Your Weird Connections to Players: A Little Levity During a Tumultuous Week

Lived in Colorado/Denver with my wife before moving back to GR. One of her best friend's boyfriend (now fiancé) is Drake Nugent's brother. Not gonna lie - he was kinda weird, slightly full of himself, and wayyy too much into frosé.

But Drake seems cool, I guess?

My daughter's boyfriend's dad was Jake Moody's kicking coach in high school.  That's all I got.

Oh I forgot about running the naked mile next to Jon Runyan.

i spent my junior year in high school (i was listed at 5'-9", 145 pounds) getting absolutely pummeled by one mike reinhold, a senior who would go on to play inside linebacker / noseguard from 1982 to 1986.  i think he was in harbaugh's wedding.

Not that weird, but I went to DCDS with Rick Sutkiewicz.  

One hell of a soccer player; got a scholarship to play on the UM football team.  Those who attended games when our beloved coach was the QB may remember Rick as the bare-footed kicker during kickoffs ('85 and '86 I think?)

Not sure Michigan has had a bare-footed kicker since.

During his Heisman season, Desmond Howard was my work partner in a Newswriting class (Comm-290). We'd get assignments to go interview students on the Diag about their opinions on the Greek system, or something like that. He'd barely get a word out before people mobbed him (in a friendly way), shaking his hand, asking for autographs. It was very hard for us to get those assignments done.

That said, he was an extremely diligent student and an ultra nice and thoughtful guy. It was pretty incredible to see the semester unfold for him week by week, and his unbelievable humility throughout. Thrilled he's had such a great broadcasting career, following football. 

My son is named Desmond. Not purely for Desmond Howard, also Tutu, Dekker, Richardson, etc. But hope the two of them get to meet one day...

I met Jake Long once. Craziest thing was that he looked like a normal human just scaled up to a tremendous size. Like the forced perspective of Gandalf in LOTR. 

My sister worked at a ropes course thing the University ran, spent a day with the team including Devin Gardner, who she likes a lot. Said the best part was watching the guys who clearly hadn’t been around nature a lot fascinated by butterflies and such. 

My son, then 11 or 12, played paintball with Vincent Smith. I also had a few classes with Jim Harbaugh and he lived down the street from me back in the day. 

Graduated in 2012. My family came up for my graduation, we all celebrated, and the last night we were in town we went out to Connor O'Neill's. Mike Martin happened to be there as well. I was a little more "lubricated" that night than I normally am, because normally I'd be way too nervous to ever talk to a guy of his stature. Don't want to look like I'm bothering him, but I probably talked to him for 20-30 seconds congratulating him on a great season, so happy he got to beat OSU, and that I couldn't wait to see where he ended up in the NFL. 

Two things happened from there. 

1) He gave me a high five after we finished that conversation. Holy...shit that high five hurt. I still somehow managed to underestimate how strong he was. 

2) I later went to the bathroom and he was chatting it up with some girl in the hallway on the way to the men's room. Not sure if that was his girlfriend, current wife or whoever, but he definitely smacked my ass on the way to the men's room. I turned back to look at him and he definitely made no inclination that it WASN'T him who did it.

I had a picture that he and I took after our convo. Don't have it anymore, that was probably 7-8 phones ago and before I switched to an iPhone, so no, I don't have proof. Not sure if this falls under the "Cool Story, bro" category, but I will take it with me to the grave that this happened. And I think it was awesome. 

Only other story that I can think of is that we ran into Matt Wile's parents at the Marriott team hotel for the Sugar Bowl in 2012. Really nice couple. 

We partied in South Quad with Derrick Alexander the night after the FSU wipeout.
 

Pretty good party. DA got a huge cheer when he entered the room.

Acquaintance level(ish):

1) When I was an undergrad, I tutored athletes for Chem, Bio, and Biochem in the S.Ross building. I didn’t tutor Marques Slocum, but my girlfriend at the time did. That guy had JOKES and lived life like it were a dance floor.

2) One of my good friends had a best friend who was a football walk-on under Lloyd. The summer of ‘03, he was so damn sure that Matt Gutierrez was about to announce himself in a major way. Honestly, I still believe him.

Passer-by level:

I have a photo from my bachelor party weekend in 2016 with a buddy of mine plus Jake Butt and Ben Gedeon. We were doing that nostalgic thing where you get a bit tipsy and leave the bars to stroll the old neighborhood, and I saw them at Sgt. Pepper’s General. They agreed to the picture for the big weekend but it was all basically that brief.

