“THOSE WHO STAY WILL BE CHAMPIONS.”
Those words — the Schembechler Doctrine — were the ones that
convinced the seniors of the University of Michigan football team
to put it together again for one last title run. Just about every
fall feels as though it could be a “special” one in Ann Arbor. This
fall, more than most, as the Wolverines returned a starting senior
quarterback, running back, and left tackle, all of whom might have
eschewed millions to get two four-year old monkeys off their backs
by beating Ohio State and winning a bowl game.
Of course, things didn’t work themselves out so neatly. After
back-to-back home losses to start the season, the Michigan faithful
were beside themselves, joining Facebook groups like “Fire Lloyd
Carr” and writing to the Michigan Daily to
protest the team’s slow start and apparent mismanagement.
This year wasn’t about individuals or records, or anything
besides “the team, the team, the team.” And the team is still in
it, with a chance to win the Big Ten title, outright, and gain a
Rose Bowl berth in the process.
THE BUCKEYES HAVEN’T BEEN nearly as interesting. Save for Brian
Robiskie, none of their offensive players jump off the television
screen. No one knows whether their fabled defense could live up to
the hype against college football’s best teams, because Ohio State
didn’t bother to schedule any quality opponents this season. That
they managed to lose, at home, to unranked Illinois, might have
been the universe’s way of saying that the Buckeyes didn’t live up
to the hype.
But even before the Hiccup at the Horseshoe, there were
questions as to whether Ohio State really deserved its #1 ranking.
Given that LSU, Kansas, and Oklahoma all have conference
championship games yet to come, against opponents that are, by
definition, “quality,” there is a good chance that Ohio State
could’ve been displaced from its top spot without incurring a
single loss.
Saturday’s game (12 p.m., ABC) won’t be quite as big as last
year’s historic #1 v. #2 match-up. Even so, since 1969,
Michigan-Ohio State has been the quintessential rivalry, college
football’s equivalent of Red Sox-Yankees. Nothing in that regard
has changed. But for one man this game might be bigger than most
Big Games — it might be his last.
IT’S NOT EVERYDAY that a Michigan man distances himself from his
team’s past.
“It’s a new year, it’s a new team, and we’re not really talking
about the past or the future,” said offensive lineman Adam Kraus at
the team press conference. “It’s about this team, and we’re excited
to get out there on Saturday and play.”
Kraus’s unwillingness to speak to the uncertain future is a sign
of the times. Little has gone as expected this season. Michigan’s
early-season missteps are a matter of public
record. The story that’s gotten relatively minor press was
Michigan’s recovery, spurred by a tear through the Big Ten that
ended a week early at Camp Randall.
Clamors of “Fire Lloyd Carr” have been replaced by a “Win one
for Lloyd” sentiment that has even afflicted some former clamorers.
While the administration has been (frustratingly) steadfast in its
loyalty to Carr (who, in the wake of Bo Schembechler’s death a year
ago, is now undoubtedly the biggest light in Michigan athletics),
there is a good chance Carr could walk away on his own. Especially
if he becomes the first coach in Michigan history to go down 1-6
against his Ohio State counterpart, let alone doing so in the same
year that his #5 team lost to unranked (and unknown) Appalachian
State.
Lloyd Carr will be immortalized for bringing Michigan the
championship to match its pedigree — its first in nearly 49 years
by that point. Playing the Joshua to Bo Schembechler’s Moses, Carr
led the Wolverines to the elusive Promised Land in 1997.
But history might look back at that moment as Carr’s eventual
undoing. Expectations have remained high ever since, only growing
with each top-10 recruiting class. Fans are, perhaps unfairly, at a
loss to understand why a championship coach can’t produce the same
results again and again. As losses piled up over the years,
sometimes coming against teams that Michigan should’ve beaten,
frustration mounted — the type that never accompanied Bo
Schembechler, who never won a national championship. And so the
faithful cheer on for Coach Carr, out of respect, even as rumors
fly that Michigan alum and LSU head man Les Miles might be
persuaded to return to Ann Arbor.
But in an era in which the spread-option, the mobile
quarterback, and flat-out speed factor into college
football more than ever before, now might be the time for an
old-school coach to get going while the getting’s good. In cheering
for the Wolverines to “win one for Lloyd,” Michigan fans are
sounding a refrain familiar in times when a great man’s moment has
passed: “We hate to see you go, but we’d love to watch you
leave.”
