I don’t have to explain how I feel about the history of this rivalry and also needless to say, it is very rough for me to watch that jug head out of town. Looking through the photos, it particularly stung seeing shots with that new section of the jug. I stood inches away when Jil Gordon painted on the score last year. You might call this the dong punch de resistance: Check out the kid holding a program. Inside there is a story this week that I wrote, particularly about the different paint jobs the jug has had over the years leading off with a mention of Jil’s work (including the photo below) on the new section last year. Now that thing is hundreds of miles away and they are doing lord-knows-what to it. Punch. Read on..(1964 team, Arena, Pomp, Mood, links and more…)
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Sights & Sounds | Michigan 34, Miami 10 (2014)
Overwhelming a hapless MAC school in the second half of a game is sorta fun, but few left Michigan Stadium Saturday with a new opinion on the direction of this team. Many of the empty seats will be occupied next Saturday when Utah visits you can bet. To the Sights and Sounds: Big Jon – Always great to see Jon Falk in the house – even if it is upstairs on not on the sideline: Pomp: Several items out there Saturday: SSB? – The band celebrated the 200th year of the writing of the Star Spangled Banner. Nerd nit: And 200 years later the scoreboard doesn’t show the proper punctuation when they display the lyrics to the song. At half the band either spelled out LIBERTY or LETHARGY, it wasn’t clear from on high. Nevertheless, here’s Big house the beautiful pregame: Not from THERE. Miami band displayed a “NOT COLUMBUS” banner on the opening number before playing THE VICTORS. Pandering? Guilty. Do I Love it? Guilty. Capacity – Two minutes before kickoff, sparse in the student section and the unsold whatever-we-call-it section just north of the students: Booing – There were some loud BOOs in the 2nd quarter and the crowd was obviously frustrated. I’m not a big BOO-bird when given the opportunity, and no, I’d never boo college players. …
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Man Down in the Press Box | Brandy Does Play-by-Play (1980)
Last week we learned that the new radio broadcast team will be former U-M teammates Jim Brandstatter and Dan Dierdorf. The big news is that Brandy is shifting over a seat to do the play-by-play, with DD handling the color commentary. I confirmed with Doug Karsch that he will remain is his previous role handling the on-field duties. I kinda hope Karsch would get the nod to be in the booth (in one role or another) but it’s hard to argue with the Brandy-DD team. Heck, I didn’t even know Dierdorf was an option. You might know that Brandy stepped in to handle the radio play-by-play back in 2003 for the Northwestern game, but that’s not actually the first time he performed those duties during a Michigan football game. It turns out that was way back in 1980…on TV. Recently Steve “Dr. Sap” Sapardanis shared with me the details of Brandstatter’s first shot calling the game: In 1980, Larry Adderley and Jim Brandstatter were all set to call the Michigan-Notre Dame football game from South Bend, Indiana for a local cable TV outlet. Adderley, who had just finished 5 years as the host of Michigan Replay with coach Bo Schembechler, would unfortunately come down with laryngitis just before kickoff. He made a valiant effort to do the play-by-play, but…
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Wire Photo Wednesday | Taking a Timeout
It’s Spring Break for many here in Michigan and thus WPW takes the foot off the gas this week, featuring just one shot of General George S. Patton Schembechler: Schembechler Hall was dedicated this past weekend, and of course the centerpiece is the new Bo statue. Details on the 7 1/2 foot bronze Bo features the mandatory ‘M’ hat, sunglasses, a headset (with “BO” in Dymotape label) in his hand, and a Rose Bowl watch on his wrist. The above 35MM shot of Coach Bo looks to be in the ballpark of the era of the pose that was used for the statue, and that looks to be a Rose Bowl watch shining on his left wrist as he calls timeout. You can find that photo on eBay right now. Follow MVictors on Twitter
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Big House English Football
