rather stepped forward into a power vacuum. And since the Big East is stuck at 8 teams, West Virginia can schedule a fifth nonconference game against a tomato can, an opportunity the Mountaineers have seized with gusto. As far as back-to-back-to-back ten win seasons go, WVU's are somewhere between LSU's and Boise's in terms of impressiveness.

But, right: in terms of back-to-back-to-back ten win seasons.

So, to put this in Big Ten perspective, West Virginia is essentially Purdue from 2001 to 2004. They're dangerous, but only in that fluky way. During this time, they go 0-3 vs. Miami, 2-2 vs. Va Tech, and 2-2 vs. BC. Against the heavyweights of the Big East, Rich Rodriguez's record was 4-7. Then, like Mayflowers out of Baltimore, the big boys bolt leaving the Big East horrendously short on talented football teams. At the same time the Pat White/Steve Slaton era begins at WVU, and you've got your back to back to back 10 win seasons. Is Rich that good, or is the conference that bad?

Take a look at WVU's schedule post big boy exodus:

Syracuse
Wofford
Maryland
East Carolina
Virginia Tech
Rutgers
Louisville
Connecticut
Cincinnati
Pittsburgh
South Florida
Georgia (sugar bowl)

So yeah, they went to a BCS bowl, but they did it by running through a foam party. The team they lost to? Former Big East power Virginia Tech. Had Va Tech still been in the Big East, this might not have even been a conference championship season! The next two seasons follow mostly the same script - terrible competition with equally inexcusable losses, South Florida, and Pitt being the two primary offenders. To say that West Virginia stepped into a power vacuum is slightly misleading. They stepped into a power vacuum that most European countries would have started a war over. West Virginia not only played in a terribly weak conference - they lost to inexcusably beatable teams.

Did Michigan hire this man?

The great equalizer is, of course, the bowl games that West Virginia won during their foam party. Yes, they beat Georgia, yes they beat Oklahoma. Assuming Rich can take credit for the Georgia win and half the Oklahoma win, he's 1.5-0 in his BCS bowls. That should provide enough hope to keep Michigan fans alive for awhile, but the facts don't lie; his teams regularly beat up on inferior competition, and regularly got beat at least once by that same inferior competition. Heck, the Georgia game was almost lost as soon as Georgia figured out they weren't playing a pee-wee team.

The rallying cry will be "but he was doing that with inferior West Virginia talent!" For this, I offer the same argument that the above Buckeye poster offered. While playing teams that get the same level of talent, he lost as much as he won.

What does this all mean for Michigan? Not a whole lot. Given the 3-8 performance in his first year, the transition could be much rockier than anticipated. After he gets his ducks in a row, Rich should probably begin beating teams that he should beat. But what happens when he runs into the MUCH stiffer competition of the Big Ten remains an unknown. His success at WVU has to be mitigated slightly by the significant decrease in good teams in the Big East. It can't be coincidence that WVU started dominating as soon as the three heavyweights left the conference. Did Michigan hire a guy who's record is smoke, mirrors, snake oil, and wizard hats? Time will tell.