Volunteering for InVoluntary Practice In Ann Arbor
Well folks, My how the Mighty have fallen! I didn't want to jump on this too early, but it seems that this story has some "legs" to it. Here is an article in the Detroit Free Press...
A look inside Rodriguez’s rigorous program
By MICHAEL ROSENBERG AND MARK SNYDER
FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITERS
Ask University of Michigan football coach Rich Rodriguez about Mike Barwis, and the superlatives will flow.
“He’s my guy,” Rodriguez told the Free Press in the summer of 2008. “I won’t go anywhere without him.”
Barwis has been Rodriguez’s strength and conditioning coach for six years, four at West Virginia University, two at Michigan. The 46-year-old Rodriguez, entering his second season at U-M, has said Barwis might be even more important than Rodriguez’s assistant coaches because of all the time Barwis spends working with players.
But how much time is too much?
The NCAA, which governs college athletics, has strict limits on how much time coaches can require players to spend on their sport. But Rodriguez’s team has routinely broken the rules since he took over in January 2008, people inside the program told the Free Press.
Numerous players on the 2008 and 2009 teams said the program far exceeded limits intended to protect athletes from coaching excesses and to ensure fair competition.
Two players called Michigan’s off-season requirements “ridiculous.” The players described the coaches’ expectations as an ongoing concern among many teammates. Parents of several players agreed.
The players and parents agreed to talk only if they were not identified because they said they feared repercussions from the coaching staff.
The Free Press outlined the allegations to U-M officials on Friday and requested responses from Rodriguez, Barwis, compliance director Judy Van Horn, athletic director Bill Martin and President Mary Sue Coleman. U-M issued brief written statements from Rodriguez and Van Horn.
Rodriguez said, “We know the practice and off-season rules, and we stay within the guidelines. We follow the rules and have always been completely committed to being compliant with all NCAA rules.”
Van Horn said, “Compliance and administrative staff conduct in-person spot checks of practice during the academic year and summer. We have not had any reason to self-report any violations in this area with any of our sports.”
Officials said Martin and Coleman were unavailable. Athletic Department spokesman Bruce Madej said Barwis would not comment because Rodriguez speaks for the football program.
‘It was mandatory’
In the past two off-seasons, players said, the Wolverines were expected to spend two to three times more than the eight hours allowed for required workouts each week. Players are free to exceed the limit, but it must be truly voluntary.
The players said the off-season work was clearly required. Several of them said players who failed to do all the strength and conditioning were forced to come back to finish or were punished with additional work.
“It was mandatory,” one player said. “They’d tell you it wasn’t, but it really was. If you didn’t show up, there was punishment. I just felt for the guys that did miss a workout and had to go through the personal hell they would go through.”
In addition, the players cited these practices within the program:
# Players spent at least nine hours on football activities on Sundays after games last fall. NCAA rules mandate a daily 4-hour limit. The Wolverines also exceeded the weekly limit of 20 hours, the athletes said.
# Players said members of Rodriguez’s quality-control staff often watched seven-on-seven off-season scrimmages. The noncontact drills, in which an offense runs plays against a defense, are supposed to be voluntary and player-run. They are held at U-M’s football facilities. NCAA rules allow only training staff, not quality-control staffers, to attend as a safety precaution. Quality-control staffers provide administrative and other support for the coaches but are not allowed to interact directly with players during games, practices or workouts.
If the NCAA investigates and concludes that U-M willfully and repeatedly violated the rules, the NCAA could find the football program guilty of major violations for the first time in the football program’s history.
For this report, the Free Press interviewed 10 current or former players and the parents of four others. In separate interviews, five players gave almost identical accounts of how the program is run, and a sixth player confirmed most of the descriptions. Other players, as well as parents of additional players, discussed the conditions in general. Several players declined to be interviewed at length but did not dispute the allegations when asked specifically about them.
‘All the rules are ... clear’
At U-M’s football media day last week, two of Rodriguez’s freshmen talked freely about the tough training regimen for the Wolverines, saying they spent many hours in workouts during the off-season.
