Ohio State's legendary lunatic, Wayne Woodrow Hayes, voiced his displeasure with the forward pass by saying: "When you throw the ball, three things can happen. And two of them are bad."
Woody's desciple from the state to his north, the late Bo Schembechler, held a similar opinion about the practice of padding a school's schedule with "cupcakes"--opponents that served as nothing more than sparring partners, providing a team with easy wins. During his reign at the University of Michigan, first as head football coach and then as athletic director, Bo made a point of welcoming any and all non-conference opponents to the Big House. Each year the Wolverines would play the likes of Miami (the Coral Gables version, not Oxford, OH), Florida State, Colorado, UCLA, Washington--all among the nation's top programs at the time.
The Wolverines did capitalize on name equity for the benefit of home cooking (rarely was there so much as a home-and-home deal, as most of these series were played exclusively in Ann Arbor). Nonetheless, this "taking on all comers" approach provided the program with something much more valuable than compelling September sports programming: it paved the way to a successful campaign. The greater the number of ranked opponents on a given schedule, the greater the likelihood of a "special" season. Michigan's best teams since the Bo-vs.-Woody era--1980, 1985, 1988-89, 1991, 1997--all happened to feature formidable non-conference slates.
Once that first Mid-American Conference opponent strolled out from the Michigan Stadium tunnel in September of 1995, Schembechler told anyone willing to listen that these "cupcake" games served no positive purpose. Anyone who boasts about Michigan's 10-0 record against the MAC conference conveniently fails to recognize its 4-6 record the week after playing a MAC opponent.
So earlier this year, when the opportunity presented itself to add an unprecedented eighth home game to the 2007 schedule, athletic director Bill Martin responded with an unprecedented move: he invited a Division 1-AA school. But this wasn't just any "cupcake", he would insist. This was the defending D-1AA National Champion Appalacian State Mountaineers.
If Bo were alive when this contest was booked, he'd have been first to ask, what good can come of this? Victory means nothing when it's an expected result. And unlike the MAC schools, a win over this opponent doesn't even count toward the BCS standings. Even a close call can be catestrophic, as evidenced by last year's nail-biter over Ball State. And any time you take the field, you run that slimmest of slim possibilities of coming in second.
Coming in second is precisely what happened on the ground-up Goodyear surface of the Big House on September's first Saturday. Someone forgot to tell Appalacian State that they were cupcakes. The players and coaches seemed to be under the impression that they were fresh off of a 14-1 campaign that saw them claim their second straight national title. (See photo, taken by yours truly.)
The Wolverines, who clearly got the memo, showed up ready to do a quick, pre-Labor Day walk-through. Yet the afternoon saw them stunned, bewildered and beaten, their jaws dropped in collective chagrin. Not since the most recent "To Catch A Predator" episode of Dateline have we witnessed so many "this isn't supposed to happen!" expressions in the same place. You'd think this team would have learned about overlooking opponents after last year's Rose Bowl, when they seemed more concerned with calculating the margin of victory needed to impress the voters than preparing for USC. (The Trojans beat them soundly, 32-18.)
On this gorgeous first day of September, instead of turning in a bold, polished performance, Michigan looked like an unprepared understudy at a Shakespeare festival, ad-libbing Hamlet's lines. The coaching staff was unsure of situations until each smacked them in the face (a fourth-down, goal-line situation at the end of the first half was met with surprise more than anything else); players were unsure of when to take the field or when to leave it (twice they lined up a player short on offense); star quarterbacks were unsure of which play to run (Chad Henne called time-out before the first play of the second half); and certain star running backs were unsure whether their number would be called (or whether they'd be in the lineup at all) during crucial stretches of the game.
Inside the historic stadium that was kicking off its 80th birthday--the game tickets bore an indelible image of Michigan's storied past, that of its first Heisman Trophy winner, Tom Harmon--the twin scoreboards read, 28-14, with two minutes remaining in the second quarter. Today, the "point-a-minute team" was not the one in maize and blue.
When the Aquatred crumbs settled, the little team that couldn't, did. The easy win, wasn't. Appalachian State's starters ran toward the South end zone to salute their fans, who drove, flew and did everything but mall-walk from tiny Boone, North Carolina, to witness some history of their own. Cheerleaders hugged anyone in a white uniform. The jubilant players and their equally-giddy coaching staff held a spontaneous team photo session on the maize "M" at midfield, while over their shoulders the Jumbotron's earth-shaking message filled the frame. David 34, Goliath 32.
So maybe Bo was right after all. Maybe Michigan should remove the "cupcakes" from future schedules for good. The irony of the old man's words belies one eerie truth not even he could foretell: in three tries, the Wolverines have not been victorious since Coach Bo passed away.
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