A BREAK WITH TRADITION: Wolverines refuse to follow example set by Wolverines

[written and shared on 9/18/06]

They call themselves college students? America’s brightest and best? Yeah right. They can’t even follow a simple script.

The setting hadn’t changed for the Michigan Wolverines. It was the first road game of the season. And the location seemed familiar enough. South Bend, Indiana. The same South Bend from which their school had not returned victorious since 1994. Remember 1994? Bill Clinton’s first term? The year before the internet became available to the populace? Yes, that long ago.

All these educated young minds were expected to do was what those before them had done. Show up, play tight and tentative, worry about failing instead of succeeding and, ultimately, fail. Yet they looked like they had no idea what it meant to be a University of Michigan football team in the third millennium, throttling the second-ranked Notre Dame Fighting Irish, 47-21, before 80,000 stunned expressions.

Weren’t any of these young balls of clay paying attention? They were supposed to let last week’s annual Mid-American Conference exhibition (in this case, a sleepwalk win over Central Michigan) soften them for defeat seven days later. Just like it had six previous times in the Lloyd Carr era. Since 1995 Michigan has scheduled nine MAC teams for demolition; despite their perfect record over the weaker conference, their combined record in these two-game stretches is a not-so-impressive 12-6.

The kids seemed to understand early on, as they stormed to an impressive first-quarter lead. A performance so dominant, it was safe to assume they had done their history homework on this series. For example, 1998. Michigan owned the first half yet only led 13-0 at the break. The Irish went Yost on them over the final 30 minutes, scoring 36 and ruining the Wolverines’ hopes for a national championship defense.

This year they even added a new wrinkle and took it up a notch, swelling the score to a seemingly insurmountable 34-7 count (limiting the Notre Dame offense to a single first down in the process). Nice touch. A 27-point collapse would add a new chapter to this newfound tradition. We even had a foreshadowing taste of the impending devastation in the half’s waning moments. The Wolverines hit the locker room a minute early, allowing quarterback Brady Quinn to trot the Irish effortlessly down the field and cut the lead to a very reachable 20 at intermission.

You knew it. I knew it. The volunteers at the Dippin’ Dots stand knew it. According to script, Michigan’s second-half offense would have all the potency of an internet-dating senior citizen. The Wolverine defense would sit back, daring Quinn to throw 10-to-15-yard passes, all the way down the field if necessary. And, at the worst possible moment, they’d serve up a plot-twisting turnover to seal their fate. A halftime PA announcement even cautioned delirious Irish fans from storming onto the field after the game. Clearly, we were all on the same page.

But this year, unlike 2005, Michigan wasn’t satisfied with less than a full game’s worth of effort. This time they didn’t mail it in as they had before. They tossed the tired screenplay aside and wrote a new one, an action-adventure epic built around a character by the name of Ron English. Instead of calling off the dogs (or weasels, to be accurate), then sitting back and watching the clock tick its way down, English’s new attack-style defense continued its day-long assault on the Notre Dame offensive line. The Wolverines hurried, harassed and hamstrung Quinn, hushing the monolithic student body in the old stadium’s northwest corner.

The quarterback who seemed a natural fit for the role of Guest of Honor at the Downtown Athletic Club, wore sod in his helmet much of the half. Prescott Burgess, who grabbed a deflected Quinn pass in stride moments after the F-16 flyover and put the first points on the board just 41 seconds in, bookended one memorable pick with another, this time returning it to the Irish five. And Lamar Woodley, terror of terrors, whose eyes Quinn still sees between nocturnal twitches, snatched the Irish's final mistake off the manicured Indiana fescue and lumbered into the end zone in the game’s final minute.

By then the Notre Dame faithful, their painted faces smeared with blue, green and gold tears, had already left the building, pausing at the tunnel for one last disbelieving glance at the scoreboard. From my angle, Touchdown Jesus stood to the right of it, his arms extended outward as if to say, “What just happened?”

The bi-annual story the Irish once knew by heart had been rewritten by a young improv group of Wolverines determined to try something fresh and new. This time there’s more action and a whole different ending. And this time, it runs a full 60 minutes.


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