Those freshmen apparently were unaware of the NCAA’s time-commitment rules. But some veteran players who came in under previous coach Lloyd Carr said they were familiar with the rules, and Carr’s staff followed them.
One veteran player said the Wolverines talk to each other about the excessive hours under Rodriguez “all the time, but there is nothing we can do about it.”
Chuck Wynne, director of Communications Strategy for the NCAA, said the time limits went “to one of the central tenets of the NCAA, which is: We’re all about student-athlete well-being. We recognize that student-athletes need a balance in their lives.”
Wynne was commenting generally, not about the specifics of the U-M players’ accounts. Former coaches at other schools, also speaking generally, said the rules were important and, they believed, widely followed.
“All the rules are pretty clear,” said former Baylor University coach Grant Teaff, executive director of the American Football Coaches Association since 1994. “Rules are rules. Some carry greater penalties than others. The rules are to be adhered to, period. You’re not partially married. You’re either married or you’re not married. …
“If you’re my neighbor, and I see you’re breaking the rules, my responsibility if I want to criticize you for breaking the rule is turn you in. It’s not to turn around and start breaking the rule because you are doing it.”
Teaff said most of these rules were instituted in the last 20 years for the health and safety of players.
The coaches’ association is often consulted by the NCAA and sometimes proposes rules changes. Rodriguez has been on the AFCA’s Board of Trustees since 2005.
One player, echoing the words of others, said the workouts in the past two off-seasons at Michigan “affected people’s grades. People were falling asleep in class.”
One parent said: “It’s very difficult for kids that take the programs seriously. They’re exhausted. According to the coaches, what they’ve told our kids is, ‘This is permitted.’ ”
The players said they had not personally reported their concerns to the athletic department’s Compliance Services Office and, in fact, had signed forms stating that rules had been followed.
“They were making us sign those, you’d get in trouble if you didn’t sign,” one player on the 2008 team said. “We signed that and joked about that: ‘We work out way more than this.’ We can’t do anything. We were trying to play.”
‘Wow, this is absurd’
In December 2007, Rodriguez and Barwis walked into the weight room at Schembechler Hall, home to the football program, and immediately declared it inadequate. At their request, athletic director Bill Martin spent more than $1 million upgrading it.
Martin also authorized the expansion of the football staff. Carr, before retiring, had three people on his quality-control staff; Rodriguez has five. Barwis has seven full-time assistants (some work with other U-M teams), one part-time assistant and 10 interns, a significant increase over Barwis’ predecessor, Mike Gittleson.
Barwis received a $190,000 salary last year, school records show. The only members of the football program who were paid more were Rodriguez, who makes $2.5 million annually and whose contract runs through 2013, and his offensive and defensive coordinators.
Barwis has been praised in some corners for his advanced workout techniques and for getting players into the best shape of their lives.
Earlier this month, he told fan Web site GoBlueWolverine.com: “In reality, the work that they do, the commitment that they have and things they are put through, they are not going to be put through it at any other level, at any other time in their lives. The NFL guys we have back think, ‘Wow, this is absurd the amount of work they are putting in.’”
In 2006, when Barwis and Rodriguez were at West Virginia, Barwis described the Mountaineers’ off-season workout regimen to the Associated Press: On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the players did Olympic and conventional lifts, functional and balance training, injury prevention, core training, plyometrics and explosive training, functional flexibility and conditioning. Tuesdays and Thursday were for speed, agility and flexibility training.
Barwis runs the same program at U-M.
Several players said that on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays during the past two off-seasons, they were expected to be in the weight room for three to four hours, followed by a run of 45 minutes to an hour.
Players said that on Tuesdays and Thursdays, they were expected to spend two to three hours working on speed and agility. That brings the total time commitment to 15-21 hours a week, more than the NCAA’s weekly 8-hour limit, which includes time spent watching film.
On top of the strength and conditioning, many players are expected to participate in seven-on-seven scrimmages five days a week, for about 45 minutes a day, during much of the off-season.
Why do Barwis’ workouts take so long? The volume of weight-lifting sets and exercises is only part of the explanation.
