Three and Out (31 page)

Martin's engine usually idles pretty low, but he got revved up for Clausen. “He better not be showing up at our place in a stretch limo with some spiked hairdo,” he said, “and expect to get out of here alive.”

“He represents pretty much everything we don't want our team to be,” Ryan Van Bergen added. “You can tell someone's behavior on film. You see him get sacked and he tosses the ball in the guy's face.

“Asshole.”

“Men, the entire country is watching us tomorrow afternoon,” Rodriguez told his team Friday night at the Campus Inn. “That's just one reason why you came here—games like this.

“Bottom line, what this game comes down to is respect.

“And isn't that what we're all fighting for right here?”

A few minutes later, in the room he shared with Martin, Van Bergen observed that the previous season Rodriguez would say, “‘We've got guys in here we
can
win with.' Now he says, ‘We've got guys who
will
win.'”

Tate Forcier shared their confidence. “They're gonna blitz a lot,” he said, studying his playbook in his room. “But as they say, ‘You live by the blitz, you die by the blitz.'”

Forcier's world had changed quite a bit since classes had started that week. “I walked into one of my lectures, the professor says my name, and eighty heads turn to look at me. It was awkward.

“If we win
this
one, you'll see a big change, a lot of guys getting on the bandwagon. And we'll get a lot more respect, nationwide, because people will start thinking Rich Rod is doing something special.”

For the upperclassmen, like walk-on turned starter Mark Moundros, there was no point pretending. “Every game is big. But this is Notre Dame. We know what we're capable of. No one came here to be in the middle. That's what Michigan is—at the top.”

The next afternoon, the crowd lining the Victors' Walk was even louder than it had been the previous week. In the coaches' room, the usual pregame silence was broken by the Central Michigan–Michigan State game on TV, which pitted Rodriguez's good friend and former assistant coach Butch Jones against the considerably less well-liked Mark Dantonio.

At the Big Ten luncheon in Chicago a month earlier, Dantonio announced to the thousand or so people in attendance that the Spartans' rallying cry that year was “Play up!”—play up, that is, to the best competition in the Big Ten, “Penn State and Ohio State,” he said, with no mention of Michigan, which he now apparently considered beneath them.

Even privately, Dantonio was prickly. At a Chicago steak house the night before that luncheon, the Wolverine contingent coincidentally got seated next to the Buckeye bunch. Jim Tressel could not have been more pleasant, and ditto actor Jamie Foxx, a true sports fan, who was sitting nearby and who engaged Rodriguez in a twenty-minute postdinner conversation. But earlier, when the Michigan folks first arrived, the Spartans brass was—amazingly—at a nearby table, and Dantonio wouldn't say two words.

On the day of the Notre Dame game, when Central scored a touchdown with thirty-two seconds left to close the gap to 26–27, the Michigan coaches had no trouble deciding which team to pull for.

“Gotta go for two!” Tony Dews said, to which new defensive coordinator Greg Robinson—the only other man in the room who'd been a head coach—quietly added, “Easy to say from here.”

Central missed the two-point conversion but executed a perfect onside kick to set up a chance for a game-winning field goal.

In the Michigan locker room, the players had taken a knee by the door and wondered what was holding up their coaches.

“All that work we did, all winter, all summer, that's money in the bank,” Brandon Graham said. “Well, this is where we
spend
all that money we saved up. Don't save a cent.” Then he added, “Damn, this is the longest five minutes of my life!”

Back in the coaches' room, they had all gathered to watch Central's field goal attempt sail just wide. Game over.

But no. The referee called the Spartans for roughing the kicker. Central's do-over went straight between the uprights to seal the 29–27 upset.

“‘Play up'?” Rodriguez asked, recalling Dantonio's rallying cry. Rodriguez stood and adjusted his cap. “Think you forgot Central, Coach!” He marched out of the room, already pumped up.

When the coaches finally emerged from their cave, they told the players, “State lost!”

There was something in the air that day.

*   *   *

When the two head coaches met at midfield before the game, the equally weary Weis shook Rodriguez's hand and said, “So, are we having fun yet?”

They both laughed, proving a maxim: Only head coaches can understand what head coaches go through.

