As the Korean People’s Army poured into South Korea in the summer of 1950, the US Army that opposed them was the best in the world…on paper. But success in war, like in football, can often be a fickle mistress to predict. It is a game of inches, where unpredictable events occur with stunning regularity and even the greatest superforecasters in the world can never guarantee victory.   

As the Second World War drew to a close, the United States found itself in the position of global hegemon for the first time. The Allies had together forever crushed Germany’s decades long dreams of expansion and Imperial Japan’s rapid rise to regional dominance. But the efforts had destroyed the old orders and replaced them with new powers. The United States in 1945 fielded one of the best fighting forces the world has ever seen.

Not just technically and strategically dominant, the United States stood alone in the world with their logistical networks and capabilities that were every bit as contemporarily dominant to Rome’s. If all roads led to Imperial Rome, all logistics in the middle of the 20th Century led to the United States. The US had perfected logistics and they had perfected combined arms tactics on the battlefield, and stood as masters of the world and yet in June of 1950 the army of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), which had not even existed five years earlier, rolled through them like they were not even present.  

As the North Koreans crossed the border, the South Korean army began to disintegrate. The United States determined to not let their new protectorate fall, sent what everyone thought was the successor to the greatest all around army the world had ever see to deal with these backwater upstarts.

Commander of the Far East Theatre Douglas MacArthur demanded an “arrogant display of strength”.. it was a disaster.

The peacetime Army was a shell of its former self. Convinced nuclear war in Europe was the only future Aries held for mankind, they had cannibalized conventional forces to feed their new strategy. The National Security Act of 1947 had created the Air Force and the CIA, but had relegated Army ground combat units to second priority in acquisitions and funding.  Nearly every division hovered around 60% strength, with most of the enlisted men being raw recruits with 8 weeks of training. Equipment was often Second World War vintage, and most of the leaders were connected officers who had been spared the rigors of prolonged combat in World War 2 were being given time in  Command. 

While the Soviet Union had provided the North with hundreds of modern T-34-85 tanks, the US had provided South Korea with precisely zero tanks or anti-tank weapons. The US Army, logistical masters of the world, had only 18 anti-tank artillery rounds in the entire Far East Theatre. Task Force Smith, the small taskforce of the 21st Infantry Regiment sent to stop the North Korean mechanized onslaught, was given six. The US Army went into battle with a wheel gun’s worth of rounds.  

The battles of the early summer of 1950 were a disaster. Error after error piled up, which led to disaster after disaster on the battlefield. Task Force Smith had been annihilated in less than a day. Every American attempt to stop the North Korean advance had failed miserably. The most perplexing part was that the United States was failing at what had been considered their strength: logistics and combined arms combat. Not only was this a test of the United States, it was a testbed for the theories NATO armies hoped to use against the Soviets. The question if better could hold against more had haunted the West since 1945, and it was beginning to look like the answer was no.

As the North Korean army backed the US and South Koreans into the last corner of South Korea around the port of Pusan, it looked for a moment like the position of the United States as global super power would last less than half a decade.

But then something strange began to happen. As the American supply lines grew shorter and the North Korean lines grew longer, the Americans began to remember who they were. Digging into the hills surrounding the airfields and shipyards at Pusan, the American lines began to stiffen. They knew it was their last stand, and they determined to hold. Reinforced by troops from all over the Far East theatre and the Western United States including the 24th and 25th Infantry Divisions and the 1st Cavalry Division in the trenches, and the Fifth US Air Force in the skies, the showdown was set. The US Air Force immediately began attacking the supply lines of the North Koreans, who after advancing a miraculous 200 miles in merely 3 months were beginning to show cracks in their logistics.

As American rockets and bombs rained onto North Korean trucks and trains in the rear, the young Americans who huddled in the trenches around Pusan knew the time was drawing closer for them to play their part. These young men held not only their own fates, but the fates of their nation in their hands. They needed to shake off the mistakes of the past months, look their so far invincible enemy in the eye and tell them “This far and no further”.

Despite the promises of strategists and think-tanks that modern war would be over the horizon and nuclear, young Americans were now being asked to do it the old fashioned way, how young men for centuries had been asked to do it, at the end of a bayonet.

The battles around Pusan lasted nearly two months. They were waged across nearly 150 miles of front lines at places most Americans have never heard of, but Americans fought and died there by the score. Places like the Naktong Bulge, Taegu, P'ohang-dong, Triangulation Hill, Yongp’o and the Bowling Alley. Young American soldiers and marines, joined by their South Korean allies bent, but never broke. All along the line, as if suddenly awakening from a slumber, the army that won the Second World War began to re-emerge. The North Koreans could sense it too. They knew they had been lucky so far punching so well above their weight class and taking advantage of their opponent’s mistakes, but they knew that luck was running out. They desperately flung every last man, every last bullet and every last everything at the American lines, desperately needing just one unit to break and flee around Pusan. None did.

