The maize-and-blue faithful here in Tree Town and around the world are emerging from this January in an unfamiliar position. Instead of losing their bowl game at the start of the month, tucking tail, and saying “wait till next year”, they find their team is a National Champion, first time in 27 years, the twelfth time all told for a Wolverines team over their 144 seasons. 9th year coach Jimmy Harbaugh – All American quarterback hero and Bo Schembechler protégée returned home to restore Michigan Football’s faded glory – and did just that, fielding a team that ground all 15 opponents into paste, including hated rival Ohio State for the 3rd straight year. He wasn’t on the sidelines for 6 of those contests, but that’s another story. His team not only beat other teams, they blew up whole programs. Legendary Nick Saban retired unexpectedly after his ‘Tide fell in the Rose Bowl. The coach of the championship opponent Huskies, former Hoosier Kalen DeBoer, split after only 2 seasons to take the Alabama job vacated by Saban. Ohio State’s Ryan Day, whom Harbaugh said “found himself on 3rd base and thought he’d hit a triple”, not only finds himself on the hottest seat in college football, at a school where any season in which you don’t beat Michigan is a failure. Ryan’s got himself a triple there, with three straight losses to that team up north. Meanwhile, funds from all Buckeye supporters are pouring in, working on their second multiple of $10 million, for NIL monies to lure prospects from the transfer portal. To think this school got in trouble for players trading the “gold pants” trinkets they got for beating Michigan for tattoos. When Ryan thinks of his predecessor Jim Tressell, I’m sure he thinks “amateur”.
All that was missing for Michigan was hearing the lamentations of their opponents’ women. But Jimmy is nothing if not an interesting character. He and AD Warde Manuel had been dancing over a new contract since before the end of the regular season. It would have made sense to give him everything he wanted, letting him ride triumphant into the post-season with a symbol of the U’s love for him. Instead, Jimmy was left to start his annual dance, 3rd year running, with the NFL. He’d been a successful pro coach with the Niners, leading them to 3 division championships and one Super Bowl, where he famously lost to his brother John’s Ravens in Super Bowl XLVII (2013) 31-34. Things went horribly south the next season with the Niners management, and he was ready to be lured to greener pastures in Ann Arbor, an orchestrated seduction chronicled in John U. Bacon’s book Overtime: Jim Harbaugh and the Michigan Wolverines at the Crossroads of College Football (1).
So, after that natty, Jimmy continued to provide us drama. His speech to the adoring throngs at Crisler celebrating that championship showed a heartfelt Michigan Man, through and through, quoting from Fielding Yost, Bo, his dad, James Earl Jones, and Shakespeare (2). This did not appear to be a man who was going anywhere. But the dance continued, Jimmy interviewing not only with the Chargers (where he played 1999-2000) but also with the Falcons. When the Chargers finally made an offer, 15 days after the National Championship game, UofM AD Warde Manuel finally relinquished and included a clause in Jim’s proposed contract that he would not be fired for any NCAA sanctions levied – something Jim’s lawyers had been asking for since negotiations had started the previous year. The potential NCAA sanctions had been a double piece of BS since the get go, the first for supposed “recruiting violations” during COVID and the second for “sign stealing”, based on a cell phone-based piece of espionage orchestrated by an overzealous graduate assistant. They made Jim sit out 6 of his team’s 12 regular season games. So, when LA agreed to Jim’s $1.5 million buyout – coy on other numbers of his 5-year contract except to say he’ll make more than his brother John with the Ravens ($12 mill/per) – Jim was gone.
The Michigan faithful were comforted by Warde’s quick appointment as HC of 37-year-old offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Sherrone Moore, once an offensive tackle for Bob Stoops at Oklahoma. Sherrone had been on staff for 5 years, starting as tight ends coach and responsible for the entire O-line the last three years. In the first two years, his line won the Joe Moore award as best offensive line in all of college football. This past season, his first as sole coordinator of the offense, his team put up 30 or more points in all but three games, playing the smash mouth style Jimmy loves, with just enough zings from the great JJ McCarthy to his talented receivers to keep things interesting. They ate lots of clock and kept the defense rested. I’m sure Bo looked down and smiled. Public Sherrone was a joy, passionate, emotional, and all Michigan.
However we got this future superstar coach to Michigan is the basis of the little tidbit I want to share, which inspired this blog. But to appreciate it, you need a little background, especially you’re not from the state of Michigan.
