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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN MEDIA CONFERENCEDecember 6, 2010David BrandonRich RodriguezStephen TremelTHE MODERATOR: We're going to, just to give you the format for the rest of the day. We are going to finish up this portion with Coach Rodriguez. Before we do that, we want to welcome a couple of individuals from the Gator Bowl and athletic director Dave Brandon. First from the Gator Bowl, the chairman of the Gator Bowl, Steve Tremel. And Erik Dellenback, the Vice President of Marketing. Like I said, we're going to bring up athletic director David Brandon and then our head coach Rich Rodriguez. At this time, I want to bring up Steve to make a few comments, and we'll open it up for a couple questions afterward. STEPHEN TREMEL: Thank you. I feel very privileged to have the opportunity to come up here and formally invite the University of Michigan to this year's upcoming January 1st Gator Bowl game. This is actually the 66th Gator Bowl game in our great history, and to have a team like the University of Michigan be represented there is just fabulous. Obviously, the most winningest program in college football. This will be their third appearance. Last time they were here was in 1991. So we're certainly looking very much forward to having this great program be represented in our game. As you all know, they'll be playing Mississippi State. We believe this will offer a great contest. Mississippi State ranked No. 20 by the Associated Press, I think, will add to, hopefully, what will be a great experience for the school, the Gator Bowl, and the whole overall program. I'd like to formally extend the invitation. Coach Rodriguez will have an opportunity to get the real formal invitation when he comes down to Jacksonville on Thursday. I tried to bring Jacksonville here. I promise this is not the weather you'll see on New Year's Day. Formally welcome you guys and invite you to the Gator Bowl game on January 1st. Like I said, look very much forward to having that time. Thanks. THE MODERATOR: At this time, I want to bring up Athletic Director Dave Brandon. DAVE BRANDON: Good morning. I would like to formally accept again, and thank God I am, in light of the fact that I heard from both Steve and Erik late in the afternoon yesterday, and both of them talked to me. I accepted with great enthusiasm this invitation, and then they both got on airplanes and put their head to the pillow here in Michigan at 2:00 a.m. They've been working hard already, and we're already having a good time sitting down and working through a lot of the mechanics and issues that we need to work through to make this a great experience for our student-athletes and our coaches and our fans. So we are very excited about this opportunity to play a top 20 team and go to a great bowl and play on New Year's Day. It's something that we really look forward to. We're excited about it, and we happily accept the invitation and look forward to bringing our large contingency of fans down with our team, our coaches to play a great game. Thank you. THE MODERATOR: I'll bring up Coach Rodriguez, and we can go through with his press conference. COACH RODRIGUEZ: Steve and Eric, thank you. As Dave said, we are very excited to go down there. It's a terrific venue. I've been there several times, both as a coach and a player. They'll have a great experience for our fans, great for our players, and it should be a very exciting ball game. We're already working on it. I really appreciate all the folks at Gator Bowl. Known Rick Catlett for many, many years. Again, they do as good a job as anybody in the country. So it will be super. With that, any questions? Q. We haven't seen you since the Ohio State game. I guess talk about the mindset of Roundtree right now after he had obviously a lot of big drops in that game. COACH RODRIGUEZ: He had a couple, but you know, he had a couple good plays too. Roy's a competitive guy. I think when you're an Ohio kid, playing against them is even amplified even more for him. I'm really proud of the year he had. I think there was a little bit of a pressure on him to have a big year, and I think he had a big year. I didn't realize he was so close to having 1,000 yards in a season. And he knows he can play better at times. But, you know, all we can do is go forward to the next one, and I'm hoping he'll have a great bowl game. Q. You said you didn't get to watch too much on them but you did get to watch a little bit of them against Cam. Did you get to watch enough of that to -- COACH RODRIGUEZ: Actually, I have not seen any of that game yet. We'll break it down. But I saw a little bit of some games later in the season. I know they run -- knowing Coach Mullen from his days at Florida, I think they run -- I don't want to say it's the exact same offense that we do, but there's a lot of spread principles that are similar to what we're doing. I think for both teams they'll probably be able to go good against good, offense against defense, and get some quality work done before the bowl game. Q. When you see someone that you taught your offense to a couple years ago, do you look back and say, well, maybe I gave them too much or something? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Well, it's funny. We talked -- because there was a few years back when we were at West Virginia that we had -- it might have been after the Sugar Bowl -- that we had a lot of coaches come and visit. Some folks said, why would you do that? Well, it was reciprocated because every time they'd come, the deal was -- you know, don't tell them everything. We'll spend some time talking about our stuff if you give us some of your good stuff. At that time, I can remember there was a whole contingent from Penn State, a whole contingent from Ohio State. Then we come here, and I'm thinking, that probably wasn't the best thing to do at the time. But everybody -- there's no patents on schemes, and everybody takes their version of it. At Florida, when Urban was there, they took a version, I think, of some of the things we did and added their own thing to it. We've since evolved over the years too to tweak some things to try to fit our personnel. Q. How big is this for the morale of the kids who have been here for a long time? The upperclassmen haven't been to a bowl game in a few years. Just the morale of the whole program to get back there. COACH RODRIGUEZ: I think they're really excited. I think, when we became bowl eligible, that was an excitement. Certainly, I think when