Michigan Coach Rich Rodriguez, in his tireless effort to weasel his way out of paying his buy-out, has reached the point which even casual observers will recognize as the beginning of the end: he's just making stuff up now.

A Fox Sports column today asserts that, in a deposition, Rodriguez claimed that he was "coerced" into signing his contract. Coerced. Into signing a multi-million dollar contract. Somehow, it seems, that Rodriguez wants us to believe that the powers that be at West Virginia are powerful enough to intimidate him into signing on the dotted line, despite his ready access to legal counsel, agents, financial advisors, and really any other sort of assistance he could ever want.

This is, in a word, nonsense.

FanHouse is counting down the ten best, ten worst, and ten weirdest moments in the history of Big Ten football.

Oh, like you didn't know this was coming. Come on. How could the single most disastrous game in the history of the conference not be the next item on this list?

You know the particulars already. Michigan was #5 in the country; Appalachian State was supposedly just another Division I-AA Football Championship Subdivision tomato can who was only supposed to be in it for the money. You know the game came down to a last-second blocked field goal, and you also know that Michigan was doggone lucky that they were ever in a position to win this game. The block happened, though, so the chants of "Down goes Frazier!" spread across the college football world. Appy State had pulled off the greatest upset of all time, being the first Not Ready For Prime Time Player to drink the milkshake of a top-5 team.

The day after, the Grave Dancers Union got a record number of applications for membership. "Overrated!" "End of an era!" "Fire Lloyd Carr!" Gosh, it's hard to argue with people when they're right.

My concern, though, is not with what this game meant to Michigan. My concern is with what this game meant to college football in general.

Cleveland Browns receiver and Michigan alumnus Braylon Edwards caused a minor internet meltdown in Michigan-land recently when he said he was mad at new Michigan head coach Rich Rodriguez for giving the #1 jersey to an incoming freshman defensive back. Edwards had endowed a scholarship for the jersey, traditionally given to god-like wide receivers, that specifically prohibited any freshman from wearing the #1.

Every newspaper in West Virginia has three guys working the Rich Rodriguez beat; Bob Hertzel is one of them. And Bob Hertzel is very confused:

[The number #1] has belonged exclusively to a wide receiver since 1979, dating back to Chris Carter.

There is something wrong with this sentence: it's "Cris Carter." Oh, and here's a picture of the Wolverine legend donning the precious #1:



Oops.

Now that the depositions are underway in the WVU vs. Rich Rodriguez case, we are finally starting to learn a few things that weren't apparent. For instance, we didn't know how little Rodriguez's attorney, Marv Robon knows about sports. More to the point, how little he knows about who is coaching where.

At one point Pastilong testified that Texas A&M had a problem when its football coach was given his own Web site, leading to his dismissal. "You mean Bobby Knight?" Robon asked. Bobby Knight? He was a basketball coach. Latest stop at Texas Tech, not A&M. And he was fired at Indiana.

Not satisfied that people knew the depth of his lack of fandom, Robon continued.

"Do people blame Mike Parsons for Bobby Huggins leaving?" When he was corrected and told that Huggins was the current coach, Robon dug himself in deeper. "Attempt to leave?" he asked.

Once again, real life proves itself far funnier than anything I could ever make up. I'm sure he meant former West Virginia basketball coach John Beilein. And being a West Virginia fan, I heard a lot of things about assistant AD, Mike Parsons and the loss of Beilein. His name was also mentioned quite a bit during the Alabama-Rodriguez fiasco. Keep in mind that what I just said is 100% rumor. But the rumor goes that while both Rodriguez and Beilein were at West Virginia, they went to Ed Pastilong on more than one occasion to complain about Parsons. Most likely about facility issues and Parsons lack of concern.

It hardly seems important at this point, as Pastilong and Rodriguez made only sparse contact over his last eight months.

In Rodriguez's final eight months, Pastilong seldom had contact with the coach other than in social settings and was not involved in negotiations, which were done through Team Rodriguez's agent, lawyers and financial experts while the WVU legal team and President Garrison and Walker handled the Mountaineer side.

The Detroit Free-Press gets points for due diligence on this article, which is about a shoddy homemade video on YouTube. The home movie shows a surly Charlie Weis delivering a speech at the pre-game luncheon before the spring game. In front of a handful of fans and donors, Charlie cracked candidly about his feelings for that lovely academic institution in Ann Arbor:

"And then we'll listen to Michigan have all their excuses as they come running in and saying how they have a new coaching staff and there's changes. To hell with Michigan!" (exclamation mark is [sic] -Ed.)

The exclamation mark, in my opinion, comes from the overactive imagination of the article's author. A viewing of the video (the quote in question is at the 1:10 mark... be warned, though, it's a really obnoxious video) will convince every rational person with a cursory understanding of what counts as an "exclamation" that the more commonplace period is a more appropriate punctuation mark for the transcription.

Weis' remarks come from a long tradition of Notre Dame and Michigan trading damnations upon one another. Most famously, Bo Schembechler was known to quip "To Hell With Notre Dame" to anyone who asked him about scheduling the Irish, the Big 10's relationship to Notre Dame, or if he wanted syrup with his pancakes.