My son bought a used iPhone from someone online and it turned out to be Khalid Hill. Some time later, we were at a game (I think it was homecoming) and my son spotted Khalid walking down the aisle next to us. He went down and introduced himself to Khalid as the kid who had bought his phone; Khalid was very friendly and took a picture with him, which I have a copy of somewhere.

I was installing a very small data network for a somewhat specialized Pet Food company in San Diego a bunch of years ago.  I met the owner and I can't remember if he had one of those name placards on his desk or if he just introduced himself.  He was Hayden Epstein.  It was pretty immediate that I was like - there can't be too many Hayden Epsteins in this world.  Yeah it was him.  Nice dood.  Chatted for a bit.  Had a bunch of Mich memorabila in his office.

My neighbor across the street noticed I had a bunch of M gear on one day (which is typical).  Her son and Matt Wile played soccer together.  Another San Diego kid.  Never met Matt but knew her son who's maybe 25yrs younger than me. 

According to my brother Jim Harbaugh - yeah that guy - hit on my brothers wife-to-be way back in the day when they were both still in college and working at some AA steak house.  Harbs was in the NFL (and married) but was back for some alum thing most likely. 

That's the best I got. 

I played a lot of pickup basketball with Dave Brandt. Also my in laws lived a few doors down from David Harris’s Michigan residence.

Another one: my daughter took hitting lessons from Aidan Falk, Mich softball 2015-2018. 

Last year on Black Friday I was at the Buffalo Trace distillery in Lexington, KY waiting in line for a Blanton's bottle release. Was wearing a Michigan cap and the guy in front of me turned out to be Garrett Rivas's best friend and we ended up facetiming Garrett for a bit (the guy called him, I didn't ask)  while in line. 

My brother's freshman year girlfriend lived with a woman who was casually seeing Steve Threet. Apparently Mr. Threet was very easy to startle: all it took was entering the room to spook him.

Fellow person who had her teach my gym class. Lovely lady, she liked me because I actually gave effort during the 15 minute run or whatever it was. As a result, me and my friends who played hockey got her to extend the floor hockey unit quite a bit longer than planned, much to our classmates disappointment. 

Also had a friend who had her in another hour who she didn't like, we asked him how that's possible, because she was pretty easy going. It was because he found a work around to mat ball (kickball but multiple people could be on each base, and you could choose to run back to first once you made it home if you could arrive safely). So one time there's only one kid left at the plate and nobody in the dugout. So he walked the kid, and the penalty for not having anyone up to kick was an out. He also might have told her Drew sucked (he was an MSU fan). 

Kris Jenkins grandfather was one of my middle school teachers.

Jamar Adams used to volunteer a bit at a youth group I was a part of. Class act guy.  

I was a victim of theft of Boubacar Cissoko. 

Weird connections? I guess that's subjective. Hmm. Well my gf went to high school with Jake Long and we played some random backyard football before he bulked up. By the time he arrived on campus i didn't recognize him at first, so i thought that was weird. The rest are pretty normal. 

Was able to play 2 on 2 basketball during orientation with Madison Ristovski (women's basketball) and two of the incoming football players. I just happened to be sitting at the table at lunch when they sat down, and the two were saying they should play sometime that week. She looked at me and to my surprise asked if I wanted to join. Took her up on the offer since I played, but was nothing special in high school. Passed to Madison to start the game, she scored. Then I figured it was my chance to let it fly because I wasn't going to be much of a help on defense... So this was the only way I wasn't going to be a simple bystander. Hit the three as the football guy sagged off me, and that was the last time I was able to get a shot off and we lost 11-5. 

I was Jon Runyan (Sr)'s English teacher during his senior year of HS at Carman-Ainsworth

Me and a friend met Woodson night of my bachelor party.  2008, we were at Connor O'Neills and alumni of the football team had a charity golf outing that day in the party room next to the main bar.  No security, so we walked in (saw Steve Hutchinson and Brian Griese right away too).  Just stood there fan watching for a while and in walked Charles.  My buddy says we have to go say hello.  So we do and he actually engaged with us for a bit.  I told him two of my greatest fan stories are 1) his interception against MSU and 2) his return against OSU.  But for 2), I told him it wasn't just the kick, but that he went to do the Heisman pose but someone jumped on his back.  At that, he pauses and grabs a person from nearby.  He points at me and tells this other guy "This kids mad at you."  "why?" says the other.  Woodson: "You jumped on my back and kept me from doing the Heisman."  Other guy: "dawwww" (in a Will Smith style).  Woodson tells us that was his roommate who jumped on his back.

