Hammered locally and nationally for four straight days, new University of Michigan football coach Rich Rodriguez finally fought back Thursday.
He called the stories out of West Virginia against him a smear campaign.
He was right. What he still doesn't seem to get, though, is that the main reason he's being smeared is because he behaved so poorly on his way out as West Virginia football coach.
Michigan fans want to overlook that. They want to circle the wagons around their guy, even though he's a guy they hardly know.
If you're inclined to do that, if you believe Rodriguez is in the right, and deserves the benefit of the doubt, ask yourself how you'd feel if the tables were turned.
This is one of those signature stories about how college sports has become a soulless, money-driven game, and you're wrong to ignore it just because this time around Michigan benefits from a coach's willingness to jump at the next big job and trample everyone who rooted for him and believed in him at his former school.
West Virginia fans loved Rich Rodriguez as much - or more - than you love him now.
Let's imagine you had a football coach you loved at Michigan, who told you, "This is my school,'' who said he was going to be "here a long time,'' and a year later, behind your back, when he was thought to be recruiting for Michigan, he's caught interviewing for another job.
Then the coach informed Bill Martin he was quitting by sending a graduate assistant to tell Martin, and called Michigan's top recruit - and incidentally the best player in the nation - to tell him he was leaving, before he told his own Michigan players, and invited the kid to ditch Michigan and come to New Job U.
Then, hours after quitting, he used his Michigan cell phone to call high school recruits who had already committed to New Job U.
Oh, and he hired lawyers to get him out of the buyout he owed you according to terms of the contract he just signed last summer.
There's no way you'd be defending that guy.
Only now you are, just because the school is West Virginia and not Michigan.
Are ethics really that situational?
All those things happened. We don't need to "wait until this plays out'' or "get all the facts.''
Those things happened.
The way Rodriguez left West Virginia was wrong.
His decision to contest this buyout might earn him some money in the long run, but the damage it's doing to his reputation and Michigan's isn't worth it.
And, yes, the people at West Virginia who leaked a story that Rodriguez had shredded official university documents are guilty of the smear campaign Rodriguez has accused them of. Rodriguez admitted shredding documents Thursday, but said they were his own files. West Virginia officials have said no player records are missing. Right now, that storyline appears to have been more about character assassination than any real transgression
But neither sin forgives the other. They just each feed the ugliness and hurt both schools.
Rodriguez told a story Thursday about West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin calling him on Christmas day. Earlier, Manchin - a long-time friend - had criticized the coach's decision to leave West Virginia, saying, among other things, that high-priced agents had changed Rodriguez and that "something is wrong with the profession of college coaching today when a leader's word is no longer his bond.''
Why did you say those things, Rodriguez asked?
It hurt me, the coach said.
Manchin apologized.
If Rodriguez would simply do the same thing to all the people who believed in him at West Virginia, he'd do more to help himself and Michigan than he could in a dozen news conferences.
Instead, the coach said he has nothing to apologize for Thursday.
Hopefully, that's just stubborn pride, because if Rich Rodriguez truly believes there was nothing wrong with the way he left West Virginia, you have to wonder just what Michigan has gotten itself into.
