Fourth and Long: The Fight for the Soul of College Football

by Bacon, John U.

  “We’ve done it for so long,” he said. “We don’t plan on doing anything else on football Saturdays.”

  “Because you’re an alum,” Jackie said, “it’s part of who you are. A family thing. It’s my mom, who’s seventy-two. It’s my kids. I don’t think I’d sit in the freezing cold every week if it wasn’t family.”

  With game time fast approaching, I had to keep moving—which meant passing a fan’s gigantic Notre Dame helmet, big enough to stand up inside; a recording of Kid Rock singing “ ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ alllll summer long”; and mixed parties with Michigan and Notre Dame fans, even “mixed couples,” if you will. In the parking lot, hundreds of flags flew high to help friends find their tailgates, but also to identify loyalties. The ND banner always flew below the Stars and Stripes, but above the national flags of Ireland, Italy, and Poland.

  I passed a live band that one tailgater had hired, playing a friendly mix of reggae on acoustic instruments. I asked the lead guitarist, “Are you playing for beer, or money?”

  “A little of both!” he said, and went back to his song.

  • • •

  It was hard to say which team had more on the line in that game. The Irish were still undefeated, though they had barely snuck by Purdue, 20–17, in the final seconds. Then they had a big win over tenth-ranked Michigan State the previous weekend, which bumped Notre Dame to eleventh. It also catapulted captain Manti Te’o onto the cover of Sports Illustrated, which told Te’o’s Gipper-like story of losing his beloved grandmother and girlfriend in the same week, before going out to make a season-high 12 tackles against the Spartans.

  For Notre Dame backers, that was enough. They were already whispering they might have their twelfth national title in their sights, and their eighth Heisman Trophy winner in Manti Te’o.

  On the other side, a preseason eighth-ranked team and its own Heisman candidate, Denard Robinson, were both one game away from knocking themselves out of consideration for national titles or awards.

  The previous weekend, Michigan beat up on the University of Massachusetts, 63–13. Okay, U-Mass was pretty bad. But the Wolverines had done exactly what they were supposed to do that game, and done it well.

  Still, as I wrote in my previous book, Michigan fans aren’t happy unless they’re not happy, so it was not surprising to hear fans complain about Robinson’s performance in that game. Mind you, Denard ran for over 100 yards and a touchdown and passed for almost 300 yards and 3 touchdowns.

  And that, to one caller, was the problem: “I’m sick and tired of living and dying with Denard!” In other words, Robinson was too good for that fan’s taste.

  This only proved my theory: the two toughest jobs in the state of Michigan are goalie for the Detroit Red Wings and quarterback for the Michigan Wolverines. You can never do enough.

  This was Robinson’s third season as Michigan’s starting quarterback, and at some point during each of those seasons he’d been listed as a strong candidate for the Heisman Trophy. Still, some fans complained that he ran too much, that he didn’t pass well enough, and he didn’t beat enough of the big teams.

  It didn’t help matters that Michigan’s second-year offensive coordinator, Al Borges, seemed uncertain how best to use Robinson, which often resulted in this thoroughbred being used as a plow horse. In fairness, Robinson didn’t pick these coaches, and they hadn’t picked him, preferring the drop-back passer in the Tom Brady mold.

  But it was not true that Robinson had a weak arm. I’ve seen him, goofing around after practice, drop to one knee on the goal line and launch the ball sixty-five yards. And when the coaches let him roll out of the pocket, which is what he was recruited to do, his accuracy and touch increased dramatically.

  But all these points obscured a far bigger one: how lucky Michigan fans, students, and alumni were to count Denard Robinson as one of their own.

  When other schools offered him money and cars and girls and even tuition for his sister, he decided instead to go to Michigan, where he was offered a scholarship, a chance to compete, cold weather, and long, expensive flights for him and his parents. He took it.

  Robinson backed up Tate Forcier their freshmen year, 2009. But the following spring, Robinson outworked Forcier to become the starting quarterback.

  Since then, Robinson had broken just about every Michigan record for quarterbacks, a batch of Big Ten marks, and a few national records, too—and he still had ten or eleven games to go.

  Robinson probably wouldn’t have gotten into Michigan without football, but he was making the most of it. He went to class every day. He studied every night. He never drank, but he bowled every week. He didn’t just quote his parents—“Denard, they can take football away from you, but they can’t take your education!”—he believed it. And he would graduate on time.

  He had the chance that night to finish a great chapter of his legacy, with a third straight big game against Notre Dame—the kind that would test Matt Cornicelli’s faith.

  • • •

  The program, the pregame ceremonies, and the scoreboard all made a big deal out of the 125th anniversary of Notre Dame football—and with it, the 125th year of this rivalry.

