OT? Nebraska Fullback Ben Miles to Transfer

They wrote that Michigan had lost its "family values" under Rich Rodriguez.  People took it sort of literally, and seriously, and Michael Rosenberg added fuel to the illegitimate fire by yammering about how Rodriguez practices were abusive and obscenity-filled.

All of which was a monstrous sort of joke.

First, what everybody should have realized right away (because it was so obvious, but nobody wanted to say it) was concerning the real reason that the whole Boren family went so ballistic that they pulled Justin out of school; it was because then-Pickerington senior Zach Boren did not get the Michigan scholarship that he had waited his whole life for.  Zach's understood position at that time was as a fullback, and the Rodriguez offense just didn't use a fullback.  And nobody in football was recruiting Zach as a llinebacker.  Ohio State, which eventually gave him the "family" scholarship that he wanted from Michigan, gave him the spot as a fullback, not a linebacker.  OSU took Zach, with a scholarship, along with non-scholarship Justin (whose father owned a reasonably prosperous landscaping and snowplowing business in suburban Columbus).  

The "family values" that the Boren family thought Michigan had lost, was the alleged promise that the Boren family felt was made by Lloyd Carr that Zach would get a scholarship offer.  Mike Boren let slip later on that "He would not have his two sons playing for two different universities."  That line said everything.

Second, the absolute joke about "family values" in the case of the Boren family is that they are all some of the roughest, most foul-mouthed people you could ever imagine.  Published stories from Justin's days at Pickerington were that at halftimes, Mike would yell at Justin so ferociously that they thought, "somebody might call the cops."

Third, as to Michael Rosenberg adding to the rumor/myths about Rodriguez football practices, as our own Brian Cook and John U. Bacon have pointed out, Rosenberg is noted to have scarcely spent any time at any of the practices that were open to the press in that early period of Rodriguez.