the news -- and I told them a week ago the possibility was maybe the Gator Bowl. I know they really got excited, especially guys from Florida. But just in general to be in a January 1 bowl, that has such great tradition and history, and to be able for us to stay together, I guess, as a football family for another three or four weeks and practice and another bowl site, it's a nice reward but especially for our seniors. You know, the senior class are the ones that I felt the most excitement for. Q. How big is the extra practice time? It's only a couple of weeks, but how much more can you really get done? COACH RODRIGUEZ: It's a benefit. I don't know if it's as big a benefit as some people make it out to be, but I think it's a benefit from a standpoint, at least the first five or six practices, you get a lot of fundamentals in. As I said earlier, with the print media, I think there's a huge benefit just from the experience standpoint, particularly for the younger players, you know, to have the practices, to be at another site and practice. I think the bowl experience itself, I think, really helps as far as accelerating the maturity process for the younger players. We have so many freshmen that will be making their first bowl appearance, and being in this kind of environment, I think, is going to be invaluable to them. Q. You said Martavious Odoms wouldn't be back. Where is he in his recovery? COACH RODRIGUEZ: I think Tav Odoms will be able to do some things in practices. Maybe not this week, but maybe toward the end of our practice time here in Ann Arbor. We're hoping that Van Slyke and Mike Jones will be able to do some things in practice. I don't know if they'll be able to go when we go full pads, but just to get them back on the workload will be pretty important. Q. You made some personnel changes defensively in the second half of the season, moved some guys around. Out of those, what did you like the best? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Well, I think moving -- well, probably moving Craig Roh back down, even in the last game he did both outside linebacker and defensive end. I think that's a position where he's most comfortable at. You know, some of the personnel moves, John, were by necessity, whether it was injury-wise and what have you. Hopefully, other than the ones that were out for the season, still out for the season, and some of the others coming back healthy, we may be able to lock guys in there. You know, some coaches in early bowl preparation will do some experimenting, you know, maybe moving a guy from offense to defense or moving a guy from a safety to a corner or corner to safety or vice versa. You know, I don't know if we're in a position where we can do that right now. There may be a guy that we may play at offensive guard as opposed to offensive tackle the first five or six days, but as a coaching staff, we haven't even begun thinking about that because we're just now finding the practice schedule and most of my guys are on the road recruiting. Q. Rich, when you played in that Gator Bowl as a player, what do you remember about that? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Well, that was almost -- I'm dating myself here -- 30 years ago. We played a very good Florida State team. I do remember -- it's funny how certain things you remember. It was a night game at the time, and it was a little chilly, I can remember. And I wasn't a starter -- it was my sophomore year -- but I was on the kickoff team. And for something to happen that it was really wet that night, and something happened on kickoff team. I probably just fell down and tripped. But I remember falling down and tripping in the biggest puddle of mud and water that you could have, and I was just soaked from head to toe. And I can remember, boy, I can't wait till halftime. Maybe I can change my jersey because I was just drenched. When you only play seven or eight plays a game and you're drenched in mud and water -- Even though it was raining and wet and muddy, we still couldn't stop them. I mean, they were that fast. But the experience up to that point was really good. The game wasn't fun. Q. How do you prepare for all these Mississippi State cowbells? COACH RODRIGUEZ: It's funny you asked that because we had played -- I had played against them, my team at West Virginia did a few years back. So to try to prepare for the road game in Starkville, we purchased a bunch of cowbells and were ringing them all week in practice. Our guys were annoyed with it. And I think one of the folks at West Virginia called one of my guys and said, hey, we still have those cowbells in storage. Do you think you need them? So we may try to get those cowbells back. Because at the time, the cowbells were not allowed to be used in conference games, but nonconference games they could. I think the SEC has since rescinded that. I'm not sure. We'll hear a lot of cowbells. So our guys will hear them in practice here the next few weeks. Q. Coach, you talked about you didn't think this game was a must win for you more than any other game. Can you talk about that a little bit? COACH RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, again, I think all coaches probably feel every game is a must win at all levels. We put so much pressure on ourselves as coaches to win the game. You know, the bowl games are always, I think, added importance. Even though some people will downplay it, and I understand why, because it's the last game you'll remember to the off-season and the upcoming season. Having gone both ways, having lost bowl games and won them, if you lose them, you try to forget about it. If you win it, people say it's great momentum. I think the reality is, after about a couple weeks, you know, you start moving and thinking about the next thing anyway. So I think it's important just to feel good. As I told the players, we want to remember the main thing going down there is to win the game, especially for the seniors, because they'll remember the game more fondly, of course, if they win. Q. So you don't feel like you have to make a statement for yourself? There was the talk the other night that you were trying to state a case for yourself, and you don't think you need to do this here. COACH RODRIGUEZ: Everybody is going to have an opinion on the importance or the relative scenarios that are out there. No matter what I say, it's not going to change what people's opinions are one way or another. I'm better off not saying anything. End of FastScripts |
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