My eyes were opened fully the 10-1-1 year of ‘85, when I was in the 3rd grade. You feel things deeper as a lad, before girls and music and world events figure into your life. The 12-10 Iowa loss felt like a death in the family on that late late midwestern afternoon in October. A month later, John Kolesar’s 77-yd post-pattern TD from #4 Harbaugh was one of the most glorious affirmations of a Divine Maker’s existence. The gorgeous January 1st Fiesta Bowl win over venerable Nebraska set me up to think Oh We Win Bowl Games!
What followed was 30 years of slow almost imperceptible descent from that unforgettable (I can at age 46 tell you everything about that season: the punt block TD at EL, the manhandling of the Terps and Gamecox, the bombs-away destruction of Purdue and Minnesota, Ivan Hicks, Gerald White, Messner, the Hammmersteins, Kattus, Jokich, Thomas Wilcher, the 3-3 tie - thanks crossbar! - vs Illinois…) year in terms of the attention I gave and the emotional energy I spent. By early ‘90s HS I was almost indifferent. I watched but the games’ events and scores are lost to me.
Sadly the same is true for my first two years studying at Ann Arbor. Both 8-4 years. The Biakabatuka game freshman year in ‘95 was of course legendary, for his performance, the win, the weather, the streaker, the particular moment in life….
i lived in Seville, Spain the year we went undefeated. Seemed like a neat season, but I missed it.
Senior year we were 8-4 again, or something.
Then Life began and I tuned in here and there, at home, bars, watch parties. I read the John U Bacon books, felt bad for RR, wanted to believe in Hoke…and then felt a massive swelling of interest and life and faith with the landing of childhood hero Jim Harbaugh. Trouble with the snap, the spot, another FG loss at Kinnick, Peppers out vs FSU…lots of grief amidst the resurgence. But it was a resurgence. We felt different. I was a middle aged man now but following the team felt much like it did as a kid.
Still, my 3 children had never seen a bowl game victory from Grandma and Grandfather’s basement until this year. I was afraid they were getting cynical about their dad’s Alma mater.
Now this.
This National Championship has arrived at a time of sadness for me, as I’m recently divorced, and my 90 yr old dad is in his last days. The expressions of Faith that I hear from the UM players and coaches are intriguing to me. I’d like to know more about that part of the team culture.
i may not tune in again so much for many more years. As somebody said here, this neutralizes all the bitter moments of yesteryear. There are other things to devote energies and passion to in this life. I feel a great satisfaction with it all. This team has some outstanding young men, and I’m happy that they represent my old school.
This comment right here is amazing, life-affirming, wonderful, "Hurrah for LSA Aught One-mazov!"
I didn't even come close to experiencing this, but feel now as if I had.
The cold January air slicing through your jeans as you go out the back entrance, on your way to Mason Hall, you'll see your girlfriend later that day, pick up a Gargoyle near the fishbowl....
I'm sick of vertical aspiration. Everyone moving up, or trying to move up. Be a kickass D coordinator and build something awesome with the legend that hired you. Then maybe after 10 years and a solid reign of winning, go become a head coach.
Westlake High School grads include Drew Brees, Nick Foles, Sam Ehlinger, and kicker Justin Tucker. This school, along with its neighbor Lake Travis High School (Garrett Wilson, Baker Mayfield, Garrett Gilbert) is a heavyweight in boys' and girls' athletics and also academics.
Is Iowa the only team towards whom we have almost 100% respect? There’s little to no cursing on the boards this week, nor snark. Nebraska has Frost and his mom, MSU and OSU are obvious villains, we’ve got Frames J…but shouldn’t we have SOME edge in our take on Iowa? Bc otherwise we’re left with “please don’t fumble” and “no 2016 repeat, please.”
Our record against them in the 2000s is 6-7.
BUT….I agree that this M team is different. GO BLUE!!!
Oh I think I get it. Maryland got “Rutgered”? Is this a long standing joke that a team that gets pounded by us (even when it’s a home game for them) must “fly back” from Rutgers? That’s funny.
Wait I was wondering about this too. Somebody’s reply to you seemed to make you remember something, but I’m still confused….Why IS Brian saying that there was a flight home for Maryland?
think AD must be under 23 years old and is very enthusiastic, somewhat green, prone to sportswriting cliches (one of his first recaps this season actually featured the expression “holes so big you could drive a Mack Truck through”) and still retains the self-referential tendencies (“your author” and his own tweets) that is fairly common among very young writers slightly dizzy with having their own columns. You’d see this at the Daily a lot. I think he’s getting better, less hackneyed, as the season progresses, and there’s no doubting that he’s True Blue. In a few years when he’s seasoned by life and has written many of these he might be at Brian level.
