Birk's Eye View: More from Shaun King on Rich Rodriguez and the University of Michigan football team

Hopefully everyone’s finding their way around the site all right. We look forward to bringing you the most extensive Michigan coverage anywhere. Keep those e-mails coming, too, as I’ll be doing a mailbox once a week during the season, and I welcome any suggestions or story ideas.

For those who weren’t familiar with my Lions coverage, you’ll see some of my posts tagged Birk’s Eye View. Those entries will be more insight and analysis than breaking news and features. Something the camera lens doesn’t capture. An insight from someone plugged in to Michigan football. Or, like today, maybe a little leftover nugget that didn’t make it into another story.

I reached out to former NFL quarterback and current ESPN analyst Shaun King, who played under Rich Rodriguez at Tulane, for a story that appeared yesterday. King spoke highly of Rodriguez, said his greatest attribute as a coach is his ability to tweak his system to his players’ talents (the un-Mike Martz, King said), and made one very relevant point why some have been so slow to embrace him at Michigan.

“When you’re dealing with Michigan you’re not just dealing with wins and losses,” King said. “You’re dealing with a tradition that you respect, a certain way of winning. It’s not just about winning. When you won a particular way for so long, any time you get some change there’s going to be some resistance.

“That’s what they found out when they got to Michigan, they’re reluctant to accept that college football has changed. I think the Big Ten as a whole. That’s why they haven’t had a lot of national success since Ohio State beat Miami, because the country as a whole, the country’s changing.”

The Big Ten’s shortcomings on the national college football stage are well documented. Since the Buckeyes beat Miami in the 2003 Fiesta Bowl (a win I still contend wouldn’t have happened if not for Willis McGahee’s gruesome knee injury), the conference is 0-2 in BCS title games and 0-5 in Rose Bowls.

King, like many observers, blames the Big Ten’s stodgy style of play and its inability to attract top athletes.

“They still play such more traditional offense,” King said. “That’s all well and good. You can still win football games running the football, playing great defense. But the thing is, when you get in a bowl game - and I’m talking national championship, I’m not taking the fourth-place Big Ten team versus the fourth-place ACC team; I’m talking the big games, the Floridas, the Oklahomas, the Southern Cals - you aren’t used to going against that type of athlete all year. It’s culture shock.”

Rodriguez, King said, is changing that about Michigan.

“If you want to take that step and try to compete for national championships than you got to evolve a little bit,” he said. “You think about the teams they had with Chad Henne at quarterback. Who were the great athletes on that team? (Mike) Hart’s not a great athlete. (Mario) Manningham’s not a great athlete. Jake Long, you could argue, was the best athlete on the team and that’s your tackle.

“It’s one thing to be successful, it’s another thing to get the type of players in there where you can compete for national championships.”

Dave Birkett covers the University of Michigan football team for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at davidbirkett@annarbor.com