Three and Out (53 page)

*   *   *

Five minutes and two seconds. That's how long it took Denard Robinson to lead two straight touchdown drives against Bowling Green to go ahead 14–0.

“Be ready!” Van Bergen told the offense. “We're getting it back!”

They did, and they started their third possession on their own 9. No matter. Robinson took off, cutting up the left sideline by Michigan's bench. It looked like he might go all the way again, but at midfield the Falcons cut off his lane, exactly the situation the coaches had been urging Robinson to avoid: geting out-of-bounds.

But he cut back, trying to squeeze out a few more yards. At the 44-yard line they knocked him out-of-bounds, sending him to the ground. It didn't look like much, but he struggled to get up.

On the sidelines, Dave Brandon said, “He's so used to outrunning everybody, he's not good at getting out-of-bounds. Even
Bo
let the quarterbacks do that!”

The doctors and trainers set him up on the table against the wall and surrounded him with every medical professional they had, about eight in all, plus a couple coaches, the athletic director, and even a regent or two. All the king's horses and all the king's men.

In Robinson's stead, Rodriguez once again sent out not Forcier but Gardner, who needed only three plays to put Michigan up 21–0, just 10:39 into the contest. But the Falcons, playing a backup quarterback, scored twice themselves to tighten things up, 21–14, with 5 minutes left in the half.

That's when Rodriguez sent Forcier in, and a big cheer went up. For all his trials and tribulations, Forcier remained a fan favorite. “I might have gotten the biggest woodie I've had in ten months,” he cracked. He was sharp, directing the offense from their own 31 in ten plays to go ahead 28–14.

At halftime, Paul Schmidt made a rare appearance in the coaches' room. “Denard,” he said, and all heads turned to the door. “It looks like an MCL sprain, inside of his left knee. He'll be okay.” Relieved, the Wolverines came out swinging. The defense scored a safety, Mouton got an interception, and the offense burned Bowling Green for five consecutive touchdown drives, the first four by Forcier, the last by Gardner, for a very convincing 65–21 victory.

Their 721 total yards finished just 6 yards shy of the all-time Michigan record set the previous year against Delaware State. Critics could no longer say the offense was all Denard Robinson. It was the
offense
—when run right. Forcier had gone 12-for-12, setting a Michigan record.

When the Wolverines ran to the student section to lead “The Victors,” Forcier and Denard sang it side by side, “Kumbaya”-style.

At the press conference, Forcier—who had filled out the paperwork to start the transfer process just two days earlier—said all the right things. “I love everything about Michigan. I love Coach Rod.”

When he left the podium through the back hallway, he ran into Rodriguez heading toward him and returned his big hug from Thursday. Forcier showered and changed, then basked in the attention of the fans outside the tunnel, signing everything they had.

Denard, in contrast, hid in the tunnel with his high school sweetheart, Sarah Chattman, to avoid the very same crowds Forcier was delighting. Chattman wore yellow tennis shoes, blue pants, and a yellow zip-up sweatshirt, topped by a warm smile and bright eyes. If you were Denard Robinson's mother, this is the young woman you'd want showing up at the door for your son.

They met through a cousin, but she was no pushover. Before they started dating, she said, “I want to know who this ‘Shoelace' is. What's your real name?'

“I liked his personality, and his smile. And he seemed to have a plan. He wasn't just riding on his talent.”

Chattman had goals, too. She was attending Valencia Community College in Orlando, earning a 3.5 in political science, and applying to Michigan. “I've planned this out for a while.”

After Rodriguez finished signing autographs, he returned to the tunnel, where he helped smuggle Robinson and Chattman to Junior Heming way's truck. Some fans gave chase—but as usual, they couldn't catch him.

*   *   *

Rodriguez moved Sunday's offensive film session from its usual spot at 1:00 in the afternoon to 10:00 a.m. The reason had nothing to do with their upcoming game at Indiana. Rhett's second football game was scheduled for 2:00, and his dad figured this might be his only chance all season to see his son play.