Cool story bro, I know, but there's a reason Woodson will be forever my favorite Wolverine.

I dated a girl in college who dated Scott Driesbach when she was in high school.  

One year in undergrad I had two psych classes (100-level, 300-level).

The first had a bunch of football players. Some wound up being starters a few years later, but no big names. Lance Dottin (who, unless he was blowing smoke, was the third-leading all-time scorer in basketball at his high school behind Patrick Ewing and Rumeal Robinson) was one of them. There were several other varsity athletes in the class, including Sean Higgins. Everyone was pretty good-natured. I noticed that the football attendance was better than the basketball attendance!

Mark Messner and the hockey player Myles O'Connor were in the 300-level class. They seemed like good guys and participated fully in the class.

Dhani Jones was my freshman year bio lab partner.  Smart dude and down to earth.  We both lived in East Quad, so we'd meet a bunch to study and walk to class.

EDIT: Many years ago, when I lived in Saginaw in the late 80s, I went to catholic school with Shawn Thompson (late 90s TE).  We weren't super close, but were friends kinda. I moved away from Saginaw in the early 90s, then ran into him at Rick's when he was a freshman.  That kid bulked up (and I'm sure it wasn't natural).

My best friend's brother is Adam Patterson, DL during the RR years. 

My second cousin is Spencer Brown, yes that Spencer Brown.

His younger brother is a S at NIU. YES that safety, however he was a freshman when he had a rough game vs Michigan and he bounced back to make All Conference.

I wen to high school with Chris Perry. 

I worked with a girl for about 2 years, and while I obviously recognized her last name because of the Wolverines, I had no Idea that entire time she was married to Brian Greise's brother. 

My first gf in college is Blake Corum's first cousin. 

When I lived in A2 after graduation, I played on D-league teams at the Cube.  I remember Doug Karsch skated on an opposing team when he was at WTKA.  Antoine Pitts too.

During that time both of them might have also been in one of Steve Knuble's hockey skills clinics along with me.

Anyway... which leads to the player connection --- during the 2004-05 NHL lockout, Mike Knuble came back to A2 and one night was out on the ice with us demonstrating actual NHL skills.  It was amazing to see NHL-level slapshots from that perspective.

Butch Woolfolk's family lived up the street from mine in suburban NJ during his time playing for the Wolverines in the late 70s / early 80s.  My dad was pretty friendly with Butch's step-dad (acquaintances through community musicals). They moved away not long after he went pro.  

But before that, I had one or two occasions to catch football with Butch, remember another local kid who painted / taped up his own winged helmet and, of course, that's how I caught the bug for all things "Blue", which was a not small reason I ended up applying and matriculating.  

Always wonder if Bo Schembechler was on my street for a recruiting visit at some point.  Imagine him floating down the street in the same land barge of a car that he drove to the Michigan - Ohio border in that old 10-years War VHS I once had. 

13 years of working in the suites I've had a few interactions with former Michigan athletes...

Gary Moeller hung out in the Alro steel suite for every game in 2010, had to remind him where the bathroom was 3 times during one game. Also in 2010 I got to show Mr Glick a picture of the lights turned on early in the morning, he wanted to see how they looked. 

Met Juwan during the 2019 international soccer game... him Saddi and Jace all showed up to one of the suites late. Pretty sure it was Jace's quasi recruiting visit.

Braylon is always tooling around on the 5th floor bouncing in and out of suites. Nice guy but is still full of himself. 

First game of the season this year Brandon Naurato was in one of my suites. Super nice guy. 

I had friends who grew up going to school with Jake Long. I live in Virginia, and Blake Corum is from Virginia, so, you know, we're basically best friends.

Worked with Donovan Warren’s girlfriend (at the time).

Apparently Ryan Mallett was a douchebag even by frat boy standards 

Played against Chris Graham in HS (M linebacker 2003-2007). He was unblockable in HS due to his size, strength, and speed, so it was a little shocking that when he came to UM he looked a little slow out there.