“No kidding,” Rodriguez said. “We're the mayors of the two drama capitals of the country.”

Michigan mounted a 79-yard drive to open the scoring 7–0. After a Notre Dame field goal, Darryl Stonum caught the kickoff at the 6, then cut straight up the middle for a 94-yard return. A true gift for the Wolverines and a contrast to all the dropped kicks in South Bend a year earlier.

But Clausen engineered two touchdowns and a field goal to go ahead 20–14, outgaining Michigan 302 yards to 119.

“They're kicking the shit out of us!” Dusty Rutledge said on the sidelines. “I mean
physically.
We're working hard, but man, it's seniors versus sophomores out there.”

On the final drive of the half, however, Michigan took over at its own 30-yard line, where Forcier hit Stonum for 24 yards and Denard Robinson ran for 14. On fourth-and-11, from Notre Dame's 37, Rodriguez decided to go for it. For all the storms he'd endured over the previous two years, his confidence was clearly intact.

Forcier rolled out, found Greg Mathews, and connected for a 15-yard play down to Notre Dame's 22-yard line. Jason Olesnavage lined up for a 39-yard attempt—and hit it, making the score 20–17 at the half.

“We are in
better
condition,” Rodriguez told his team before the second half. “This is
our
half. We're gonna get the ball first, take it downfield, and
stuff
it down their throats! Every man, every play!”

“Time to beat these bastards!” Minor added.

When the third quarter ended, Michigan had a 24–20 lead, and had compiled 320 yards to Notre Dame's 329. They were battling the big boys. The team ran down the field, just like Rodriguez had been exhorting them to do for two years, but for the first time they seemed to do it with pleasure.

The Wolverines finished a 17–0 scoring streak to give them a 31–20 lead in the fourth quarter. It was time for Jimmy Clausen to show if he really was a Heisman candidate after all. He was, masterfully directing two long touchdown drives—picking on cornerback Boubacar Cissoko every chance he had—capped by a perfect Statue of Liberty play, to go ahead 34–31.

With 3:07 left, Notre Dame took over again on its own 16-yard line. Michigan's defense had to get a stop, and soon, or it would end there. Everyone on Michigan's sidelines stood up to cheer them on.

After gaining a quick first down, Weis inexplicably called for two consecutive pass plays, both incomplete, to set up a fourth-and-10. The man who once claimed his players would enjoy a “decisive schematic advantage” in every game they played was making the kinds of mistakes no self-respecting high school coach would commit.

Greg Robinson told his defense, “You guys stepped up
big-time
right there!”

Michigan got the ball back on its own 43-yard line with 2:13 left and two time-outs in its pocket. On first down, Forcier's quick toss to Greg Mathews gained 9 yards. It was especially gratifying for Rodriguez, because Mathews was one of the current players who had spoken to the media. He had been urged by Toney Clemons, who had transferred to Colorado, to join a three-way call with him and ESPN's Joe Schad. After the story broke, Mathews went directly to Rodriguez's office to confess and apologize. Rodriguez thanked him for his honesty and assured him all was forgiven.

On first-and-10 from Notre Dame's 28—within field goal range, on a good day—Forcier hit LaTerryal Savoy for 6 yards, but Savoy couldn't get out of bounds, forcing Michigan to spend its third and final time-out. Without Weis's help, that play probably would have marked the end of the game.

On the next play, Forcier scrambled back and forth with the Irish in hot pursuit. A sack that far back, with no time-outs, would either have put Michigan out of field goal range or out of time, or both. The coaches were unanimous:
“Throw it away! Throw it away!”

But the confident freshman had other ideas. He eluded the tacklers and fired the ball on the run to Savoy on the left sideline. Savoy clamped it down and got out of bounds at the 5.

“That's one of those Tate plays,” Rod Smith said, “where you say, ‘No no no no no NO!
YES!
'”

At that point, down 34–31, some coaches might have lost their nerve and taken the field goal and the momentum into overtime. But not Rodriguez. On second down, Forcier rolled to his left, saw the recently repentant Mathews running right to left along the goal line with a defender right behind him, and threw the ball exactly where it needed to be so the defender couldn't touch it but Mathews could catch it in stride. Mathews made the catch and glided into the end zone.