After getting their work done, Rodriguez huddled in the cold with his extended family in the stands. Rhett failed to duplicate the magic of his debut, when he'd scored a touchdown on offense, defense, and special teams. He did, however, connect on all three of his passes—to the other team.

“The bad news is, I threw three interceptions,” he told his dad. “The good news is, I can clearly throw a catchable ball.” Rodriguez liked the line so much he repeated it with a few friends that week.

After the game, Rodriguez walked out to the parking lot with his arm draped around his daughter's shoulders. He had a relaxed smile few fans would recognize.

 

41   THEY LEFT US TOO MUCH TIME

On a drizzly Friday morning at Coach & Four, Jerry Erickson said the blue backers were optimistic. Even ESPN's Colin Cowherd, who had broadcast from campus that week, was giving Rodriguez credit.

“It's still scary,” the barber said. “The jury's still out.” But the jury seemed to be tilting in Rodriguez's favor. “I had dinner with [former Michigan hockey coach] Al Renfrew the other night, and he said it's only a few football alums who are down on him, and you know their names. But they're still crushing him, even now. In their eyes, he can't do anything right. That's not fair.

“But I can give him one knock,” Erickson added, echoing his more critical cousin's comments. “I cut Bo's hair way back in '69. People don't remember this, but he wasn't popular at first, either! But he got out all the time, and people liked him. We know Rich is busy—we respect that—but he needs to get his ass up here! Whoever meets him likes him.”

A few doors down, Red Stolberg had to concede, “People are a little bit more positive in this chair, but everyone reminds me that we went 4–0 last year—and look what happened!

“This is probably a turning point. Win this one, and the ol' boy's almost home. But if they lose, you better start looking over the horizon.”

*   *   *

On Friday night, October 1, 2010, in Bloomington, as they twirled footballs in their hands, watching the game on ESPN, Robinson and Gardner had arguably become the epicenter of the Michigan football universe.

What would they be if they weren't football players?

“An A student,” Gardner quipped.

That was not an idle boast. Gardner is an excellent student and so motivated that one of his professors felt compelled to tell me his comments in lecture, the best he'd heard in some time.

“I'd probably be running track or playing baseball,” Robinson said. “I love all sports. But football was always my favorite. At first I was a running back. I always wanted the ball in my hands. But quarterback is best. It's what I always wanted to play. There's no other feeling like this. The best part? That's easy: winning!”

“Best part?” Gardner said. “Playing on TV.”

“Yeah, that's cool,” Robinson said. “But I don't like being noticed.”

Right on cue, ESPN's Mark May said, “Denard Robinson is the most outstanding player in the nation.”

“Oh, jeez,” Robinson muttered.

“There you go!” Gardner gushed, bolting upright, knowing how much his roommate hated it. “Heisman hopeful Denard Robinson!”

“A month ago,” Lou Holtz said, “he was just second string!”

Robinson clapped and laughed. He had been first string since the spring game in April.

“So here we are with Heisman hopeful Denard Robinson,” Gardner said, mimicking a sportscaster. “Mr. Robinson, how is that whole not-being-noticed thing working out for you?”

They both laughed, but Robinson shook his head, chagrined.

“When I was coming out of the Academic Center last night,” Robinson said, “the autograph guys were waiting for me. They're there almost every night now, no matter how late we come out. And they all say the same thing: ‘It's for my ten-year-old son.' Their kid is
always
ten years old! Is ten the automatic age for charity?”

“Ha! No doubt!” Gardner said. “But that's the price of being the Heisman trophy favorite.”

“Aw, man! Why you always gotta bring
that
up! Now
everyone's
doing it!”

When Gardner quit laughing, he admitted, “People say I'm arrogant or aloof. No I'm not. I just don't like talking to random people. I just don't.”

“I
love
people, that ain't a problem,” Robinson said. “But it's just, like, don't be trying to act like you know me when you really don't know me. What's scary is when they know my birth date and all that.”

“Well, that's what happens when you're a Heisman hopeful!”

