Michigan’s Charles Woodson wafted the long-stemmed rose under his nose. Sniff, sniff. Woodson offered his game souvenir to be shared with all noses in the room. Sniff, sniff. The room obliged.
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“Can you smell it?” Woodson wondered. “I want to make sure everyone can smell it.”
As inevitable as Michigan beating Ohio State is the gloating that follows. To the victors go the aromas.
To these victors also goes the Rose Bowl for a change, and a chance at the national championship of college football, all deserved and all possible, the same prize that Ohio State avoided two years running (but not running well), and the prize Ohio State could not prevent Michigan from realizing this year.
The Michigan Stadium faithful threw marshmallows at the Ohio State bench, not making it clear if this was a consideration or an insult. And when sophomore Buckeyes receiver David Boston trudged back under the tunnel, marshmallows rained down on him like dandruff.
“The first time I lined up against him, I jammed him and told him he was soft,” Woodson said. You know, like a marshmallow.
Boston had observed that Ohio State should probably win by two or three touchdowns, an opinion that did not go unnoticed among the Wolverines.
“We were told (by Michigan coaches) that if we had a shot on him, to take it,” strong safety Marcus Ray said, an unfortunate admission if true.
Ray put Boston out of the game with a particularly vicious hit while Boston was in the air reaching for one of Joe Germaine’s passes.
“I tried to tackle him a little bit,” Ray confirmed.
The short form is Ohio State gets Weathers-ized, Woodson-ated, Griesed and Cooper-toned. Again.
In 10 years as Ohio State coach, John Cooper has beaten Michigan once.
“I think John Cooper is doing a tremendous job,” said Michigan coach Lloyd Carr without the least hint of sarcasm.
Carr should no more do anything to get rid of Cooper than a frequent flier should a pilot.
“We had our chances,” Cooper said. “We played an outstanding football team. I think Michigan is deserving of being the No. 1 team in the country.”
The Cooper curiosity this time was having his running quarterback, Stanley Jackson, pass the ball, most inappropriately to nearly as many Michigan players as Ohio State players, while Cooper’s passing quarterback, Germaine, spent most of the day waiting for Michigan pass rushers to be peeled off him.
Woodson had been told that, like Boston, Jackson had dissed Woodson as well. Woodson, trying to convince others than himself that he is the best player in America, could not allow Jackson to think Woodson “was good, but not that good.”
“I go out there every game trying to prove I’m the best,” Woodson said. “I don’t know how he (Jackson) can say that when they don’t trust him to play a full game.”
Half a quarterback can do as much damage as a whole one. Jackson made maybe the bravest and dumbest play any Ohio State quarterback ever made against Michigan, fighting off tacklers until he could throw the ball to Michigan cornerback Andre Weathers.
“My eyes got big, and there was the end zone,” Weathers said.
Weathers’ pass interception for a touchdown, Woodson’s punt return for a touchdown and Woodson’s 37-yard reception from Brian Griese in Michigan’s only earned drive on offense were adequate, if not spectacular, enough to win.
In this game, it is surely not how but how much. And Michigan’s early 20 was more than Ohio State’s tardy 14.
“Other football games are just neighborhood street fights,” Ray said. “This game is like a world war.”
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Anyone who fought at Bataan or Anzio may disagree.
Ray, teary-eyed and smug, donned a red windbreaker denoting Ohio State’s Rose Bowl victory last January, gift bait from a Buckeye. Ray is from Columbus.
“This was my dream,” Ray said, “the reason I came to Michigan. To go undefeated, to beat Ohio State at home and go to the Rose Bowl.”
It is reassuring to know that not everyone goes to Michigan to become a lawyer.