With an abysmal 3-13 mark in Big Ten play -- and 8-16 overall -- in his first two seasons at Michigan, there’s little doubt that Rich Rodriguez is on the hottest coaching seat in America entering the 2010 season.
With that Ann Arbor résumé firmly in place, it makes one of Rodriguez’s decisions on National Signing Day veer very close to the inexplicable.
Rodriguez received a commitment from Demar Dorsey, one of the top high school safeties in the country. While there’s little doubt that Dorsey could be an immediate help to RichRod’s sieve-like defense on the field, off the field, and based on his past, he could be the final nail in the coach’s Wolverines coffin.
According to various reports, including an extensive look at the DB’s past by the Detroit Free Press, Dorsey has been arrested three times since he turned 16 on a variety of burglary and robbery charges.
In June of 2007, Dorsey was arrested for burglary, but he was sent to a diversion program for first-time offenders by prosecutors. In July of 2008, Dorsey was arrested for robbery with a deadly weapon. Those charges were dismissed by prosecutors when a concrete identification could not be made.
In November of 2007, and according to the Free Press, Dorsey confessed to burglarizing two homes in one day.
Police had been responding to calls of several men lurking around houses.
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According to the reports, three of the teens, including Dorsey, went to the back of a Coconut Creek home, where the sliding glass door was shattered. Dorsey and another teen entered the home, only to encounter the homeowner, who came face-to-face with the intruders in the living room, the reports show. The teens fled, but were stopped by police a short while later.
Once at the Coconut Creek Police Department, Dorsey and his cohorts all admitted to their roles in the burglary, as well as to a break-in earlier that day in another suburb, where a flat-screen television was taken.
Much like in the June ’07 burglary incident, Dorsey was again placed in a diversion program for the Nov. ’07 burglary.
On signing day, Rodriguez defended the decision to bring a player with such a sketchy past into the program.
“I don’t think it’s fair to the young man and his family to pass judgments on something before you know the whole story,” Rodriguez said. “As a coach we get a chance to go visit these kids at the school, at their home and have them come up here and spend a weekend. You get to know them; certainly you get enough time to research and learn the whole story, not just what somebody’s written out there.”
One thing is certain: Rodriguez had better hope he’s right about Dorsey, or else the anti-RichRod crowd will have even more ammunition for what will turn out to be his eventual ouster. Especially if the on-the-field product doesn’t do an about-face post haste.