“Will you
stop
with that?” he said, threatening to throw the football at Gardner's head. “The other day [at Chili's] I thought the waitress was bringing my check, but she wanted my autograph.”

“Have you no shame?” Gardner asked.

“Then a lady was following us around the mall,” Robinson said, “and she said to her little daughter, ‘You better get that autograph, or I'm going to take away everything I just bought you!' This lady just really said that!”

“Have. You. No. Shame?” Gardner repeated.

“So the mall's almost off-limits. But I can still go to the library.”

“Class is fun,” Gardner said. “We're good there.”

“We don't even go out, anyway,” Robinson said. “Except to go bowling.”

Robinson had his reasons for steering clear of trouble. He'd gotten a reminder the day before, during a quarterback meeting, when his cell phone started ringing. He never picked up in meetings, but this one he had to take. It was from his twenty-two-year-old cousin, who had been a star defensive tackle at Deerfield a few years before Denard and was something of a hero to the younger man.

“They were the first Deerfield team to get ranked in the nation,” he recalled. “I was very close to him. He had a scholarship to go to Louisville.”

But after their senior season, he and a teammate decided to pull an armed robbery.

“Bad idea,” Robinson said softly. “I was very disappointed in him. And his mom took it hard. Real hard. It was hard to see that.”

On Thursday, his cousin was released. The very first call he made was to Denard.

“It was good to hear from him,” Denard said. “But it's sad, you know, to think about everything he lost. My parents call me every day just to tell me school, school, school, school. ‘They can take football away from you, but they can't take your education!'”

Gardner chuckled at the imitation. “Ohhh, yes. One
does
hear that! The hardest part about this is time management.”

“The hardest part, for me, is rest!” Robinson said. “We don't go home until nine or ten o'clock, every night, earliest. And you want to have fun sometimes, and you can't have fun. Sometimes you just give up having fun. They get mad at us at the Academic Center when we're laughing with other people, but they don't realize, it's because we're happy to see other people!
We're happy to see other people!
”

Gardner laughed at that. “Too true, too true. Other students can all do whatever they want. We actually can't. We have curfew six days a week. People think we just got it made—‘You guys get all this stuff'—but if you had to do all this, you'd give all the stuff back and pay for school yourself.”

Except they couldn't, and they wouldn't. The chance to get an education they probably couldn't pay for themselves—both were from modest homes—and to play football on the world's biggest stage was enough to keep them going.

Fourteen hours. Every day. Six days a week.

But winning helped.

*   *   *

“This week,” Rodriguez had announced to his coaches six days earlier, “we're going to use all twenty hours,” something they hadn't done since the season started, probably the only team in the country that hadn't. “This is Big Ten time. They've got to feel it's different, a different level of intensity. They've got to know we'll do whatever we've got to do to beat Indiana's ass.”

Indiana's two Big Ten titles—outright in 1945 and shared in 1967—placed them dead last in the league. The Hoosiers have finished in the Top Twenty-five just five times, most recently in 1988. But they felt they had a good chance to get it right this time—as evidenced by the 52,929 fans who filled the place, the fourth-biggest crowd in school history.

Before the game, Rodriguez seemed more anxious than usual, pacing back and forth in Indiana's tiny blood-red coaches' room. Playing had been far less stressful for him than coaching.

“Waiting's the worst, isn't it?” he said to Dave Brandon, sitting nearby.

*   *   *

With Michigan ahead 14–7, and the ball about midfield, Robinson hit Roundtree, who twirled around, made a couple cuts, followed his blocking, and dived just short of the end zone. Two plays later, on the 1-yard line, Robinson fumbled the snap, and Indiana recovered.

Indiana quarterback Ben Chappell took immediate advantage, hitting five different receivers en route to a 99-yard game-tying, spirit-sucking touchdown. The ghosts of the Illinois debacle haunted every man on Michigan's sideline. But this time neither team backed off, firing at each other all day.

The Hoosiers trailed Michigan 35–28 about halfway through the fourth quarter, when they charged 80 yards for a game-tying touchdown, leaving just 1:15.