Three and Out by John U. Bacon Read Free Book Online

“We’ve got 105 guys out for the team and only 95 helmets.”
    â€œI figured the competition for those last ten helmets would be intense,” Rodriguez said. “And it was!”
    The program off the field matched the team on the field. “We were so bad that first year,” Rodriguez admitted, “the crowd would literally give us a standing ovation if we got a first down. I’m not kidding. And they didn’t have to do it very often.”
    The Pioneers finished that first season 1–7–1.
    But the locals still loved him. “He lived in Glenville, right in the faculty apartments,” his star receiver Chris George said. “He played in the local softball league, he played on the local nine-hole golf course. Rita played there. They lived there. He knew everyone, and everyone knew him.”
    â€œThat’s what made him so loved around this state,” longtime sidekick Dusty Rutledge noted. “He was one of them.”
    But all that love was no substitute for winning. In need of leftover players, Rodriguez went back to the same place he got his leftover equipment: Morgantown. Nehlen told him he had about fifty walk-ons, and if Rodriguez could offer them at least room and board, he could probably get a few of them. Rodriguez scooped up a bunch, including quarterback Jed Drenning and receiver Chris George.
    â€œRemember the Land of the Misfits?” Rodriguez asked. “Well, that was Glenville: the Land of the Misfits. A bunch of Rudolphs and Herbie the Dentists, and none bigger than me!
    â€œBut I’ve got to say, the kids we got were hungry. We might have all been misfits. We might have all been a little lost, trying to find something better. But we all wanted it, and wanted it badly. And we were willing to sacrifice to get it.”
    It will come as a surprise to Michigan fans who felt Rodriguez did not embrace Michigan tradition that right before Rodriguez’s second season in Glenville “he puts that sign up in our weight room,” George recalled, “ THOSE WHO STAY WILL BE CHAMPIONS. And he didn’t just put it up, he explained what it meant. He said, ‘This is going to be hard. We’re going to have people leave. We’re going to have guys who can’t handle it. But if you stick with me, you’ll be rewarded. Trust me.’ And we did.”
    The Pioneers still had a long way to go. “My first year,” George said, “teams were laughing at us when we got on the field.”
    They had reason to. The Pioneers headed into their fifth game of Rodriguez’s second year at 1–2–1, and they weren’t likely to win against West Virginia State. “They were good,” George said. “They beat [Drenning] to a pulp. He needed help just getting to the training room the next day.”
    In fact, he’d been sacked thirty-two times over his last two games, a season’s worth even for a bad team. Worse, the Pioneers were about to face Wingate, which had whipped them 63–0 the year before. To say things looked grim is to understate the case considerably.
    *   *   *
    They say necessity is the mother of invention, and sometimes it’s actually true. In 1945, Fritz Crisler had a bunch of seventeen-year-olds who were no match for the undefeated, top-ranked Army squad, with a bunch of twenty-five-year-old guys who had already swept Italy, Germany, and Japan. They were not scared of a bunch of teenagers. Crisler knew it was time to gamble.
    Pioneer Stadium would never be confused with Yankee Stadium—your average suburban high school soccer field is nicer—but Rodriguez’s desperation was every bit as great as Crisler’s. And what he decided to do on that field that day would change the game more than anything since Crisler created his platoon system forty-six years earlier.
    Quarterback Jed Drenning was so bruised from all those sacks that he begged his coach to