His teammates mobbed him, the players on the sidelines leaped for joy, and, thanks to the skyboxes going up, the crowd's cheer might just have been the loudest noise ever heard in the Big House.

Forcier had covered 57 yards in nine plays in 2:02. The spread offense at its best.

Michigan had earned the 38–34 victory—and the respect of the college football world.

The student section was a sea of arms. The players jammed “number one” fingers into the air, with Rodriguez getting mobbed in the middle of it all. When he took the Michigan job, this is surely what he had in mind.

Back in the locker room, a few dignitaries gathered to greet them, including Rick Leach, Bill Dufek, Jamie Morris, LaMarr Woodley, and George Lilja. A few other alums, however, who had been suspected of feeding the
Free Press
, also lurked in the hallways, perhaps as cover. One insider asked, “Where will
those
guys be if we start losing?”

Rodriguez led the players in singing “The Victors” before telling them, “I'm damn proud of you men.
Damn
proud. But that's just one game on the road back to redemption. So remember, stay humble, and stay hungry.”

“YES, SIR!”

“Here's a story worth writing,” Rodriguez told the press afterward. “They have four five-star players on their team, and we've got Jordan Kovacs, who joined the team when school started. He tries out with the general student body in the spring, and here he is, playing safety against Notre Dame. To me, that's something special.”

“Did you feel sorry for Charlie Weis and Notre Dame?”

Rodriguez smiled. “Do you think they'd feel sorry for us? Their linemen are so much bigger than ours, they could eat peanuts off our linemen's heads.”

He added, reflexively, “The tradition of this program cannot be beat.”

*   *   *

With the sun setting as they left the stadium, Rodriguez did not seek a bar or even a fancy Main Street restaurant, just the quiet of his home, family, and friends, a few pizzas, a couple cold ones—a Coke Zero, that is, and a bottled water—and the USC–Ohio State game on the kitchen TV. He sat watching on a stool, with a freshly socked foot on the counter.

“These two hours,” he said, “are like gold. You don't have to think about the game you just played, and you don't have to worry about the one coming up next.

“You can watch some other poor bastard be miserable.”

If the win over Western offered salvation, the upset of eighteenth-ranked Notre Dame sparked a celebration: The Wolverines were back.

The AP pollsters put them in the Top Twenty-five—just barely, at number twenty-five itself.

In his second college game, Tate Forcier created 310 yards of total offense, five touchdowns, and completed 6-for-7 passes on the final 55-yard drive. The Big Ten named him the Offensive Player of the Week.

ESPN's veteran college football writer Ivan Maisel wrote, “This was Michigan's answer to the charge that coach Rich Rodriguez wiped his feet on the 20-hour-per-week rule. This was the Wolverines' reply to former teammate Justin Boren, the offensive lineman who transferred to Ohio State, and all the other players and onlookers who believe that Rodriguez is turning Michigan into something it isn't … With a freshman quarterback too goofy to be nervous, and a few well-placed seniors throughout the lineup, Michigan stunned No. 18 Notre Dame 38–34 in one of the most exciting games ever played in one of the sport's great rivalries.”

Jamie Foxx, Rodriguez's new friend from the Chicago steak house, sent him a text via the Adidas rep: “Tell coach congrats on the win.”

 

20   COCKROACHES

The Wolverines had taken two big steps back to respectability, but they were still a young team—for the second year in a row, they had only fourteen scholarship seniors—and more prone than most to getting too high or too low. It would be too easy, Rodriguez knew, for his impressionable players to believe their clippings, get big heads, and look past their lowly cross-county competition, the Eastern Michigan Eagles, who reside just a few miles down Washtenaw Avenue but a lot farther down the rankings.
Sports Illustrated
put them at 114 out of 120 in its preseason listing.

That would be a big mistake. The Eagles had just lost a close one 27–24 at Northwestern, a team that had won four of the last twelve games against Michigan. Further, EMU was coached by Ron English, Carr's defensive coordinator in 2006 and 2007, who had applied to succeed him.