You see, in this state with many public and private institutions of higher learning, there are only two that play big-time football: Michigan and Michigan State. The two schools have been playing each other since 1898, when a contest between the two undefeated schools on Michigan’s home turf of Ferry Field left Michigan victorious, winning all the rest of its games to claim their first National Championship. MSU was MAC then (Michigan Agricultural College) and were the Aggies, not the Spartans. That new nickname, acquired in 1925 – same year MAC became MSC – may have slowed the farmer jokes from Michigan fans, but certainly hasn’t stopped them! Meetings were irregular until MSC was admitted to the Big 10 in 1950, replacing the University of Chicago, which had deemphasized football a decade earlier, greatly reducing the Big 10’s output of Nobel laureates. The state made MSC a university in 1955, their centennial year, and “Michigan State University” was adopted in 1964.
Regardless of institutional names, whenever green meets blue on the gridiron, it’s an epic struggle. Books have been written on the rivalry (3,4), as well as a very good Wikipedia page (5). It’s hard to appreciate the atmosphere of game week unless you live around here. It’s nonstop hype, everybody’s flying and wearing their colors, and jabs to those on the other side. The many “mixed marriages” test their bonds. But the underlying current is always good natured and well humored. Sure, past games have had stings for both sides, and they are not forgotten, but it’s never the source of bitterness or rancor. The game is played, one side gets bragging rights for a year, and we move on.
So, imagine my surprise when I discovered this tidbit as I looked into Sherrone’s background. Here goes. We owe his presence on the Michigan staff to a former Spartoon. Sherrone’s previous post was at Central Michigan, where he coached tight ends. His head coach was Dan Enos, MSU QB 1986-1990, under George Perles. He started his last two years and did pretty well, even beating Michigan in 1990 (the controversial game where obvious interference on Desmond Howard that thwarted a 2-point conversion wasn’t called). After Dan was canned by the Chips in 2017, Jimmy hired him on to be wide receivers’ coach. He brought Sherrone with him. Dan was hired away to Alabama by Nick Saban 6 weeks later, but Sherrone stuck around, fortunately. So, thank U, MSU! “Go right thru…”(6).
I’d be remiss if I didn’t confess my own Spartoon near miss. My adoptive father only managed Haney’s Business School, but was a lifelong fan of the Wolverines, indoctrinating me early so there was never any question where I’d go. Only when I met my birth family around 15 years ago did I realize how different it all might have been. Mom had a year in at Wayne State till she got pregnant with me, but all her other living kids have at least one MSU degree, with my sister Di still a volunteer coach for their women’s rowing team. My birth dad not only went to MSC, he played football there, spending a year as a linebacker under legendary Biggie Munn, until “I got tired of being a tackling dummy”. My adoptive family pitched in with Mom’s little brother Jim, a proud member of MSC’s marching band at their first ever Rose Bowl. To assure he’d always be at loggerheads with his nephew, he went and got a PhD at Ohio State! But like all Michigan mixed families, we still love each other.
And so the great drama that is college football plays on.
References
1. Bacon JU. Overtime: Jim Harbaugh and the Michigan Wolverines at the Crossroads of College Football. New York: HarperCollins (William Morrow), 2019 https://www.amazon.com/Overtime-Harbaugh-Michigan-Wolverines-Crossroads/dp/0062886959/ref=sr_1_2?crid=U9QLXOWLCVAX&keywords=John+U.Bacon&qid=1706617484&sprefix=john+u.bacon%2Caps%2C140&sr=8-
2. Coach Jim Harbaugh: Michigan National Championship Celebration. Fox2 News. YouTube. https://youtu.be/WQ5c0-VWYWw?si=iMqrrYwxji9F-bO1
3. Gallagher B. The Nasty Football History of Michigan vs Michigan State: Why Every Game Drew Blood From 1898 to 2020. Little Rock: Power Group Enterprises, 2021. https://www.amazon.com/Nasty-Football-History-Michigan-State/dp/1734431334/ref=sr_1_1?crid=9YHAQGDAI7EQ&keywords=michigan+michigan+state+football&qid=1706622164&s=books&sprefix=michigan+michigan+state+football%2Cstripbooks%2C162&sr=1-1
4. Schinkal P. The Great Lakes Rivalry: A complete history of the Michigan vs Michigan State football rivalry. Independently Published, 2021. https://www.amazon.com/Great-Lakes-Rivalry-complete-Michigan-ebook/dp/B0871PGLJ9/ref=sr_1_7?crid=9YHAQGDAI7EQ&keywords=michigan+michigan+state+football&qid=1706622612&s=books&sprefix=michigan+michigan+state+football%2Cstripbooks%2C162&sr=1-7
5. Michigan–Michigan State football rivalry. Wikipedia 1/22/24. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan–Michigan_State_football_rivalry
6. Michigan State Spartans Football – Fight Song. Luthstar. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT_ZuY63qKw
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