What about tailback Jamie Morris and fullback Gerald White in in '85 and '86?
Morris was rushing for 1,000 yards a season for 3 years back then, and White lead the team in touchdowns in '85 and tied for first in touchdowns in '86. If you were around, you'd remember the '85 team being one of the best in Michigan history at 10-1-1, the one loss being the dang 12-10 loss at Kinnick Stadium on the FG as time expired. That season had it all: an ass-kicking of MSU, a defeat of ND, a savaging of the non-conference foes South Carolina and Maryland, utter air-it-out unleash-the-Kolesar-romps of Purdue and Minnesota, a weird 3-3 draw with Illinois, an utter dismantling of Wisconsin, a classic home takedown of OSU, and the Fiesta Bowl win over Nebraska. There's some others I'm forgetting. Maybe a ho-hum defeat of Indiana. Oh and the defense was insane. Gave up like 80 points for the whole season. Harbaugh was nations's most efficient passer that year, too. Anyway. Morris and White were legends in my childhood.
Yes he should have gone right and followed 74 but.....
74 looks a little hesitant and slow, and when you're playing OSU every millisecond counts, especially when it's 4th and 1.
This replay shows an elevated view that he couldn't see. What he saw was likely 74 not far enough upfield yet and an alternate hole appearing to develop on the right.
The stalkery "finger" function to figure out where on campus other PINE users were....I loved that one....
You ever take a VHS movie over to the MLB and go watch it on the 3rd floor where they had little booths featuring TVs with built-in VCRs, and just watch in peace, no interrupting roommates, between classes? That was like 1995 Youtube.
Against reason (D line no-show, pass coverage fail, O line collapse), I am haunted by the idea that this game may actually have had an entirely different outcome if it weren't for 3 plays
1) Gentry not hanging on at 7-3
2) Punt debacle
3) Pick deep in our own territory
Game would still be a shootout, OSU still gonna get theirs, but....Momentum, confidence, stadium energy play immeasurable roles.
...you can remember the '84 season. MIchigan beat #1 Miami Hurricanes in Ann Arbor to start the season, and it was going to be a great year (although we did lose in week 2 to Washington). Then Harbaugh got hurt for the season agasint MSU. Chris Zurbrugg (sp?) was his backup and we ended up losing to Purdue and Iowa and Ohio State and also to undefeated BYU in the Holiday Bowl and went 6-6.
Anyway, you lose a key player or two, and everything can go sideways, and there's not a lot you can do about it.
Michigan is still very well coached and we may win 9 games this season.
It was going to be an off year. We all said so.
Were we going to be undefeated?
Could we have expected to lose a few?
Might one of those losses be in a rainy low scoring
affair over a bitter rival?
Take off the sackcloth and ashes and
remember that we have a lights out D.
There's no way we lose more than 3 this season.
Also, unrelated: Using /s is a sophisticated way to signal sarcasm. It doesn't defang your prose at all, and it respects the intelligence of other University of Michigan fans. Let's keep using it.
rolled away from potential sacks like a boss last year. We lost to Iowa because Whatshisface gutted us for 6yds a pop. The OT TD against OSU was ice. He was also hurt. IMO, he never looked nervous in close-ups. To me, he looked like he wanted to be there. Like he knew what he was doing. With him in charge, we were a centimeter from Final Four.
think of the pain from a different sport from a different time. It's the pain of the Steal by Bird, plus McHale's (foot-on-the-line) three, plus Vinnie and Dantley colliding. But that pain surrendered to great joy not long later.
Did the D dominate the way we all wanted it to? No. But did you see the D rise to the occasion in awesome ways throughout the game? I did. Why did we give up 400 yards to MSU? For the same reasons that a bad Michigan team went toe-to-toe with OSU in the Gardner 2pt conversion game. Any sports fan knows that this happens to the very best teams sometimes. And also that the very best teams find ways to win, week in and week out. And now we're 8-0.
Just relax, man. Everybody is going to give Michigan their all. CU is a legit team, and UCF is not bad. We utterly buried Penn State & Wisconsin's offenses, remember? Nobody likes that a Spartan ran on us. Still....still....We have the top rated D in the country, and it's not even close. We stuffed those hosers time and again when it mattered today. We went into EL, they wouldn't go away, but we still won.