  At 6:41, a military plane boomed over head—shortly after Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick approached Michigan’s Dave Brandon on the sideline and handed him a letter. Brandon slipped it into his coat pocket, unopened. Few saw that, of course, and fewer probably noted it—but a few days later, everyone in that stadium would understand its significance.

  When the Dropkick Murphys’ signature song, “I’m Shipping Up to Boston,” blasted through the speakers, everyone stood up. The fight everybody here had waited a year to see was finally about to start.

  But if this was a battle between two heavyweights, it looked like their best days were behind them. Despite the calm, dry, warm weather, the teams traded turnovers as if they were being paid to give the game away.

  With little over five minutes left in the first quarter, on third and 8 from his own 14-yard line, Robinson connected on a pass to former backup quarterback Devin Gardner—marking the first reception for either team.

  It seemed to spark Robinson, who hit 5 of 6 passes on that drive for 59 yards, then added a 15-yard run to give the Wolverines first and goal from Notre Dame’s 10-yard line. Instead of calling for another Robinson pass, or even a run—which he did better than any other quarterback in the country—offensive coordinator Al Borges called for him to hand off to five-foot-six tailback Vincent Smith, who rolled to the right, then cocked his arm to throw the second pass of his college career.

  It was a strange enough plan to begin with, but the idea looked even worse after two Notre Dame defenders rushed him, forcing Smith to throw wide just to avoid them—right into the hands of Notre Dame’s Nicky Baratti.

  What confidence Robinson had mustered seemed to slip away. With the coaches apparently advising Robinson to pass first and run second, he ended Michigan’s next four possessions with interceptions, followed by a fumble.

  If there’s one thing opposing teams feared, it was Robinson’s fast feet. If there’s one place they wanted to see those feet, it was stuck in the grass in the middle of the pocket while he looked downfield.

  For this, the former sophomore Big Ten MVP was blamed. But as Einstein said, “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.” Robinson was born to run, not stand, so seeing him stuck in the pocket was probably as big a relief for opposing coaches as it was maddening for Michigan fans.

  Notre Dame converted two of those turnovers into 10 points, and that’s how the first half ended, 10–0. If national viewers suspected Michigan and Notre Dame of relying too heavily on their lofty traditions before this game, the first half would not have gone far in convincing them otherwise.

  Our friend Rhino, back in the Magic Bus, fell asleep through the second quarter, while saving a cool $370.

  • • •

  You can�
�t go far in Notre Dame’s press box, however, without running into that tradition, starting with a long row of framed Sports Illustrated covers that led up to legends like 1987 Heisman Trophy winner Tim Brown, who was sitting in the press box with his young son. His NFL career with the Oakland Raiders was almost as impressive, with nine Pro Bowl selections, leaving him on the edge of induction to the NFL Hall of Fame.

  But when I asked which team he liked playing for most, he didn’t hesitate.

  “The college experience is just hard to duplicate,” he said, in his typically precise manner. “Playing at Notre Dame for me was so special. You’re playing for the Blue and Gold, all the tradition—Rockne, Gipp, the Four Horsemen, the Echoes. Where else can you find that?

  “I picked Notre Dame. All my teammates picked Notre Dame—and for probably all of us, that was our first choice.”

  He contrasted that with the NFL draft, which is just that: they pick you, and you go. Brown tried to dissuade certain teams, and while he was happy to play for the Raiders, it was not the same as Notre Dame.

  “The NFL is a business, man! There, I focused on putting food on the table. Mama needs a new purse, and baby needs new shoes! The NFL is just a different mind-set. It was more about going to work and respecting the game.”

  When I asked him which experience he’d like to live again, he said, “Oh, college! Playing here at Notre Dame, and being a student here, meant so much to me.

  “I will never forget the last day I was here, the day after my graduation. I was sitting in my apartment, by myself. And I remember thinking, ‘I do not want to leave this place. I do not want to move on.’ ”

  On his last day in the NFL? “I did not have that feeling!” he said with a laugh. “I was ready to move on. I was eager to move on! What’s next?!

  “There is nothing like playing college football—and just about everyone who played in the NFL will tell you that.”

  • • •

  In the second half, it didn’t look as if anyone on the field that day except Manti Te’o, who already had two interceptions, would ever get the chance to compare the two. It was only the fourth week of the season—a season in which I’d already seen 0-2 Penn State host 0-1 Navy—and this was by far the worst football I’d witnessed.

  But despite the Wolverines’ woes, they were behind only 13–3 late in the game when they got the ball back on their own 30-yard line. This was the moment Irish fans had come to dread—thanks to three straight years of dramatic, last-minute Michigan comebacks, the last two engineered by the magician who’d just got the ball: Robinson.

  One of those Irish fans, Matt Cornicelli, watched with bated breath as Robinson rediscovered the same rhythm he had lost after Smith’s interception, hitting four passes on four straight snaps for 51 yards to Notre Dame’s 24-yard line, then running to the 7.

