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Originally Posted by billmac91
Maybe he was just pre-occupied and the players could tell???
Is it that unplausible?
If I'm considering a move that is going to forever change my life, I may consider cutting down on wind sprints at the end of practice.
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No, that's perfectly plausible, and I'd buy that, but Reynaud didn't mention that.
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Why would RR shorten practices and what benefit would there be for him? It could have nothing to do with any benefit to him, if he knew he was leaving is it so far fetched to believe that he simply didn't care anymore? Why would I put forth any effort if I'm not going to be here in a week could be all it was about. And no, just doing it out of spite can't be eliminated from the equation.
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Here's where my own assumptions take over. Rodriguez started off in 1990 at dinky little Glenville State, in Division II. A decade later he was at the helm of a Division I-A, BCS team, with two other promotions in between. He then proceeded to take that team to the apex of its historical achievements - thanks to Rodriguez's coaching, the West Virginia Mountaineers have never been more successful in their history. What's the point? To me, that's not the career of a lazy person. People who work that hard don't suddenly get that lazy. And if he had been that way in the past, then it wouldn't be all that extraordinary for the practices to be shorter and the players wouldn't really have noticed.
To add to that, RR would have had to know he was taking the job, otherwise why risk botching a bowl you might be coaching in? He couldn't have
known he was going to leave until the evening of the 14th at the very earliest, after his talk in Toledo, which would leave him only Saturday's practice to shorten up, because he was out the door by Sunday's practice.
Finally - and most blazingly important - you don't schedule practice willy-nilly the day before or the day of. Nor are the practice agendas decided as they go. The entire week's practice schedule would have been posted earlier. If RR had to go take care of business related to the job at Michigan, the obvious course of action is to turn to Bill Stewart and say "finish up here for me, I have some stuff to do." I believe it would have made the news before now if Rodriguez had repeatedly turned to his assistants the week before he left for Michigan and said, "OK guys, we're cutting this short, forget the wind sprints." Somebody would have said something. So clearly (to me), the practices were scheduled to be shorter - a schedule which would have been written well before there was any meaningful contact at all between RR and Michigan.