Dave Brandon (center) and the folks responsible for the match at midfield today It’s official – Man U and Real Madrid will play August 2, 2014 at 4pm. Sounds like the delay in getting this announced was dealing with the pitch: how to get natural grass and how to get a field of adequate dimensions for a game. More details: Beer? Yes. Liquor license request is in the State Legislature but you can book it: Guinness will pour at the Big House on August 2. Field? They will bring in large chunks of natural grass 48 hours before the game and go through a process to weave a pitch. No platform. Team Benches? Likely somewhere in the stands (see below). Walls? Width of the field will bump right up to the perimeter so they’ll be padded. God forbid Giggsy cracks his melon open on the bricks. Tickets? For Michigan donors and season ticket holders, Monday April 7. Price Range: $45 – $189. Details. Other games? Unlike the hockey events at the Big House, unfortunately they won’t have any other matches on the pitch before or after the event. How will it look? Crude mock-up and yes, liberties taken with the field logo: Will you be there? Follow MVictors on Twitter
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WPW | Jimmy Orwig’s Righteous Swig
Hump Day! Wire Photo Wednesday leads with something near and dear to my heart, the Little Brown Jug: A great shot of a few men from Bennie Oosterbaan’s 1957 roster. Left to right I believe you’ve got: Stan Noskin (QB), Dave Brown (QB), ‘57 captain Jim Orwig (LT) taking a pull, Larry Faul (LG) and Jerry Goebel (C). We don’t have a lot of information on this shot, but it looks like it appeared in the Minneapolis Star, making me think it was shot just prior to the ‘57 battle for the Jug. The caption also says that’s a replica – which is looks to be (for starter, there are no scores down the side, at least on the side we can see…). Good news – Orwig took back the real jug after Michigan’s 24-7 victory on October 26, 1957. Fritz: “..and finally, we’re getting new helmets..with yellow wings on them.” [Team breaks out in laughter]Fritz: “Trust me on this one. Wings are the future. Wings I tells ya.” So I’ve seen this shot on eBay before but never noticed the significance of the date it was taken. This is actually a pretty historically significant shot from March 28th—the start of Spring football back then. This is probably one of, if not the first, published photo with Fritz Crisler…
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The Bo Brackets
[Ed. Steve “Dr. Sap” Sapardanis at it again, just in time for March Madness. ] Ever wonder what Bo Schembechler-coached-Michigan-Football-team was the best? [Ed. Sap, of course they have!]. With March Madness all around us and brackets being filled out everywhere, I decided to draw up my own set of Bo Brackets – The Schembechler Sweet 16, if you will. I used some basic criteria to determine who would go dancing, who would stay on the sidelines and who would get the highest ranking/seed of the Schembechler-coached teams from 1969-1989. Rose Bowl and Big Ten Championships certainly helped, and the absence of either of those pretty much meant you didn’t get an invite. As a result, these teams are not included in the tourney for the following reasons: 1975 – Started Bo’s Bowl streak but did not win a Big Ten Championship & had only 8 wins. 1979 – No conference championship & poor record doom this team. 1983 – A great defense, but no Big Ten Championship means no invite. 1984 – Obvious non-qualifier with 6-6 record. 1987 – Too many losses and too many interceptions spell disaster for this team. Also note: The 1970 team was on the bubble for this tourney, but got the nod over the 1975 squad because of their better record, even though they…
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Wire Photo Wednesday | Men Amongst Boys
This week WPW takes a look at three outstanding shots, each featuring a unique perspective of three Michigan greats – Cazzie Russell, Tom Harmon and Bill Yearby: Crisler is known as the house that Cazzie built, but here’s a look at Cazzie’s original digs: Yost Arena. Dang it looks pretty cool in there and I love the angle of that photo. Memo to #41: Nice socks, Milhous. Speaking of that venue, who’d like to see a hoops game at Yost? Get on board #1000SSS. And maybe they’d even bring back the Old Man?: Speaking of cool angles, I’m not sure I can recall a old shot quite like this, here you’ve got Old 98 Tom Harmon in 1938 trotting out of the tunnel handling a pigskin. Uniform snobs will note the block M socks. I also love the cheerleader’s sweater and the shiny pants (that guy has a little Barney Fife in him). Turning to the crowd, clearly if you didn’t wear a hat (children and ladies included) to the game back then you were a square, Daddy-O. A real flat tire. What I can’t make out is what’s on the guy’s sweatshirt behind Harmon? Best guess – it either reads “Maroons” (played in the Big House 10/8/38) or “Spartans” (the season opener 10/1/38). Hmm, who do you…