Barwis assigns players to groups of eight or 10. Every player in a group must complete a weight-lifting set before any of them can move on to the next task. Barwis and his assistants work with them.
At the school’s news media day, the Free Press asked freshman Brandin Hawthorne what winter conditioning was like. Hawthorne, a linebacker from Pahokee, Fla., enrolled in January.
“It’s crazy,” said Hawthorne, who was not complaining about his coaches and was apparently unaware of the time-limit rules. “I work out at 8. We’ll work out from, like, 8 to 10:30. We come back later, have one-on-ones, seven-on-sevens, a little passing. Then I’ll go watch a little film.”
The Free Press also asked freshman receiver Je’Ron Stokes about Michigan’s off-season program. Stokes, from Philadelphia, arrived at the Ann Arbor campus in June.
“Hooooo!” Stokes said. “A typical week is working from 8 a.m. in the morning to 6 or 7 at night, Monday through Saturday.”
And that was starting in June.
“Yes, sir,” Stokes said. “We do the weight room at least three times a week, and seven-on-sevens and one-on-ones. Speed and agility on the other days. Every day we have something new to get ready for the season. The coaches have done a great job of stressing the importance of getting us ready for the big season that we’re about to have.”
Stokes was not complaining. Like Hawthorne, he apparently was unaware of the rules.
On top of the regular workout schedule, every Tuesday during winter term, a few players on the team are required to spend additional hours at Schembechler Hall for what they call “Torture Tuesdays.” Players say Rodriguez created Torture Tuesdays to maintain school discipline and class attendance.
Those players must show up before dawn on Tuesday for a series of rigorous physical tasks: Army crawls, barrel rolls, long piggyback rides, wheelbarrow races back and forth across the field. Sometimes the players have to move every dumbbell in the weight room to the other side in a few minutes.
Players have been known to get physically ill on Torture Tuesdays because of the workouts. But they are still expected to complete their two to three hours of speed and agility work later that day.
‘We work hard’
Barwis is the first to say he is demanding.
“Occasionally, some people do go the other way when it’s a little too much work for them,” Barwis told the Free Press in January 2008, his first month on the job.
“Regardless, it’s a system where we work, we work hard, we expect to outwork the opponent, we will outwork the opponent. …
“When you’re tired and don’t feel like doing it, you’re going to do it anyway. It’s a pretty simple process.”
Several players said the off-season hours contributed to the program’s high attrition rate, more than 20 players have left the program early since Rodriguez was hired. They said that Michigan coaches have a saying: “Workouts aren’t mandatory, but neither is playing time.”
This echoes the words of Rodriguez’s All-America center at West Virginia, Dan Mozes. In the summer of 2006, Mozes told the Associated Press: “The way I say it is, ‘The workouts aren’t mandatory, but neither is your playing time.’ ”
Six months ago, Rodriguez and Barwis hired Mozes as a part-time assistant strength coach.
According to NCAA rules, coaches must do more than just declare weight-room workouts as “voluntary.” If attendance is kept or an athletic department staffer relays information about the activity to the coaches, the activity is mandatory.
Michigan players said their off-season conditioning was done at the direction of Rodriguez’s staff.
“They know the rules,” one player said. “Of course they know the rules. There was a time when the offensive line coach” Greg Frey “told me, ‘You’re not doing nothing different than anybody else in the country is.’ ”
But veteran players told the Free Press that Carr and his director of weight training and conditioning, Gittleson, strictly followed the NCAA rules. Players were expected to spend up to eight hours a week pushing themselves in the weight room during the off-season, but anything beyond that was truly voluntary. They also were encouraged to fit their workouts around their class schedules.
Players said that off-season workouts are not the only dramatic change under Rodriguez.
Under Carr, off-season seven-on-seven drills were run by players, without coaches or staff members present, players said. The only staffer there would be a trainer, in case anybody got injured, as allowed under NCAA rules.
Several players said Rodriguez’s coaches were more likely to insist they participate in seven-on-seven scrimmages, which have become more frequent. They also said that members of the program’s quality-control staff frequently watched seven-on-sevens.
