1991 indiana

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Previously: 1879, 1901, 1918, 1925, 1932, 1947, 1950, 1964, 1973, 1976, 1980, 1988, 1999

Special Guests: We've got both defensive captain/Butkus winner Erick Anderson, and 1991 scout team running back of the year Tyrone Wheatley!

1. SETUP AND PAYOFF

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Year 2 of Gary Moeller, coming off a year Iowa went to the Rose Bowl after Michigan lost to them and MSU by a point in consecutive weeks. Stadium renovated, back to grass! This one's personal.

2. THE TEAM

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Offense: Elvis Grbac is Dr. Touch. Stacked backfield; Ricky was the cutter, Jesse had the feet, Wheatley had the speed, Legette had no neck. Desmond went into the season #2 to Derrick Alexander, who got hurt and walk-on Yale Van Dyne stepped up. Big, mean, versatile OL. Ty Wheatley's recruiting story.

Defense: Mike Evans is a walk-on from Massachusetts, Lance Dottin's another big time athlete from there. Hutchinson makes everyone look good, Buster Stanley and Tony Henderson were young for NG but great. Athletes in Brian Townsend and Neil Simpson rotate with big Martin Davis. Young corners Dwayne Ware and Alfie Burch and new safeties Otis Williams and Corwin Brown replacing longtime starters. J.D. Carlson's XP streak.

3. THE NONCONFERENCE

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Slow BC start and constant big plays getting called back: no panic, just a setup for the Massachusetts guys to shine. Two big-time games: not gonna lose a 5th in a row to Notre Dame, total confidence even on the 4th and 1 call, but ND was full of talent. FSU threw out all the trick plays, including the Transcontinental, had some All-Americans, but Michigan was just as good.

4. THE BIG TEN AND ROSE BOWL

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Team finds itself, offense redesigned not just for Desmond but for scoring quickly so they don't have another FSU. Dangerous MSU and more dangerous Indiana, which needs a goal line stand (suck it Erick's brother!). Sleepy midseason—freshmen hit a wall, coaches keep them motivated for blowouts of Minnesota, Purdue, Northwestern, and Illinois. Ready for everything Ohio State had. Washington was another story—most talented team they played. Cornerbacks playing linebacker, linebacker playing end, and one of the best players of the era at DT.

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MUSIC:

• "Scenario"—A Tribe Called Quest
• "Lithium"—Nirvana
• "Breakdown"—Guns 'n Roses
• “Across 110th Street”

THE USUAL LINKS

• Helpful iTunes subscribe link
• General podcast feed link
• Download link. (right-click, download)
• What's with the theme music?

How many times have you been mistaken for Eddie Azcona, Tyrone?

[Bill Rapai]

Today in Jim Harbaugh fire quotes. Michigan's having a camp on its own campus for a change, which provides a platform for [fire emoji dot jpeg] x 7:

"In my America, you're allowed to cross the state borders," Harbaugh says. "That's the America I know."

Sounds like a man who has recently watched Hunt For Red October. Or been on a whirlwind tour of half the country. Or both.

And then there's this:

"I don't know what that means, a brand," he says, saying instead it was about "sharing a love for football."

/swoon

While I don't think that Harbaugh is quite the naïve waif he portrays himself as in that quote, an exhausted Sam Webb returned from the Summer Swarm tour reporting that 1) that was bonkers and he's not doing all of it again next year and 2) Harbaugh was rueful when it ended and wanted to do three weeks of camps next year($). It's not just about finding recruits. It is also about Sincerely Yours In Football.

He's got everyone who isn't an SEC coach on his side on this one, and it's been fun. Remember fun? Fun is good.

Speaking of. All of Jim Harbaugh's tweets can be looked at as Jim Harbaugh in a nutshell because that is what happens when you are constantly YOURSELF AT MAXIMUM VOLUME. This one may be even more definitive than most:

Day 82: Hustle! Constant Hustle! Hustling at All Times! #ExposureU pic.twitter.com/lsS4HrEq1P

— Coach Harbaugh (@CoachJim4UM) June 17, 2015

DAY 79: Still lost. Estevez feverish. Food supplies gone, eating anything vaguely caloric on the forest floor. Intestinal issues severe.

DAY 81: Estevez has died. We sit around his corpse, wondering if we will die by ignoring it… or die by consuming it.

DAY 83: Feel quite a bit better after encountering Harbaugh's Amazonian football camp. Estevez wearing jaunty hats. Does not seem particularly dead. Says he is "on that grind" far too much, though.

