During the off-season, the WLA will be recapping Michigan seasons past. These pieces will be from both the regualar writers and also from readers who submit pieces. If you have interest (particularly in the early ’90’s or earlier), feel free to send any submission to wolverineliberation@gmail.com. We have previously covered 2002 and 2005. Today, reader/commenter/friendofblog/Steeler’s fan “imafreak” brings you the 1996 season.
Clarence Williams. Need I say more? 1996 was the year Clarence Williams burst onto the pages of Wolverine football history. Good ol’ number 33.
fast Clarence Williams
Keith Jackson approved but
not famous at all
The second season of the Lloyd Carr era opened with many questions. Tailback wasn’t supposed to be one of them. Clarence Williams had been given THE TREATMENT that many of tailback royalty before him had received. He had passed upper classmen on the depth chart. He had seen time in his freshman year. As with Wheatley, Biakabatuka, and the other legends, it was Williams’ time. Besides, just as people sneer now that Michigan recruits itself, in those heady days before the fall, the chattering class agreed that Michigan’s tailback didn’t even need to be good. He would seem good because he was the starting tailback for Michigan—history, tradition, the offensive philosophy, even God would make it so. Well, I guess the MICHIGAN MAN pantheon didn’t accept Williams, thereby denying the necessary mana to run rough shod over the Big Ten or even hold tight to the starting job. In the biggest game of the year, his backup, Chris Howard, took up the banner and led the 1996 team to one of their few remaining birth rights—beating Ohio State. But let us not wish our lives away by rushing ahead.
Wise grasshopper say
If two starting quarterbacks
Then no quarterbacks
The Michigan running game needed to be good in 1996. Not solely because Lloyd Carr (still glistening with Bo’s afterbirth) was the head coach, or this was Michigan, or Mike Debord was the offensive coordinator but because Michigan had no quarterback. In 1995 freshman Scott Dreisbach had won the job. The only thing anyone remembers about the QB in 1995 was the 4th quarter of the Virginia game. Otherwise, someone had to be handing it to Biakabatuka. In short, they sucked. Dreisbach was largely ineffective and then got hurt (hooray, because you just know the backup is much better.) Walk on Brian Griese got the nod over coach’s son Jason Carr. He sucked too. Both returned in 1996 to the kind QB controversy you don’t want to have. The Griese/Dreisbach controversy was not like the Brady/Henson controversy where there just wasn’t drives to go around. Neither was particularly effective but one had to play. Dreisbach was anointed the starter and held the job for most of the season. Going into the second half of the OSU game Griese’s playing time had been very limited. As is well known, Griese, controversially, won the starting QB job in 1997 (and did pretty good.) Then in 1998 it was Dreisbach’s job to lose and lose it he did—to Tom Brady—who according to internet legend would, in turn, lose the starting job to Drew Henson his senior year.
Michigan began the season ranked #12, largely on reputation, because with the question marks at tailback and QB and “the best offensive player” on defense, expectations were low. The best offensive player was probably Tuman or Streets but the buzz was super sophomore, Charles Woodson was going to play both sides of the ball.
Charles Woodson enters
Wonder who would get the ball?
It works every time
The big, early game was the trip to Colorado which was billed as Hail Mary part 2 or some stupid crap. I circled that game on my calendar at approximately 3:30 PM on September 24th, 1994. The rematch was a mixed blessing because it gave everyone an excuse to run Kordell’s Hail Mary over and over again, all over again. Michigan triumphed over the Coy Detmer led Buffalo’s. Fortunately, Rae Caruth managed not to murder anyone and had no reason to hide in the trunk of a car. As a result, this was one of the very few seasons of the Carr era that Michigan won their first road game and survived the non-conference schedule unscathed. An UNACCEPTABLE amount of bandwidth would be wasted regarding that peculiar combination of stats over the years.
Michigan promptly took care of that by coughing up a 16 point 4th quarter lead and losing at Northwestern. Any good internet whiner would tell you it wasn’t the first road game that Carr always lost, but the first conference road game. Northwestern has been hapless before and has since returned to mediocrity. However, in 1995 and 1996 they won back to back Big Ten titles and I hated them more than Michigan State. The ridiculous ways they beat Michigan in those two seasons made me want to shove my head through a wall.
Season highlights included a classic and immensely entertaining romp over Saban’s Spartans. Schultz just kept throwing picks and Michigan improbably just kept scoring. With 30 seconds left in the half the Spartans were driving until Schultz threw one of 6 Spartan INTs. Michigan immediately capitalized with a TD. The Spartans fumbled the ensuing kickoff and then…
no time left ‘til half
D-back at wide receiver?
“Sparty, no” game over.
Then inconsistency, the great bugaboo of Michigan (college) football (everyone-even USC), struck (it happens to everyone. It’s not you, it’s me. I drank too much.)! Michigan dropped back to back games at Purdue by the hideous score of 3-9 (looks more like a record than a score amirite Dantonio?) and against Penn State. That later game being the last loss to the Nits before “LOLZ 9 in a row” drove Penn State internet fans everywhere insane.
