This site has profiled a few different Michigan championship rings that have ended up on eBay. Long time readers may recall: 1986 Rose Bowl Ring: This prompted a few follow-up posts, the first speculating on the original owner and then another, after a teammate confirmed my sleuthing. 1977 Championship Ring: Not as pretty as the others, but painful to see. 1980 Rose Bowl ring: Probably the wildest story, a ring alleged to a salesman sample bearing the name ‘McCartney’ on the side prompts a note from former Michigan and Colorado coach Bill McCartney’s wife Lyndi, asking that the ring be returned to her husband. Funny, when I was posting about these other rings it crossed my mind that this day could happen but hoped it never would. It did: Ah yes, the 1998 Rose Bowl, what a week, what a game. [Sidenote: I arrived in Los Angeles a couple of days before the game. I saw Morris Day and the Time at the House of Blues on 12/30, then I joined Run DMC at the Viper Room to ring in the New Year. I still have the T-shirt from the show, it was incredible]. As with the 1986 ring, the seller has offered a clue as to the original owner, but not much. From the auction description: “..this is a…
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Pushing the Rock
While there’s still a shot a getting to six wins and preserving two great streaks, this season is turning into an exercise of focusing on themes and trends inside games rather than the end result. A loss a Notre Dame is always tough to take and we still don’t know how good the Irish are, but I saw some good things out there Saturday. The comeback effort turned into a Sisyphean task, as a few times the Wolverines were on the brink of scoring a critical touch only to have a brutal fumble or pick wipe it all away. This game was obviously lost on the turnovers, the worst occurred before the rain came down, but that can be fixed. This offense isn’t quite ready to enough register points to overcome the kind of hole they put themselves in the first quarter, but certainly showed signs. After last week I never thought I’d say this but Threet looked sharp, didn’t he? I don’t mean sharp as in ‘much improved for a guy who’d be a third stringer on most teams’, I mean sharp as you want your quarterback to be. I haven’t seen the replay on that early screen to Minor that was dropped and picked up by the Irish- I assume that shouldn’t have been thrown but otherwise, didn’t…
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Michigan Crushes Indiana in Warm Up
BLOOMINGTON, IN What a great way to round out the season before the big one against the Buckeyes next week. Michigan crushed the Indiana Hoosiers on both sides of the ball and cruised to a 34-3 win. Next for the Blue is a mega-hyped, media-saturated week leading up the showdown in Columbus.
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Second Half Shutdown of Wildcats
Trip to Chicago topped off with another Big win EVANSTON, ILLINOIS OCTOBER 30, 2005 Despite being up 16 late in the fourth quarter, few of 10,000+ Michigan fans that attended the Northwestern game Saturday night could relax. Not after watching the fate of the previous five games being settled in the final seconds. Only when the Wildcats exhausted their timeouts and Michigan picked up a well earned first down did the maize and blue fans breathe easy. In fact, the only group that really seemed relaxed the entire game was the Michigan sideline. Sitting three rows behind the bench for this crucial 33-17 victory, one of things I took away from this was how calm, poised, methodical and perhaps unemotional the Michigan machine really is. The only real excitement out of this team was after Grant Mason’s outstanding interception late in the second quarter, and of course when the game was over. Overall, this was a much needed win and continues a stunning revival of a team that was left for dead four weeks ago. Here are the takes on this game:– Depth. Lloyd Carr consistently gets criticism for not challenging for national titles despite having highly ranked recruiting classes year after year. This is certainly a valid discussion point, but I hardly ever hear Carr praised for delivering the…
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The Road Game Blues
Wisconsin Looms; Can M Buck the trend? Wolverines Struggle in first road game each season SALINE, MICHIGAN SEPT 21, 2005 Five seasons in a row Michigan football has headed into its first game on the road undefeated with sights on another national title. 5 straight times the Wolverines have stumbled. That said, heading into the Wisconsin game, Michigan has two positive trends on its side: M has won 6 straight against the Badgers (Lloyd Carr has never lost to Barry Alvarez) and get this: the Wolverines have not lost a Big Ten opener since 1981. Unfortunately, that loss was to the Badgers. Taking it back to 1998, Michigan has actually dropped 6 of 7 road openers. Here the summary: Year Opponent Result 1998 @ Notre Dame Loss – 36-20 1999 @ Syracuse Win – 18-13 2000 @ UCLA Loss – 23-20 2001 @ Washington Loss – 23-18 2002 @ Notre Dame Loss – 25-23 2003 @ Oregon Loss – 31-27 2004 @ Notre Dame Loss – 28-20 There’s no positive spin. This is a team that has and should have national title aspirations and basically they’ve been derailed right off the bat in all of these seasons. If there’s a good side it’s that Michigan has rebounded in these years, winning Big Ten Titles in four of these seasons. The…
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Irish Expose Michigan in 2004
Notre Dame shows Michigan where it hurts SOUTH BEND, INDIANA SEPTEMBER 12, 2004 I arrived home late Saturday night, threw down my bags and dug into my pockets where I found the crumpled ticket stub. I looked at it a moment then tossed it into the trash. Another great trip to South Bend that goes unfulfilled, another Michigan loss with a team that looks as though is has more talent than the Irish but doesn’t get it done. Hmm. Even Timmy Adams (left, with throwback jersey) could help us out. So what did Michigan do well on Saturday? Tackling: I can’t recall a game where we tackled better. The Wolverines made several open field tackles on defense and on special teams. Overall I thought the defense played well – good enough to win. ND started several possessions in Michigan territory in the second half. Rivas: The Michigan place kicker got it done. What more can you ask of this guy? – he nailed 4 field goals in the game off the grass. Henne: While he didn’t do enough to move the ball, the guy showed he’s a warrior and will stand in there when it is tough. They are doing things they couldn’t do with John Navarre, things such as rolling out and throwing on the run. I think that…
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Scalping Rose Bowl tickets in the air? Weak
ABOARD NW333, DECEMBER 31, 2003 During my flight to LA, a stewardess paced slowly through the aisles with two Rose Bowl tickets in her hand. She approach my row and I heard her ask if anyone wanted tickets to the game. A lady across my row raised her hand, excited, and the stewardess brought the tickets over. I took off my headphones and asked her what the story was. She said a guy up front was selling the tickets for $200 apiece. Checking out the tickets, I could see that they are in the Michigan section and that they were bought from the ticket office for $140, just like mine. So, someone up in first class just made a cool $120. Weak.
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Comedy of Errors, Irish Stop Michigan in 2002
Comedy of Errors In South Bend, Michigan’s Sloppy play hands game to Irish SOUTH BEND, IN SEPTEMBER 15, 2002 Traveling down to South Bend is always an epic time. Brian Kunde, Ted McDowell, Kelley Kuehne and Greg Dooley stayed down at the Inn at St. Mary’s on Friday night in order to get an early start on gameday. Notre Dame defeated Michigan today in a very sloppy game. Here are some photos (all pictures by the webmaster) from campus and from the game. Now to the game: In sum, while I’ve seen Michigan play poorly in certain stretches of games, I’ve never seen the volume of big mistakes as seen on Saturday. Except for the last scoring drive, M consistently made major errors throughout the game. Fumbles, dumb penalties, dropped passes, poor passes, defensive breakdowns seemed to be the norm. It got to the point where we were just waiting for the next screw-up. Here is my breakdown: Navarre: It wasn’t his fault. As we limped out of the stadium, some old M man muttered “Navarre sucks”. Sometime he does, but he delivered the ball when he needed to. He missed many receivers and rarely put the ball exactly where he needed, but he was close enough. He stepped up in the pockets and moved the ball around as…