In related news, Hell has politely refused to accept Michigan, as doing so would drastically drop property values throughout the area.

This offseason, two quarterbacks found themselves sca-roohed by coaching changes: Michigan's Ryan Mallett and Georgia Tech's Taylor Bennett. Both are square-peg pocket passing battleship types virtually guaranteed starting jobs until a QB-run-mad head coach came in with a bunch of round holes; both said "screw you guys, I'm going home."

But while Mallett has to sit out at Arkansas next year, Bennett has been given the go-ahead to play this fall for Louisiana Tech. Why? How? What? Well, remember that one year the NCAA allowed anyone who'd picked up an undergraduate degree to transfer without penalty?

Yeah, that rule was repealed after coaches complained, but by "repealed" we mean "not repealed." The above-linked article on Bennett:

[Myles] Brand and the NCAA created a workaround. The waiver process Bennett used to be able to play at Louisiana Tech has been used successfully by about 30 Division I athletes since July 1, 2007, NCAA spokesman Erik Christianson told me. That's actually more than took advantage of the graduate student transfer rule in the one year for which it applied.

"For any individual who has legitimate academic reasons to transfer after graduating, we will grant it," Brand said.

Mike Knobler, the author, takes a properly skeptical tone about "legitimate academic reasons," saying there is some "fiction at work here," but is generally approving of the move. And you know what? He's right.

You're probably tired of the hot topic in the Big Ten this offseason: does a gentleman's agreement to not recruit other conference schools' verbal commitments exist?

Joe Tiller thinks so even though a few years back he lifted Michigan tight end Garrett Bushong from Michigan State; he thinks this mostly because Rich Rodriguez came into town and snatched Ohio wide receiver Roy Roundtree from under his nose. Tiller went nuts, derided "wizard hats and snake oil," and they were off.

Jim Tressel was asked about this gentlemen's agreement and took what might have been a shot at Rodriguez when he claimed that agreement was in effect "only among the gentlemen." Then he yoinked a kid named Melvin Fellows:

The Garfield Heights defensive end informed Tressel that he was switching his oral commitment from Illinois to the Buckeyes, delivering a blow to the Illini and bringing OSU's growing class to 12 pledges.

By my calculations, the gentleman count in the Big Ten stands at zero.

Got $2 million dollars to spare? Want to live in a gated community in Morgantown? An early 90s McMansion can be yours. It has a tennis court, swimming pool, 5 fireplaces, boat docks and sits on 2 acres. Go ahead, take the photo tour.

Hold off on making an immediate offer, though. The present owner might be more motivated to sell by the end of August. After the trial is finished. At that point, Rich Rodriguez might need the money.

You might be able pick up the house that sits off of -- wait for it... wait for it... Cheat Lake -- at a nice discount.

FanHouse is counting down the 10 best, 10 worst, and 10 weirdest moments in Big Ten football history.

There ought to be a unit to measure cockiness in athletes. There should be some means of comparing one athlete's self-confidence with another's. Yes, there should be such a unit, and if there ever is, it should be called the Howard. One Howard would be equal to the amount of cockiness displayed in the photo above, the infamous moment towards the end of the 1991 Ohio State-Michigan game when Desmond Howard struck the Heisman pose, knowing--knowing--that he had just locked up the award.

I remember seeing this moment on live TV. At the instant Howard struck his pose I had never admired nor loathed an athlete so much. He was arrogant, and he was right. Howard didn't just win the 1991 Heisman, he claimed it. Howard scored 138 points for Michigan that season, becoming the first receiver ever to lead the conference in scoring.

It wasn't just what Desmond Howard did that earned him the Heisman, though. It was how he did it. He caught 61 passes for 950 yards that season. That's more than respectable, but those aren't dizzying numbers. Last year Texas Tech's Michael Crabtree caught 134 passes for 1,962 yards. Crabtree even outdid Howard in touchdown receptions, 22 to 19. But did you catch something in those numbers?

FanHouse is counting down the 10 best, 10 worst, and 10 weirdest moments in Big Ten football history.

There wasn't a more disappointing team in the Big Ten last year than the Michigan Wolverines. Players like Chad Henne and Mike Hart sacrificed twelve months of NFL-sized paychecks to stay in Ann Arbor for one more year, sincere in their belief that 2007 would be a special season.

Of course, "special" and "wonderful" are two completely different words. "Non-wonderful" would be a better way to describe how the 2007 season turned out for Big Blue. They entered the 2007 season ranked fifth in the nation, only to lose to ... well, I think you know what happened in the first game of the year. And the second. The Wolverines did manage to win eight games in a row after that, but closed the regular season with losses to Wisconsin and, of course, Ohio State. The day after the OSU loss, Lloyd Carr told his team he would be retiring after Michigan's bowl game.

When the bids came out and the college football world learned that Michigan would be facing the Florida Gators (defending national champions with the eventual Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow starting at quarterback) everyone figured Lloyd Carr would go out a loser. The only real question was how many points Michigan would lose by.