Rodriguez Forced To Pay Up; Damage Goes Beyond Dollars

University of Michigan football coach Rich Rodriguez - the former offensive guru to Tommy Bowden when he arrived in Clemson in 1998 - waited eight months, but has agreed to pay the $4 million contractually required to complete his exit from West Virginia University.

Rodriguez tried to fight that huge sum, which was in the contract he signed at WVU after a strong courtship with Alabama less than a year earlier, as the cost of taking another job within the first year.

Good for West Virginia.

Now I must tell you, I have in-laws who are proud WVU graduates and are committed Mountaineer fans, right up to the point of setting their living room couch on fire after a big victory.

But I think my opinion would be the same even without the family connection.

A coach has signed a contract and even after eight months of delays, he's been forced to live up to it. The Detroit Free-Press reports UM will have to pay $2.5 million of the total and RichRod will have a more appealing timetable to pay off the folks in Morgantown, but in the end you have to wonder if the battle was worth it?

Coaches routinely depart one job for another on every level of the sport when a new opportunity looks more desirable. RichRod didn't handle this one very smoothly (considering he's a West Virginia native and a Mountaineer alumn), but he has the freedom to work where he wishes.

(The fact that no school at the level of West Virginia would have hired RichRod based on his work at Tulane and Clemson, but combined with his standing as a native of the state and a former Mountaineer player made him an excellent choice to replace Don Nehlen isn't taken into account.)

And WVU granted him that opportunity; provided he pays what his deal said he had to pay to go to Ann Arbor.

Coaches do that all the time; pay $800,000 to $1 million and they start recruiting for the new place. When players wish to change from one school to another (often because the head coach and staff that recruited him are fired or left for someplace else) they too can leave.

And sit out a full year before they'll step on another Division One football field.

So for that inequity alone, I'm glad that WVU is getting their $4 million. It's a pretty steep buyout clause, but I'm quite certain RichRod kept depositing the WVU paychecks that had higher dollar figures once he signed the deal that included that escape route.

A lot came out of the court battle and it should serve as a lesson to public entities like major college football programs: depositions under oath with attorneys asking probing questions are not a good idea.

And now that WVU has their $4 million, it's time to let RichRod go. There has been much outrage and ill will generated in West Virginia, but the school has won.

Michigan is in the Big Ten and West Virginia plays in the Big East. There is no bowl game for 2008 that has a tie-in which could match teams from those two conferences. Only a BCS bowl matchup could include the Wolverines and the Mountaineers and UM doesn't look like a very good bet to be remotely that good during this transition season.

So to WVU fans: put RichRod in the rear view mirror.

And Rodriguez should at least celebrate the fact that he doesn't have to win against West Virginia now. Now all he has to do is beat Ohio State.