The Victors: Wolverines dominate in face of chaos for national title

HOUSTON — The barrier between the really good and the really great has always seemed thin. It's not. The distance between a person's chances of realizing their dreams can seem to be measured in centimeters, and sometimes, yes, that is the exact measurement. A fingertip. A fraction of a second on a game clock. A single point on the scoreboard. But when you're forced to keep adding up those fractions and decimals and miss so many chances year after year, tiny, conciliatory results pile up to create mountains of cruelty.

Such has been the corn-cursed, blue Sisyphus life of the Michigan Wolverines. Check that out, it had been.

Monday night in Houston, when the clock at NRG Stadium hit zero in a CFP national championship victory over the Washington Huskies — a much closer game than the 34-13 score would indicate — all that pain seemed to be swept away at every moment. shot dozens of Michigan players who lay down on the field making snow angel confetti.

“That's what a Michigan man does,” coach Jim Harbaugh said after his team's 15-0, six-win season ended while he was forced to stay home for two suspensions. of three matches. “He does things right.”

The list of Gridiron’s accomplishments in Ann Arbor is astounding in every way. It was the most wins by any team in the 154-year history of college football, with the 1,004th coming Monday night. Second most weeks spent in the AP Top 25. Third all-time with 88 consensus All-Americans. Third all-time with 45 conference championships. And third all-time among current FBS schools with 10 national championships.

Yet all of this seems to come with an asterisk. Still so close to glory, but still only a few meters away. Fifty-two bowling appearances, but 29 losses. A week ago, they picked up their ninth Rose Bowl victory, second all-time, which still leaves the Wolverines three games under .500 in The Granddaddy of Them All. Even those national titles came with a dose of “Yeah, but…” as in “Yeah, but their last one was in 1997 and it was shared” or “Yeah, but their last unanimous decision was in 1948.”

Monday night, I finally hit the reset button on that eternal timer that was as big as the big house where the Wolverines play. The Blues supporters, who are no longer blue, refused to leave the stadium. A man, hanging over the front row railing, cried while wearing a 1940s leather helmet, found on the Internet and carefully hand-stitched to perfectly recreate the corn-winged lids worn by that team national of 1948.

“What these kids did this year and tonight was their accomplishment, but it was also so much bigger than that,” Michigan running backs coach Mike Hart said. It was Hart who was one of the coaches tasked with replacing Harbaugh during his first suspension in 2023. He was also the leader of one of the school's most memorable mock teams, the 2007 team which started the season ranked fifth in the country but lost to Appalachian State. ” He continued during the team's postgame celebration, motioning for all the former Wolverines players on the field to mingle with their new young saviors. “You look around us, around us right now, all these guys, like me, who have worked so hard and done so much but have been harassed for so long by what we weren't able to do. done. Now it's done. And we're all in this together.”

This same scenario of toeing the line without really getting over it has also long dogged Jim Harbaugh. As Michigan's quarterback, he was 21-3-1 behind center in his final two seasons, but was denied a national title in 1985, finishing second in the polls. Even in the NFL, he is not remembered for winning a Super Bowl, but rather for the wild Hail Mary that ended his best shot as a player in the 1995 AFC Championship and his loss in as head coach of the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII. , lost to a Baltimore Ravens team coached by his big brother, John.

“I think for Jim it's about keeping his promise when he took this job almost a decade ago, and really, when he signed to play quarterback here, so, what, 40 years ago? Jim and John's father, Jack said as he stood just off the trophy presentation stage, interrupted by a round of congratulatory hugs from countless gray-haired Michigan men, some wearing too-tight jerseys that they had probably donned during Wolverines game days. pass. The promise was to win championships. We all worked so hard to get there and so few of us got there. It's been a long time. So, this is for all of them. For all of us.”

Jack coached defensive backs under Michigan demigod Bo Schembechler for seven seasons in the 1970s. But Bo never won a game. And the teams Harbaugh helped with ended their years in pain. A streak of losses and ties against Ohio State that ruined national title attempts. Finally getting past the Buckeyes, only to lose to USC…and Washington…and USC again in the Rose Bowl. When Jack came home to his boys, he would regale them with Schembechler's pearls of wisdom, but then also had to devote another teaching moment to how to deal with the pain of losing…again.

Every player on every Michigan team since 1948 had the same story to tell. “Yeah, but…” Until Monday night.

“[Saturday] “The night before lights out, coach told us about it,” recalled running back Blake Corum, who ran for 134 yards and two touchdowns, just after accepting his game MVP honors. Corum led the charge for veteran players who didn't opt ​​out. “He opened the door to the NFL or transfer portal a year ago after a heartbreaking season at Michigan that ended with a stunning CFP semifinal loss to TCU. “He told us about what it means to be a Michigan man, about the history of this team. and our responsibility to defend this honor. That's what we always say here, and it goes back to Coach's coach. Those who remain will be champions.”

That was Schembechler's promise, made during his first spring as head coach in 1969, as veteran players, furious that Michigan had hired a Miami coach from Ohio, were rushing for the door . This team won the Big Ten and went to the Rose Bowl. Yeah, but… they lost in Pasadena.

Now the shadow hanging over this team is whether or not Harbaugh will stay. He bristled at postgame questions about the swirling rumors and reports of his return to the NFL. “I just want to enjoy this. I hope you give me that. Can a guy have that? Does it always have to be what's next, what's the future?” He also ignored mentions of his suspensions or their causes, recruiting violations and sign-stealing accusations, which are still under investigation. “As far as off-field issues go, we are innocent and we stood firm and firm because we knew we were innocent.”

A round of potentially large blue asterisks could have been affixed to the final record of this latest Michigan football team, but Monday night on the field in Houston there was no pain. No worries. No need to walk in the cold of winter to answer questions about shortages.

“People can say what they want and write what they want,” Corum continued, after receiving a freshly minted T-shirt that read: NO DOUBT ABOUT IT. “Will there always be haters? Yeah, but…we are the champions.”