For nearly two months those young men fought toe to toe, and bayonet to bayonet with their enemy. They picked up the eagle that had fallen, and thrust it back up where it belonged. The lines held against almost all expectation, and nearly single handedly those young men in the trenches, the ones who none of the “experts” thought would play any role in future wars had saved freedom’s best hope in the 20th Century.

 

I will admit that as Michigan attempted to fumble, drop, snap, and penalize itself to defeat, I felt a little of the old BPONE. This was the Michigan I had always known. Great in Big Ten play, but the long layoffs between Conference and Post Season always seemed to reset Michigan’s collective discipline and performance to Spring Game levels. I could feel it after a first half which felt like Michigan could have been up multiple scores but wasn’t due to their own mistakes. It felt like Alabama was merely hanging on, Michigan just needed to clean up it’s own uncharacteristic mistakes… and then it got worse.

Alabama dominated the second half of football (although not nearly as badly as the broadcast crew claimed), Michigan’s offense sputtered under a hail of drops and dorfs, and the defense looked unable to stop Alabama on the ground, especially the QB run. The thing that was Michigan’s strength (and we always want more QB run) was being turned against us. It was the same story as our last meaningful Rose Bowl, with Vince Young at Texas, running through Michigan’s vaunted defense. It all just felt so expected to the point it had a sort of comfortable familiarity. Mistakes and Michigan’s inability to stop the opponent’s champion would cost us yet another chance at national prominence.

And then the tides began to turn. Alabama had played their hand, and as JJ McCarthy stepped onto the field for his game tying, legacy defining drive, we felt the momentum shift. Despite the tipped balls, poorly timed flea flickers, and yet another muffed punt, Michigan began to show again who it was. Those young men dragged us out of that dark place where time and experience has taught us to seek shelter and simply refused to quit. As Michigan’s stars did their part through the air and on the ground, shredding Alabama’s defense apart in the final two drives, it came down to one final play. One final stand from the five yard line. The tension around the last play was so thick my watch had my heart rate over 145. An injury, and two timeouts made it worse…and as Alabama lined up, in the shotgun, first in a power run look and then in a spread, you could sense what was coming. Nick Saban, perhaps the greatest coach to ever live was going to put the ball yet again in the hands of his Champion, his Achilles, and let him win the game.

Except on the extreme left of the Michigan line stood a transfer from Coastal Carolina. A guy who came to Michigan at the beginning of the season as a pass rusher who had played Group of Five competition, and had performed fairly well in his role, but was not one of Michigan’s best in class buzzsaw interior defenders or star defensives backs. Across from Michigan’s Josaiah Stewart stood Alabama’s JC Latham. On paper Josaiah Stewart had a near-zero chance against the former 5-Star, IMG product who clocked in at 6’6” and 360lbs, and was a native of Offensive-Linemandia (Wisconsin).   

But football, kind of like war, is about more than just the numbers. It gives us moments to believe. It gives us story after story of men who on paper should be defeated but instead rise to the occasion and change history. It has given us redemption stories like Vincent Gray, and last night it gave us Josaiah Stewart. Who, despite conceding 130lbs and nearly five inches to an Alabama offensive lineman, took that bear of a man and used him as a literal meat puppet. Josaiah Stewart took every bit of Michigan post season history. Every bit of fear and angst of the fan base. Every bit of decades long narrative around both Michigan and the SEC, questions if Michigan had really replaced Ohio State as the premier Big Ten team on the national stage. He took all of those fears and packed them into that Alabama five star and proceeded to throw them like a rag doll into Alabama’s champion. Breaking his momentum, and shatter every single one of those storylines.

I did not spell his name wrong, this was reddit. 

The Play, The Play, The Play

Football is a team game, and it is true without the other ten young men doing their job, the miracle of Josaiah Stewart does not matter. Without Michigan's Offense getting back to back scores, and a huge 4th down pick up, Josaiah Stewart is never given this chance. Without Ben Hebert’s strength and conditioning program and the wizardry of Jesse Minter it never happens, but it still always comes down to the young man in the trenches. As it has happened for millennia, despite all the advances in technology and strategy, it came down to a young man, putting the hopes, fears, and fate of his supporters on his back, meeting his enemy face to face, and defeating him.  

Go Blue, forever.