He falls asleep at a red light, his passenger's already asleep, and they drift in to the pond. So it was hard to wake him up. Ever try to wake up a high-schooler to tell them class is over? Takes a few tries.
We have to keep in mind that great teams/seasons often feature weird close-calls. In 1985 we went 10-1-1 with a Fiesta Bowl win over Nebraska, and finished #2 in one of the polls. The 1 loss was to #1 Iowa on a game-ending field goal. The tie? The followingi week to Illinois, whose game-winning field goal attempt at the end of regulation hit the goal post. Final score: 3-3.
Recent Comments
My eyes were opened fully the 10-1-1 year of ‘85, when I was in the 3rd grade. You feel things deeper as a lad, before girls and music and world events figure into your life. The 12-10 Iowa loss felt like a death in the family on that late late midwestern afternoon in October. A month later, John Kolesar’s 77-yd post-pattern TD from #4 Harbaugh was one of the most glorious affirmations of a Divine Maker’s existence. The gorgeous January 1st Fiesta Bowl win over venerable Nebraska set me up to think Oh We Win Bowl Games!
What followed was 30 years of slow almost imperceptible descent from that unforgettable (I can at age 46 tell you everything about that season: the punt block TD at EL, the manhandling of the Terps and Gamecox, the bombs-away destruction of Purdue and Minnesota, Ivan Hicks, Gerald White, Messner, the Hammmersteins, Kattus, Jokich, Thomas Wilcher, the 3-3 tie - thanks crossbar! - vs Illinois…) year in terms of the attention I gave and the emotional energy I spent. By early ‘90s HS I was almost indifferent. I watched but the games’ events and scores are lost to me.
Sadly the same is true for my first two years studying at Ann Arbor. Both 8-4 years. The Biakabatuka game freshman year in ‘95 was of course legendary, for his performance, the win, the weather, the streaker, the particular moment in life….
i lived in Seville, Spain the year we went undefeated. Seemed like a neat season, but I missed it.
Senior year we were 8-4 again, or something.
Then Life began and I tuned in here and there, at home, bars, watch parties. I read the John U Bacon books, felt bad for RR, wanted to believe in Hoke…and then felt a massive swelling of interest and life and faith with the landing of childhood hero Jim Harbaugh. Trouble with the snap, the spot, another FG loss at Kinnick, Peppers out vs FSU…lots of grief amidst the resurgence. But it was a resurgence. We felt different. I was a middle aged man now but following the team felt much like it did as a kid.
Still, my 3 children had never seen a bowl game victory from Grandma and Grandfather’s basement until this year. I was afraid they were getting cynical about their dad’s Alma mater.
Now this.
This National Championship has arrived at a time of sadness for me, as I’m recently divorced, and my 90 yr old dad is in his last days. The expressions of Faith that I hear from the UM players and coaches are intriguing to me. I’d like to know more about that part of the team culture.
i may not tune in again so much for many more years. As somebody said here, this neutralizes all the bitter moments of yesteryear. There are other things to devote energies and passion to in this life. I feel a great satisfaction with it all. This team has some outstanding young men, and I’m happy that they represent my old school.
This comment right here is amazing, life-affirming, wonderful, "Hurrah for LSA Aught One-mazov!"
I didn't even come close to experiencing this, but feel now as if I had.
The cold January air slicing through your jeans as you go out the back entrance, on your way to Mason Hall, you'll see your girlfriend later that day, pick up a Gargoyle near the fishbowl....
....how do we get back there?
I'm sick of vertical aspiration. Everyone moving up, or trying to move up. Be a kickass D coordinator and build something awesome with the legend that hired you. Then maybe after 10 years and a solid reign of winning, go become a head coach.
Oh sorry man, I didn't realize you already said the very same thing!
I teach at a high school here in Austin, and I remember seeing Foles play our school one Friday night and he was a GIANT.
Westlake High School grads include Drew Brees, Nick Foles, Sam Ehlinger, and kicker Justin Tucker. This school, along with its neighbor Lake Travis High School (Garrett Wilson, Baker Mayfield, Garrett Gilbert) is a heavyweight in boys' and girls' athletics and also academics.
Baylor lost to TCU and Oklahoma State in regular season.
Oklahoma State lost to Iowa State in the regular season and then Baylor yesterday.
Who lost to SDSU?
Is Iowa the only team towards whom we have almost 100% respect? There’s little to no cursing on the boards this week, nor snark. Nebraska has Frost and his mom, MSU and OSU are obvious villains, we’ve got Frames J…but shouldn’t we have SOME edge in our take on Iowa? Bc otherwise we’re left with “please don’t fumble” and “no 2016 repeat, please.”
