1/1/2024 – Michigan 27, Alabama 20 (OT) – 14-0, 9-0 Big Ten, Big Ten Champs, Rose Bowl Champs I didn't go to the 1998 Rose Bowl. I was a freshman in college, and thought I'd go to the Rose Bowl when I was a senior. Instead I watched the most important Michigan game since 1948 in my then-girlfriend's house. She chatted in a corner with a friend, not really paying attention. At one point her mom mentioned that if Washington State scored a touchdown she would win a quarter in the office squares competition. I regretted my choice then, and regret it more now. I did go to the 2004 Rose Bowl. Michigan lost that one due to a confluence of factors—there was a bizarre interception off of Braylon Edwards's foot; Pete Carrol literally refused to run the ball after halftime and was correct—but the main one was that USC was the better team. They'd snag a split national championship after the season. Michigan was good, but John Navarre was a seventh-round pick and the other guy was Matt Leinart. Lendale White, Reggie Bush, and Mike Williams were on that team. After the game when we got back to the hotel room my dad pulled out the champagne he'd hopefully bought and started drinking it, bemoaning the fact that Michigan never wins these games. I was still young enough that I didn't believe that was the case, but also drowned my sorrows. I did not go the next year, when Michigan was the first team subject to Vince Young's Epic Glow-Up, nor in 2007. Michigan lost both those games, because Michigan loses bowl games. That's just part of the deal. I went to the last two playoff games. I spent the second half of the Georgia game in a lounge, not our seats, nursing a beer. Against TCU my brain short-circuited after the Wilson overturn/Mullings fumble sequence. I guess Michigan also loses bowl games. That's just part of the deal. So, despite best efforts I'd receded into the Black Pit of Negative Expectations with four minutes and change to go. Michigan had the ball on their 25, down 20-13, having done approximately nothing with the ball since scoring a touchdown a half prior. I glowered at the scoreboard and mentally swapped around eight points in various configurations, stewing about the special teams fiascoes that had squandered a dominant first half and seemingly tanked The Year. I did not see a way out. --------------------------------------------------- Today, the day after the Rose Bowl, I was fortunate enough to go on a tour of the place. It was slightly surreal to see a phalanx of workers attempt to sweep up the leftover confetti at the same time as I was scooping up pieces and sticking them in my back pocket. Several times I thought I had acquired enough, then decided I should get some more. The Tournament of Roses could have saved themselves some dough by telling any Michigan fan still in the area that they could come get some if they wanted. Then these poor people would not have had to attempt to sweep small pieces of paper on a grass field into plastic bags. I have children, and a rug. I know their pain. To be perfectly honest, when Seth said we could go do this thing the day after the game I was willing but sort of indifferent. It is a stadium, I have been in it, I am not sure what this is supposed to do for me. But here is a thing: I believe in the Rose Bowl. This is a silly thing to believe in, because it is a football game played in a certain place on a certain day. It is sillier because college football is devolving into a dick-measuring contest between television executives at FOX and ESPN, destroying any traditions that happen to be in the wrong conference at the wrong time. At this juncture I largely disdain the bowls and their guys in pastel suits attending games for no reason. They all seem like part of the same class of parasitic grandees that sit on top of the players, denying them their share of television revenue. I think college football should dump them all out of the playoff in favor of on-campus games. At the same time I think the Rose Bowl should be the site of the national championship game every year. In part this is because the Rose Bowl has made at least some effort to not go the way the rest of college football has. The halftime show consists of the two bands. The title sponsor has to settle for "oh yeah and these guys are presenting the game." There's a statute of Keith Jackson outside the front of the stadium and he will deliver a sermon about the Rose Bowl about 30 minutes before the game on the tiny little video screens. During commercial breaks you will not be exhorted to Light A Mup. This only extends so far—before Michigan's game-tying touchdown drive ESPN went commercial-kickoff-commercial and nobody tried to stop them. This is a commercial enterprise. But the Rose Bowl matters to me in a way that is more than just a commercial enterprise. Maybe that's dumb. But it's true that I was standing in Michigan's locker room and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. --------------------------------------------------- There was a way out. Sherrone Moore, who'd rolled only snake eyes during the second half, was once again dialing up the right thing at the right time. A fourth and two conversion saw Blake Corum dart into the flat without anyone following him. QB counter bash ripped off 16 yards, and a play action pass was about to be complete down to the 15 when an Alabama player got a fingertip on McCarthy's throw. Here, the grand cavalcade of life comes to a screeching halt. Time's arrow only goes one direction but sometimes it slows its velocity drastically. This is generally because you are travelling at a high rate of speed towards utter disaster. I am mentally revising the expected path of McCarthy's pass from Roman Wilson's facemask to the outstretched arms of an Alabama safety. The Alabama safety is doing the same thing. He is leaping, reaching. He feels like Rod Moore watching a wounded duck come out of Kyle McCord's hands. This one isn't even hard—somehow the tip didn't affect the spiral one iota. He is going to win this football game. I live a lifetime in this moment. I have a PhD in Aramaic that I didn't even want by the time Roman Wilson leaves the ground and extends his arms and snatches the ball away from the Alabama safety. In my mind's eye the safety starts frantically attempting to run while airborne before holding up a sign that says NO FUNERAL and plunging off the cliff to the valley floor below. Another Alabama defender is so stunned by this turn of events that it takes him a moment for his processing to flip from "let a naysayer know, boiii" to "oh shit oh shit." Wilson turns the meteor about to end all life on this planet into first and goal from the five, and when Michigan slips him out into the flat two plays later he is so open he can sort of hop into the endzone. New ball game, and one team would have already won this game if not for a series of inexplicable special teams gaffes. It takes two Corum runs to punch it in during overtime. The second is a glorious flashback to peak Blake Corum; he's got a linebacker shooting up the gap so he explodes outside, regapping so fast you can't possibly stay with him. Karsen Barnhart somehow does the same thing, picking off the safety, and now it's just arm tackles that aren't going to get it done. Michigan holds on defense after Milroe sets them up at the nine, stoning two runs to set up third and fourteen. Bama gets back down to the three, but after several hundred timeouts everyone in the stadium knows Jalen Milroe is running the ball. He gets nothing, and Michigan streams onto the field. I am floored. It suddenly occurs to me that I have just watched Michigan beat Alabama in the Rose Bowl. I turn the words over in my head. Michigan. Beat Alabama. In The Rose Bowl. The woman next to me has been very concerned for me, probably because at every opportunity I have been sitting down and pushing my fingers into my eye sockets, and says she didn't even know who I was