Site issues. Had a rough couple days there. Long story short, some search engine or someone else started loading very obscure pages deep in the site. These were so obscure that nobody had bothered loading them before. They were extraordinarily inefficient for Drupal reasons. And there were a lot of them—the "tracker" used to have 2683 pages. It now has one cached one.

I've been monitoring the logs for anything else that causes the database to fall over and die and haven't seen anything. So we should be good.

Ufer. Here is a Ufer thing from Steve Sapardanis. I put this in a draft a month ago and forgot about it, so all I know about it now is that I put "Ufer" in bold before it, so it could be about some other Ufer but probably not.

I hope that was entertaining or informative or both. I have no idea if it was.

1991 Indiana. Wolverine Historian:

Harbaugh needs an organizer. So they're hiring one:

The title: "Director of Internal Communications and Operations for the Head Football Coach."

The job, posted Tuesday on U-M's careers website, is most summarily to "assist the football coach in all areas, including day-to-day operations, communications, office management and administration."

Sounds like they're addressing a weak spot.

Etc.: Coaching lessons of the Golden Girls. James Light on another Durkin coverage, this one "Cover 1 Rat." Early signing period? Nevermind for this year.

I should have known you were temptation. [WH]

What's the first Michigan game you remember going to, or if that pre-dates memory, your earliest impressions of going to a Michigan game? And what would that kid/adult kid take away if he went to his first one this year?

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Ace: I can't talk about my first Michigan game without discussing what was scheduled to be my first Michigan game. My family moved to Michigan in 1993, and my dad, an alum, got us a pair of season tickets low in the North end zone for the 1994 season—we apparently bypassed much of the waiting list due to a clerical error. My brother and I would switch off going to games with my dad; Jack took the first game, a win over Boston College. I was crestfallen to learn a couple weeks later that my dad would be on a business trip for the next game, and my mom had zero interest in going—at six years old, I wasn't going solo. Instead of getting my first taste of the Big House, I got my first taste of the secondary ticket market when my mom drove as close to the stadium as she dared on the day of the game and sold our tickets for face value.

A few hours later, Kordell Stewart connected with Michael Westbrook, and while I had a good cry on my couch, not being at Michigan Stadium that day probably saved my budding fanhood.

For some reason (ill-timed Rec&Ed soccer game, most likely), I couldn't make the next home game, so my first game ended up being a titanic matchup between #5 Michigan and #3 Penn State. Most of what I remember of that game is everything but the actual game. Walking to the stadium, hugging my dad's hip so the the sea of people with stomachs at eye-level wouldn't whisk me away. Huddling at the main gate, wondering how all these people could possibly fit in a building that barely crested above ground level. The most memorable moment, and I'm sure I'm not alone here, was the breathtaking step through the gate and into the stadium; if you haven't been to the Big House, it's tough to describe walking through a concrete tunnel and seeing the vast majority of 105,000+ seats laid out below you, when from the outside—at that time, at least—Michigan Stadium looked downright understated.

Vague memories of going "Wheeeeeeeee!!!"

I vaguely remember Tyrone Wheatley and Ki-Jana Carter playing very well. I definitely remember my immediate fascination with Tshimanga Biakabutuka, whose name I would repeat while running through my backyard for years to come. I remember being somewhat disappointed with the loss, but not crushed, in large part because my dad let us walk on the bleachers to get back up to the gate and out of the stadium, and it felt like we were getting away with something even though half our section took the same tack. I'd say I remember the walk home, but the many walks I made with my dad to and from Stadium and Main over the years run together into a blur of walking across the railroad tracks, cutting through the athletic campus, and passing that ever-changing pizza place on Dewey and Packard.

Despite the loss, I loved it. I loved that everyone in our section seemed to know each other, and even if they didn't they sure acted like it after touchdowns. I loved the pure electricity of a hundred thousand strong singing the same song. (A song I actually knew, even!) I loved how the laws of society seemed to loosen just a bit on those fall Saturdays—crosswalks became irrelevant (at six, this was a major development), lines were navigated with little regard for who arrived before whom, and standing on the seats was encouraged, not something that would lose me dessert privileges.

I don't think much would change for me today. While the additions to the stadium take away from the "hole in the ground is far bigger than I imagined" effect while walking in, that effect is by no means gone, and both Kid Me and Adult Me would/does love the updated concourse and overall look and feel of the Big House. The walk is still the same. The song remains the same. The camaraderie and feeling of connection, while perhaps not as strong after a trying decade, is still a big part of the experience. Seeing 100+ winged helmets fly under the barrier of the M Club banner still sends chills down my spine.

Kid Me probably wouldn't pay much attention to Special K, but he'd have been fascinated by the hype videos. They should play more of those.

[After the jump: fuzziness]