MS Paint: Chris Howard on Judgement Day
I did a little research and it turns out our 3 best road wins since the 1997 season are:
1. 1999 PSU
2. 1997 PSU
3. 2006 Notre Dame
A sensible list, especially when you consider Carr's mediocrity on the road and then the whole program's mediocrity (worse, really) after he retired.
What criteria do you use to make that judgment, though? Are you considering margin of victory, or just looking at the opponent? Is it the record, ranking, or something else?
I looked at the opposing teams ranking when we played them and their ranking at the end of the season. Lastly, I looked at standout players the opponent had and how raucous their home field is. So, I came to the conclusion that:
a) Happy Valley>Notre Dame for home field advantage
b) Courtney Brown and LaVar Arrington went 1&2 overall in the NFL draft, Brady Quinn and Jeff Samardzija did not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr4y2_BqHYg I have no idea what props they used after this game, but I knew when they left NUMBER 2 alone and despite the 10 seconds or so it seemed for Michigan to get the snap off that whatever PSU had under Joe was gone.
Yes, they won lots more games while he was the named HC, but that was it for the Nittany Lions under than man. That is what I took out of that game. Damn, we pounded their ass though, from play one. U GO MR. STEELE
vs Joe Pa's flood pants.....Moral- Never leave the house till Mom/Wife looks you over.
YES!
One of my favorite sports related fan days of my life. Watched that game at Scorekeepers with a big crew. Place was (figuratively) on fire. I remember as we were walking out of there we stopped to watch the end of the Mizzou/Nebraska game with the kicked ball play, didn't think too much of it at the time.
We then headed towards campus. Big crowd converged on President Bollinger's house to celebrate the game for some reason. He and his wife came out to address the excited crowd. Inexplicably he invited students into their house. We toured the house drunk for a while, all over their white carpets. We left and headed down South U towards the main drag. I was so drunk I puked into one of those concrete garbage cans on the sidewalk, then rallied of course. Think I ended up sneaking into my girlfriend's sorority that night.
Next day I drove by the president's house mid-morning and there were two carpet cleaning vans in their driveway.
That was an amazing night.
It's funny that you mention this - I was part of the crowd outside Bollinger's house too, although I am foggy on the part about being in it. The group I was with was pretty far gone by the time we got down to South University, but yeah, that was a great sports evening in Ann Arbor indeed.
Did you go back over there again after we beat OSU later that season?
You may recall that the AA police ran articles all week leading up to that OSU game that if you ran onto the field after the game you would be arrested. My friends and I just scoffed at that, if we won, we would find our way onto that field. When the clock struck 0 I remember jumping down from section 24. An officer was right in front of me, just juked him and ran by. Next thing I knew hundreds had joined me. So much for the arrests. We stayed on the field for quite some time.
In the meantime tons of students converged on Bollinger's house in an attempt to do the same thing that was done after the PSU game. But what nobody realized was that Mr. and Mrs. Bollinger were out of town.
Maybe an hour to 90 minutes after the game we went to my friends' house on East U to sort of revel in the victory and make our plan for the night. We expected everyone to be in a great mood, but our friends were pretty somber. They had just come back from Bollinger's house. Apparently one student climbed one of the trees in the front yard and was rocking back and forth cheering. Suddenly he lost his grip and fell to the ground. The whole crowd stopped cheering as it was a pretty serious situation. I guess everyone then quietly dispersed at that point. I don't recall what ever happpened to that kid.
If the kid was about 3, it could have been WD. Head trauma after falling from a tree could explain a lot.
...end thread.