“They usually just watched and would write down who wasn’t there,” one player on the 2008 team said.
Another said graduate assistants would track them down.
“The phone would ring: ‘Where you at? … You gotta come.’ ‘I’m in class.’ ”
Quality-control staffers are not allowed to attend voluntary drills, according to the NCAA.
Players also said members of the coaching staff sometimes lingered nearby to watch seven-on-seven scrimmages. Players said the coaches were not physically coaching them, but their presence made it apparent that attendance was being noted and their performances were being evaluated. NCAA rules require such scrimmages to be voluntary.
And when the season started, every week began with a violation.
‘Sundays were miserable’
The 2008 Wolverines were shocked by how much Rodriguez required on fall Sundays.
Rodriguez required his players to arrive at Schembechler Hall by noon the day after games. They would then go through a full weight-lifting session, followed by individual position meetings and a full-team meeting. Then, at night, they would hold a full practice. Often, they would not leave the practice facility until after 10 p.m.
In September 2008, three weeks into Rodriguez’s first season, senior defensive tackle Terrance Taylor talked about his previous Sunday.
“It was, like, 10 hours,” Taylor said. “Everybody was like, ‘Where were you at?’ ‘I was at practice all day.’ My parents were still here. They were like, ‘Where were you at?’ I was like, ‘I was at the building all day.’ ”
The NCAA limit is 4 hours a day for required activities.
“The Sundays were miserable,” one player said. “I could never get healthy. You’d go through a game and then go through a hard workout. Sundays would just kill you.”
The NCAA also limits teams to 20 hours a week, and Rodriguez apparently exceeded that limit as well.
The NCAA counts competition days, usually Saturday for U-M football, as 3 hours against the weekly limit, even though players at all programs actually devote six or seven hours to football on those days, not counting travel.
With three hours on Saturday and a full day on Sunday, players tallied about 12 hours on those two days. They were off Monday. Players said they would spend an additional three to four hours with the team on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, bringing the weekly total to 21-24 hours.
They also had to work out on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. There was a walk-through of the plays for at least an hour on Fridays.
‘I wish I had more time’
As he prepares for his second season, Rodriguez has said he is pleased by how hard his players are working, especially in the weight room.
Rodriguez has posted a big sign above the entrance to the team’s weight room that says, “Through these doors walks the best conditioned, most disciplined, and hardest working football team in America.”
If that’s true, it did not show on the field last fall. For the season, the Wolverines were outscored, 166-157, in the first half, and 181-86 in the second half, when conditioning is crucial.
Michigan finished with a 3-9 record. The low point came in October, when the Wolverines lost at home to Toledo.
Two days after that loss, Rodriguez was asked if there were anything he would have done differently in his short tenure.
“The only thing I wish I would have had in the last seven, eight months, is I wish I had more time to spend with the players,” Rodriguez said. “You have NCAA rules. We can’t go over the time limits, all that.”
After reading this article it is pretty clear that there is some validity to the assertions made by its author. We already know that Rich Rodriguez has allowed some pretty "shady" kids play football for him while he was at West Virginia. What we also know is that his "word" is about as valuable as Bobby Petrino's.
If these allegations are true, then there is a chance that RichRod could be out at Meeechigan faster than most of us thought. Meeechigan has NEVER had a major NCAA violation. Let me repeat, NEVER had a major NCAA violation. There is a chance that RichRod could be going for the trifecta at Meeechigan...worst record ever, first major NCAA violations, and fastest coach to be fired at Meeechigan.
I think some of us saw this coming before RichRod ever coached a game at Meeechigan. "As long as the earth endures, there will be seedtime and harvest." Enjoy the harvest of RichRod's work up there in Ann Arbor, you asked for it.
Man I hate Meeechigan.
Here is a great Sangria recipe...
1 bottle of red wine
2 oz of orange liqueur
3 oz of rum
1 sliced lime
1 sliced orange
1 cup of raspberries
1 cup of sliced strawberries
1 cup of sliced pineapple
Enjoy
