He has taken over plenty of teams that had a lot of rebuilding to do his first season, and he knew the words of those players would be invaluable.

Arleen and Rita were talking recently about how Rodriguez has never taken a job that didn’t require substantial rebuilding. Why couldn’t he take over at a place that was already rolling, like Bill Stewart just did at West Virginia? Rita asked when there’d be a time when that would happen.

“I said, ‘Well, the time will be when he doesn’t have to leave Michigan because there’s nowhere to go,” Arleen said.