Our record against them in the 2000s is 6-7.
BUT….I agree that this M team is different. GO BLUE!!!
Your suggestion sounds good but suddenly I had a vivid vision of it being an INT, and this board’s collective gut tightening.
I don’t like the indoors-ness. Indoors reminds me of the Lions.
I’m also getting visions of a season-ending injury to either a star skill guy or an O-lineman.
A catastrophic sequence of kick-six plus turnover resulting in 14 point swing in 20 seconds.
Saying these things to prevent them….
GO BLUE
I love this.
Where are we (virtually) partying tonight?????
House party?
Co-op?
Mitches?
Skeeeeeeeps?
Viacount progressive?
Oh I think I get it. Maryland got “Rutgered”? Is this a long standing joke that a team that gets pounded by us (even when it’s a home game for them) must “fly back” from Rutgers? That’s funny.
Wait I was wondering about this too. Somebody’s reply to you seemed to make you remember something, but I’m still confused….Why IS Brian saying that there was a flight home for Maryland?
think AD must be under 23 years old and is very enthusiastic, somewhat green, prone to sportswriting cliches (one of his first recaps this season actually featured the expression “holes so big you could drive a Mack Truck through”) and still retains the self-referential tendencies (“your author” and his own tweets) that is fairly common among very young writers slightly dizzy with having their own columns. You’d see this at the Daily a lot. I think he’s getting better, less hackneyed, as the season progresses, and there’s no doubting that he’s True Blue. In a few years when he’s seasoned by life and has written many of these he might be at Brian level.
I
What about tailback Jamie Morris and fullback Gerald White in in '85 and '86?
Morris was rushing for 1,000 yards a season for 3 years back then, and White lead the team in touchdowns in '85 and tied for first in touchdowns in '86. If you were around, you'd remember the '85 team being one of the best in Michigan history at 10-1-1, the one loss being the dang 12-10 loss at Kinnick Stadium on the FG as time expired. That season had it all: an ass-kicking of MSU, a defeat of ND, a savaging of the non-conference foes South Carolina and Maryland, utter air-it-out unleash-the-Kolesar-romps of Purdue and Minnesota, a weird 3-3 draw with Illinois, an utter dismantling of Wisconsin, a classic home takedown of OSU, and the Fiesta Bowl win over Nebraska. There's some others I'm forgetting. Maybe a ho-hum defeat of Indiana. Oh and the defense was insane. Gave up like 80 points for the whole season. Harbaugh was nations's most efficient passer that year, too. Anyway. Morris and White were legends in my childhood.
I'm going…
That's hilarious.
I'm going to use those without your permission.
Birmingham, Michigan…
Hey J
Birmingham, Michigan.
Been living in Austin since 2002.
I'm not in the food biz, but if you ever wanna drop everything and start up a Coney Island place, let me know!
Yes he should have gone right and followed 74 but.....
74 looks a little hesitant and slow, and when you're playing OSU every millisecond counts, especially when it's 4th and 1.
This replay shows an elevated view that he couldn't see. What he saw was likely 74 not far enough upfield yet and an alternate hole appearing to develop on the right.
I feel you.
NEARLY the jubilation as Wings in '97?
I'm feeling that guarantee. It's going to be a football game.
I still think Harbaugh was talking about that moment forward, not limited to the 2nd half of PSU game. Even if he didn't know it consciously.
Wintry…
We're going to win.
Wintry Mix.
Michigan Stadium.
Generational Ohio State team.
Michigan surging.
This chapter is closed for OSU fans.
It's a party at 545 Packard tomorrow: be there.
I remember…
Quake hahahaha.
I remember guys playing that and DOOM at the South Quad basement computer center, which was a very dank space at 1am back then.
Yes we are. Always have been.
PINE email at the Fishbowl....
The stalkery "finger" function to figure out where on campus other PINE users were....I loved that one....
You ever take a VHS movie over to the MLB and go watch it on the 3rd floor where they had little booths featuring TVs with built-in VCRs, and just watch in peace, no interrupting roommates, between classes? That was like 1995 Youtube.
"Pass Her Up" sound hilarious!
Why were things funnier in the eras prior to one's own?
How did it work? A girl/woman was just grabbed and then passed up?
Sounds unsafe I suppose - as well as obnoxious/inappropriate, and probably should not be resurrected, but still....hilarious.
I think the punt block is proof that they plan all year (or at least weeks and weeks) for us.
That never happens to us.
