With a rosy dusk framing the San Gabriel Mountains, 29 years after the last national title won by a Big Ten team was confirmed upon the same storied sod of the Rose Bowl, a half-century beyond the last undefeated, national-championship Michigan football team, urgent flashbulbs searched for souvenirs, flickering around the great stadium like scampering Tinkerbells. Do you believe in Michigan?
Yes, Michigan.
In a game as gripping, as grinding, as full of consequence as any Rose Bowl ever, a game that needed every second to find its finish, Michigan met the world’s expectations, ditched its own bowl demons and without shame danced and hugged and wept on each other at the end.
“We don’t have to talk about what could have happened, what should have happened, only what did happen,” Heisman Trophy winner Charles Woodson said. “We won it all.”
Yes, 21-16, Michigan.
One of the happy Michigan souls, safety Marcus Ray, proclaimed this to be the greatest season any football team has ever had, and for him it will always be.
The world knows that this happens all the time to others, to Nebraska and to each of the teams in Florida, to Notre Dame and even every once in a while to a Georgia Tech or a Brigham Young.
And this time to Michigan, champions of the west and all other points of the compass, all of it earned, all the more precious for all the missed opportunities of all the time in between.
All the Bo Schembechler years, the Gary Moeller interlude, the early Lloyd Carr. All now can be forgiven.
“We’ve got something to celebrate,” Carr said. “We’ve got a lot to celebrate. For these players, it is an achievement to enjoy the rest of their lives.”
This was not just for Michigan, but also for Ohio State and for Penn State and for the odd Iowa, the rare Illinois, the infrequent Wisconsin, the very scarce Northwestern, all the Big Ten proxies who have journeyed to the Rose and to other bowls and left not with the biggest prize but without any prize at all.
“No Michigan team had won a national championship in 50 years,” quarterback Brian Griese said. “All anyone can ask for is opportunity. And this was our opportunity to make history.”
College football seldom ends without an argument, and the matter of Nebraska and Tennessee in the Orange Bowl Friday night may yet contradict what happened in the Rose Bowl Thursday, though it’s not likely.
“No matter what happens (Friday) night,” Washington State coach Mike Price said, “Michigan is No. 1.”
Whether one of those teams wins by 30 while Michigan could manage only a five-point survival of Washington State, only the cruelest and coldest conspiracy could deny Michigan its spoils.
“We played the toughest schedule in the country,” game most valuable player Griese maintained.
“We went undefeated, we won the Big Ten, we came to the Rose Bowl and beat a tough Washington State team. You tell me, what else do we have to do?”
Not a thing. Not anymore.
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“You can’t stop a great team from not excelling,” Washington State quarterback Ryan Leaf said, meaning Michigan and mixing his negatives better than his passes.
In the end, Leaf was just not enough of a great quarterback to overcome his own ordinary team. While for Michigan, it was just the opposite, a great team making an unremarkable quarterback memorable, giving him a day of days.
“I will cherish this day, this game, this team for the rest of my life,” Griese said.
Griese’s three touchdown passes all were necessary, and his responsibility for an astonishing 10 of 11 third-down conversions in the second half–and four in a row during the game-securing, nearly 7-minute drive in the fourth quarter–was worth all the dash and future of Leaf.
Leaf is expected to announce Friday that he will give up his senior year to become eligible for the NFL draft.
“I never wanted to be in the limelight,” Griese said. “I didn’t want to be the all-star quarterback. I just wanted to be a part of the team.
“I was fine being in the shadow of Ryan Leaf. I just wanted to play my game, and today my game came out on top.”
Every 50 years or so, it happens.