A Pre-Rose Bowl Gameday Message From Bob Ufer

As the holiday season’s finale closes in, one can only count their blessings. And one we certainly share as MGoBloggers has been the great joy that the performance of our beloved Meechigan Football program has brought us over the past few years.

But do you know what that 2021 and 2022 team will never forget and always remember?

*December 31, 1980*

Well into his battle with cancer and facing the dawn of a year that would tragically prove to be his last, legendary muse for all Wolverine faithful Bob Ufer has a job to do: attend the traditional New Year’s Eve pep rally at Citrus Stadium in Pasadena, California, and deliver a speech to fire up the 1980 Michigan Football team. Ufer envisioned the program’s success in that current era (9 B1G Championships to date) since the dawn of it in 1969, but one aspect of it kept falling short — and that trend of heartbreak laid in the stadium down the road, the Granddaddy of all bowl games. What could he possibly say to do his part in making eight times the charm?

As I’m sure so many of you imagine (if not know), the result is perhaps the most moving of his many impassioned words. Of course, the Wolverines finally rode into the darkened New Year’s night in the San Gabriel Valley victorious.

But now as Michigan makes its long-awaited return to the Tournament of Roses’ Big Ten invitation, as part of the final four-team College Football Playoff too — ranked #1 for the first time since its last rose-y national title no less, I can’t help but (with modernizing tweaks of course) find new life for Ufer’s words.

*December 31, 2023*

“Now 2023, you fellas have won it all — you’ve beaten Penn State on TV, you’ve beaten Ohio State on TV, you’ve got that Big Ten trophy again, haven’t ya? You’ve done it all.

Fellas I’ve been around long enough and you’ve been around long enough to know what I mean when I say “they wrap fish in yesterday’s newspapers.” What you did last fall — I want you to search your soul right now and ask each one of yourselves: how significant is what you did last fall gonna be if you don’t win that ballgame tomorrow?

You’re gonna WIN that ballgame tomorrow, you got it? And when you win it — not if you win it, WHEN you win it — you’re gonna be able to say something that no Harbaugh team has ever been able to say in the past, no Harbaugh team will ever say in the future: you’re gonna be able to say that you gave one of the greatest coaches in the history of the sport his first Rose Bowl victory and National Championship bid.

You’re gonna WIN that ballgame tomorrow. You’re gonna win it for Jim, you're gonna win it for Michigan. You’re gonna win it for the team with the winningest tradition in the history of college football — now the first with over 1,000 wins. You’re gonna win it to reinstate the prestige of the Big Ten (and your role in it). You’re also gonna win it for the school that has one of the largest living alumni bodies in the world — over 660,000 of em, and they’re all gonna be behind you tomorrow. And you know most of all? You’re gonna win it for yourselves. You’re gonna prove to yourself that sign-stealing can never be what your success is chalked up to.

And when you walk out of that stadium tomorrow afternoon! With victory ringing in your ears! You’re gonna KNOW that your integrity should’ve never been questioned! And better yet you’re gonna know down deep because you will have just shown 45 million on TV along with 100,000 over there that you are INDEED, the finest football team in America today!

Fellas I ask you from this point on: THINK VICTORY, BEAT BAMA. YOU’VE GOT SIXTY MINUTES OF FOOTBALL — AND A LIFETIME TO REMEMBER IT.”

 Happy New Year and let's make this magical day magical!