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Posted on Tue, Sep 8, 2009 : 1:04 p.m.

Highlights from Rich Rodriguez on Tuesday's Big Ten teleconference

By Dave Birkett

Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez just did his 10-minute penance on the weekly Big Ten teleconference. Here are the highlights:

• Michigan and Ohio State are carrying the banner for the beleaguered Big Ten this week with home games against Top-25 teams Notre Dame and USC. Rodriguez was asked about rooting for his arch-rival on a weekend like this, and like Ohio State's Jim Tressel he didn't give a direct answer.

"I think a lot of our schools in the non-conference schedule are hoping that we do well as a league to try to help maybe get some of that national respect back," Rodriguez said. "We talked about it as coaches, not only in the bowl games but in the non-conference games, and I’m pretty convinced it’s going to happen. Whether it’s this year or next year, I can see the talent level just in 18 months in our league continuing to increase. There’s a lot of talented young quarterbacks in our league and I think that’s going to bode well for our league."

Tressel's response to rooting for Michigan was similarly vague.

"Oh, we always root for our conference members," he said. "We're very proud of the conference we play in. We all take it personally if we don’t represent the conference as well as we could have. So there’s no question about it, every time we line up in a non-conference game, along with our own team and standing up for it, we always want to be front and center for our conference."

• Michigan generated some pressure with three-man rushes last week against Western Michigan, and Rodriguez said that's due in part to the speed of his defensive front. Brandon Graham is one of the best defensive ends in college football, and Mike Martin, Ryan Van Bergen and true freshman Craig Roh are all non-stop motor guys.

"We do have some guys that run pretty well and all of them have done a great job of learning the scheme," Rodriguez said. "What we’re excited about is we think we’ll keep getting better. That was the first ballgame that we had in Coach Robinson’s scheme. They’re still learning it and I think as the season goes along we’ll get more and more comfortable with it. I was pleased with the way we played overall and the young guys up front I think will keep getting better."

• New defensive coordinator Greg Robinson is using some of the same coverage concepts that Scott Shafer's defense employed last year, but there aren't many other similarities.

"That's where we’re going to have some learning curves and some moments where our guys are still learning it," Rodriguez said. "But I thought Greg did a nice job of trying to tie in some of the things our upperclassmen knew from not just last year but the year before and make it relative to what we’re doing now."

• Rodriguez on Notre Dame's personnel: "That’s a challenge for us. We’re facing some of the best skill guys that we’ll see all year."

Comments

Txmaizenblue

Tue, Sep 8, 2009 : 10:20 p.m.

Media in Ann Arbor: win = boring news loss = RR's head

tater

Tue, Sep 8, 2009 : 6:05 p.m.

Sounds like a pretty vanilla day to me. Must be a relief.