R on the left side, G on the right.
It's pretty sweet now that I see it!
Against reason (D line no-show, pass coverage fail, O line collapse), I am haunted by the idea that this game may actually have had an entirely different outcome if it weren't for 3 plays
1) Gentry not hanging on at 7-3
2) Punt debacle
3) Pick deep in our own territory
Game would still be a shootout, OSU still gonna get theirs, but....Momentum, confidence, stadium energy play immeasurable roles.
...you can remember the '84 season. MIchigan beat #1 Miami Hurricanes in Ann Arbor to start the season, and it was going to be a great year (although we did lose in week 2 to Washington). Then Harbaugh got hurt for the season agasint MSU. Chris Zurbrugg (sp?) was his backup and we ended up losing to Purdue and Iowa and Ohio State and also to undefeated BYU in the Holiday Bowl and went 6-6.
Anyway, you lose a key player or two, and everything can go sideways, and there's not a lot you can do about it.
Michigan is still very well coached and we may win 9 games this season.
play AF?
Also, unrelated: Using /s is a sophisticated way to signal sarcasm. It doesn't defang your prose at all, and it respects the intelligence of other University of Michigan fans. Let's keep using it.
is not a word I'd apply to Speight.
"Scramble effectively"? yes
"Throw 4th down TDs in big games (todays too but for the jobbing by refs)"? yes
"Bounce back from killer mistakes?" yes
Trust in Harbaugh to get him there.
is not a word I'd apply to Speight.
"Scramble effectively"? yes
"Throw 4th down TDs in big games (todays too but for the jobbing by refs)"? yes
"Bounce back from killer mistakes?" yes
Trust in Harbaugh to get him there.
rolled away from potential sacks like a boss last year. We lost to Iowa because Whatshisface gutted us for 6yds a pop. The OT TD against OSU was ice. He was also hurt. IMO, he never looked nervous in close-ups. To me, he looked like he wanted to be there. Like he knew what he was doing. With him in charge, we were a centimeter from Final Four.
think of the pain from a different sport from a different time. It's the pain of the Steal by Bird, plus McHale's (foot-on-the-line) three, plus Vinnie and Dantley colliding. But that pain surrendered to great joy not long later.
They say you lose big, then lose close, then win close, then win big.
Wnat if this really does apply to us this year?
MSU was close loss last year. This year was close (kinda) win.
OSU was big loss.........Convince me this doesn't apply to us!
MSU went for it on 4th a ton.
Did the D dominate the way we all wanted it to? No. But did you see the D rise to the occasion in awesome ways throughout the game? I did. Why did we give up 400 yards to MSU? For the same reasons that a bad Michigan team went toe-to-toe with OSU in the Gardner 2pt conversion game. Any sports fan knows that this happens to the very best teams sometimes. And also that the very best teams find ways to win, week in and week out. And now we're 8-0.
Just relax, man. Everybody is going to give Michigan their all. CU is a legit team, and UCF is not bad. We utterly buried Penn State & Wisconsin's offenses, remember? Nobody likes that a Spartan ran on us. Still....still....We have the top rated D in the country, and it's not even close. We stuffed those hosers time and again when it mattered today. We went into EL, they wouldn't go away, but we still won.
Insta-classic post about an insta-classic game.
He falls asleep at a red light, his passenger's already asleep, and they drift in to the pond. So it was hard to wake him up. Ever try to wake up a high-schooler to tell them class is over? Takes a few tries.
Remember how the streaker struck the Desmond Heisman pose before getting tackled?
An ammmmmaaaazing day. The light snow, TimB going OFF, we wreck Buckeyes AGAIN.....everything!
That was my freshman year.......20 years ago.....dang!
Thanks for this thread!
"No, it's nothing. he was just some stupid little clown....He was....He was an idiot."
We have to keep in mind that great teams/seasons often feature weird close-calls. In 1985 we went 10-1-1 with a Fiesta Bowl win over Nebraska, and finished #2 in one of the polls. The 1 loss was to #1 Iowa on a game-ending field goal. The tie? The followingi week to Illinois, whose game-winning field goal attempt at the end of regulation hit the goal post. Final score: 3-3.
....Cottage Inn bread sticks.
....wonders why we didn't have max protect on that play, and Monica asked "who's Max Protect?"
....took a drag off my cigarette out here on the porch.
showed up with random guy.
...we're all roommates near Elbel or maybe up on Washtenaw.
Who's calling the girls?
What music are we playing?
Who's going to Blue Front and what are you buying? You need cash?