8602230152
DETROIT FREE PRESS
861123
Sunday, November 23, 1986
STATE EDITION
1F
Photo Associated Press
MITCH ALBOM
SEE ALSO METRO FINAL EDITION
Copyright (c) 1986, Detroit Free Press
GIVE THESE MEN A ROSE
WOLVERINES GROW UP QUICKLY IN GAME OF GAMES
COLUMBUS, OHIO -- No bigger games.
No bigger moments.
This is all that matters if you wear a Wolverines or Buckeyes uniform, this
Saturday in mid-November, and now all but 66 seconds of the thing were gone,
and there were hearts all over the field, and they were pumping as if they
would burst.
"'Make it, make it," prayed the Ohio State players silently.
"Miss it, miss it . . . " countered the Michigan team.
The ball was kicked, it rose toward the uprights, and, ho, what was riding
on this thing! Just a championship, just a Rose Bowl, just a season. Just 59
minutes of a 60-minute war.
No bigger games. No bigger moments. Was there anything left to give here?
Ohio State had played brilliantly and Michigan had played brilliantly, and Jim
Harbaugh had made good on his boasts and Jim Karsatos and Cris Carter had
earned a few of their own. There comes along, every now and then, an affair
that colors your character, that ages you, leaves you somewhere new, from
which you can never return.
Here it was. The Michigan players watched that ball rise, rise, saw the
Buckeyes players raise their arms as if it were good, saw the Buckeyes fans
shake fists in the air, heard a thundering roar begin in Ohio Stadium -- and
then felt it collapse like a popped balloon.
No good. Wide left.
The Wolverines leaped into the stunned silence with more than a game, more
than a victory.
They were, suddenly, all of them, men.
You don't go through a game like this and come out anything else.
Understand that football on a college level -- at least at a place such as
Michigan -- is more than any game you might know. It is your life. And here
was a Michigan team that had cruised through the first nine games of the
season, fallen on its face last week, and was coming into the snake pit
against its arch enemy, and when the game began they looked terrible.
"Were you scared at any point during this thing?" someone asked Harbaugh
afterward. "Did you ever think you might lose it?"
"When you come up in a program like Michigan's," he said, matter-of-factly,
"you always think you're going to win."
Well, who is to argue? What was the first quarter like? It was like
stepping out your front door and having a dump truck bury you in manure. The
score was 14-3 when they broke to start the second period, and there was a
feeling the thing might be a rout.
Everywhere except the Michigan sideline.
Harbaugh threw a heart-breaking interception, killing a second-quarter
drive. "So what?" he seemed to say. He came back in the third and directed an
83-yard touchdown march on the very first series.
U-M's defense was like a lace curtain the first half. "So what?" they
seemed to say. In the fourth quarter, they held Ohio State on three straight
downs and forced them to attempt that final field goal from 45 yards.
"Weren't you scared that your team, which your quarterback 'guaranteed'
would win here, might not do it?" someone asked running Jamie Morris, who,
simply put, was the difference in this game, having gained 210 yards on 26
carries.
"Nope," he said, "Jimmy was speaking for all of us when he guaranteed the
win. All of us."
They got the win, the championship, the Rose Bowl. They got much more.
"There were a lot of people laying in the weeds all year," Harbaugh said,
"and when we lost to Minnesota last week, they said we were lucky to have had
that 9-0 record, lucky to have won 14 straight."
He set his jaw. "Lucky," he repeated.
This was the biggest victory of his life, he said. Ditto for Morris and
Andy Moeller and the rest.
This was a Michigan team that had collected money and bought their coach a
plaque for breaking Fielding Yost's victory mark at Michigan. And they had it
last week, ready for the giving, and they held it back, because they lost.
And after Saturday's win, they gave it to Schembechler. Beautiful. Here it
was, after they had given everything they had on the field for their coach,
and they gave him something else.
"I wanted this game for them," Schembechler said. You could believe him.
Let the scribes take this game and put it in its proper perspective. Let
them note that it was up to the Michigan offense to carry the team -- and
asking an offense to do that in a game like this is liking asking a bird to
carry an anvil.
And the offense came through.
Let them note that after a fumble by Thomas Wilcher with 3:17 left that
could have killed the thing -- the classic, ill- timed mistake -- the team did
not collapse. It held tough.
Let them note that in a game that featured a time-out charged to the crowd
and a 15-yard penalty charged to Schembechler, and all sorts of craziness, the
Wolverines held their heads together.
Held them high.
And won, 26-24.
In the mob scene outside the locker room, defensive lineman Mark Messner
was standing amidst his friends, this big hulking body, and his eyes were
closed in a most unusual pose.
He was sniffing a rose.
No bigger games. No bigger moments. Today they are men.
And they age going to Pasadena.
CUTLINE:
Cris Carter beats U-M's Erik Campbell, hauls in Jim Karsatos' pass for a
first-quarter TD.
U-M;COLLEGE;FOOTBALL;COLUMN