Michigan traveled to Columbus on a two game losing streak to face the heavily favored Buckeyes. In order to capture the majesty of THE GAME, I will revert to satirical, melodrama voice. Please pretend to hear the following words narrated by that dude from NFL films (you know, frozen tundra this, Steel Curtain that.)
John Cooper had a two headed monster 1996. Stanley Jackson was the gritty leader (this was before one glorious moment of too much grittiness swallowed his entire career.) Joe Germaine was the soulless technician. They had chewed through their schedule scoring 42 points a game–scored in the 70s twice and won every game but one by double digits. Just as in 1995, they needed one last win to pop the cork on undefeated regular season. But John Cooper knew what waited for him at the curtain call. Just as the ‘rider on a pale horse’ waits for every man at the end of his days, Michigan would come for John Cooper at the end of the 1996 season. Michigan limped into the hostile confines of the Horseshoe, a deeply wounded team—a stifling defense shackled to an offense lacking identity or even a fixed two deep. None of it mattered, because John Cooper knew there was nowhere from the Grim Reaper in maize and blue.
On that steel grey autumn afternoon, the stadium of red necks and truck drivers howled franticly, in their terrified drunken stupor (no parking structure or cooler would remain “unanointed” on this day), as the Scarlet and Grey dominated the first half but came away leading only 9-0. As ever, Carr was content to bide his time–stoically waiting for the moment when the waning light of day would glint briefly off his shiv as he sheathed it in his foe’s steaming innards.
Griese for Dreisbach
Then, fallen Springs; streaking Streets
And Columbus burn’d
In those, more hospitable days, Carr’s moment always came. The world was always set right when, no longer burdened by aspirations of national glory, MICHIGAN MEN claimed their birth right, earned through honor, tradition, and integrity, by defeating Woody’s Warriors. In the youngest moments of the second half, when the pixie dust of “adjustments” tells most true, fate struck. Carr lifted his ineffective signal caller (we learned, but only later, due to injury) for young Brian Griese. On his first pass of the battle, Griese found Tai Streets on a routine slant. As Michgan fans have learned in these darker times, there is no routine slant. But in the days of yore it was always the other team’s corner back that slipped. The other guy’s safety caught visiting Sweet Stevie Brown in O’fuckland. As soon as Streets caught the ball the future snapped into focus with bone jarring clarity. As always, Keith Jackson said it best, “Streets wide open and he’s gone.”
Fate caught John Cooper
outcome clear, details remain
the leader but lost
Did John Cooper recognize his doom or by his recognition seal his fate?
Is our destiny ever really in doubt or is it, rather hewn into the walls of the mead halls of Valhalla with the chisel of integrity at our birth? Each man must live out the moments of his life, just as John Cooper had to play out the rest of the game that November day—when the sun no longer shined Ohio. Every molecule of every mullet and buckstache in the ‘shoe knew how this must end. The details bear a bard’s retelling, however, because these were the days of myth when heroes walked the earth amongst mortals. Some hallowed Saturdays those heroes were the great Knights of renown like Chaz Woodson who played enough offense, defense, and special teams to propel Michigan into eternity or Tshimanga Biakabutuka who dreamed a number never imagined and then tattooed “313” on the tomb stone of Ohio. But in this year, a hero sprung from the ground like a warrior from a dragon’s tooth. Chris Howard gained 85 of his game high rushing yards in the second half. A churning sea of muscle, Howard emptied both chambers into the soft Buckeye underbelly, leaving no doubt who wanted it more. His mighty heart, if only for this one day, pumped the blood that gushed through the Michigan offensive machine.
Michigan ground out a FG to go with the game’s only TD. Then half way through the 4th quarter Lloyd Carr’s team delivered that which abandoned the legendary coach in his later years. The never subtle jack boot to the neck–the game kill drive. Michigan with an eye towards destiny up 10-7, under a Chris Howard cloud of dust, crushed the life from John Cooper’s body.
When Joe Germaine next took the field of battle, he needed a TD and there were only 79 ticks before the blackness fell . In Carr’s younger days, before an ungrateful world weighed so heavily on him, there was no Vince Young and his moonwalking dance partner, Patrick Massey, no Troy Smith’s head to tempt Shawn Crable, no off tackle Gary Russell to ruin an autumn day, and Jim Herman was on the cusp of the type of genius that often accompanies idiocy.
no hero for you
Oedipus, King Lear, Macbeth
John Cooper you fucked
Markus Ray (his misspelling not mine), the fortunate recipient of the inevitable game ending INT, commented after that he would much rather beat OSU and have them go the Rose Bowl than lose to OSU but go to the Rose Bowl himself. It is an eternal question that each MICHIGAN MAN must ask himself. One may wonder how Chad Henne or Mike Hart would answer.
Michigan went on to lose the Outback Bowl to Alabama–the stifling defense once again left hanging by the offense. It would be the only game in 1997, the year Woodson stole half the football field, Michigan would lose.
Coach’s take:
Beat OSU GOOD
not WIN a CHAMPIONSHIP
I cannot SUPPORT
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