  Michigan still had four minutes left, and all three of its time-outs—plenty of time to tear out Irish hearts once more. If you polled all the people in the stadium at that moment, a majority would probably have predicted that was exactly what was going to happen—again.

  College football fans take their losses hard because they take them personally. All the tradition and history and hoopla lead up to this moment, and only this moment. There is no home-and-home rematch, no playoff game to point to, no chance for these teams to wipe the slate clean. College football makes you wait an entire year and come back with a new team to get a chance at revenge, and the wins and the losses go in columns that have been kept by six generations.

  It’s every bit as all-or-nothing as electoral politics, but far more brutal. If that sounds like hyperbole, ask yourself: Would Matt Cornicelli lie on the sidewalk in agony for ten minutes if his presidential candidate lost that November? Would anyone?

  This was the heart-in-throat moment everyone had come for.

  But when the Wolverines needed it most, their offense broke down again. Michigan had to settle for a field goal, for a 13–6 margin with 3:27 left.

  Whatever hope Michigan had, it evaporated when its defense gave up three straight first downs, allowing Notre Dame to set up for every coach’s favorite play: the victory formation, when the quarterback takes a knee, the benches empty, and the game is over.

  At least one Cornicelli would not be lying on the sidewalk that night.

  • • •

  We reporters ran down the stairs from the press box to the field. Chris Balas, who writes for the Wolverine, said, “It’s going to be unbearable,” referring to his readers’ predictable despair over Michigan’s 2-2 record. “It’s going to be, ‘Everyone sucks,’ all over again.”

  For the Irish, however, the celebration had already started—and showed no signs of stopping. Walking outside the stadium, I heard something that sounded like water rushing through Hoover Dam. When I turned back, I realized it was the fans—but how did they make that noise? It came from a spot in the concourse where fans from four directions converge: from the stadium, from the left and the right of the concourse, and from down the huge staircase, ten people across—while yelling from the balcony halfway down and from every other direction.

  They yelled for the hell of it—and each time someone yelled, it inspired someone else to yell, too. Yelling begot more yelling, until you could hear them yelling from this spot halfway around the outside of the stadium.

  “Undefeated! Undefeated!” a diminutive coed screamed.

  If this didn’t wake up the Echoes, nothing would.

  • • •

  On the drive home the next morning we tallied our expenses, divided six ways. For each man on the trip, it looked like this:

  RV rental—$125

  Gas—$100

  Parking—$50

  Food—$150

  Drink—$100

  Tickets—free, this time

  Stories to tell our friends—priceless

  We’d spent over $500 each that weekend—and none of us had purchased a ticket, which would have added another $350 or so. But we had no regrets, and before the Magic Bus had crossed the Michigan state line, we had already begun planning our next road trip for 2013.

  • • •

  The week before the 2012 Michigan game, Notre Dame had joined the suddenly active Atlantic Coast Conference, which was gobbling up Big East members at the same time it was trying to keep other conferences from doing the same to its schools. The move would give Notre Dame’s other teams, especially basketball, a promotion from their membership in the Big East, which was rapidly falling apart.

  The ACC was so eager to lure Notre Dame, it let the Irish remain independent in football, while the Irish agreed to play five ACC football teams a year. Both parties would earn bigger paychecks. But some observers immediately recognized that Notre Dame’s decision could threaten its rivalry with Michigan, though probably no one expected it to happen so fast.

  While we were driving home that Sunday afternoon, Dave Brandon pulled the letter out of his coat pocket that Swarbrick, a former law partner and Internet CEO who had never worked in an athletic department before Notre Dame hired him in 2008, had handed him right before Saturday’s kickoff. That’s when he learned that, as their agreement allowed, Notre Dame was ending one of the greatest rivalries in sports, canceling their games from 2015 through 2017, with no future dates scheduled. By informing Michigan minutes before the kickoff, Notre Dame could count the 2012 game as one of the three the agreement required they play after either side informed the other it planned to break the rivalry off, giving the Irish two remaining home games to Michigan’s one. All of it was all legal—and none of it was well handled.

  In fairness to Swarbrick, if Brandon—who had a similarly strong business background, with no prior experience working in athletics or education—determined that it was in Michigan’s financial self-interest to cut the rivalry off, he almost certainly would have done the same thing, and in the same manner. Neither party seemed overly concerned with goodwill.

  For decades, Notre Dame’s leader
s had wisely traded on their football success to become a national academic power. Mission accomplished, they discovered they were now free to sell that same tradition for money.

  So much for Father Walsh’s promise to the Wolverines that a “cordial reception would always await them at Notre Dame.” The tradition of distrust between the schools’ leaders, at least, was alive and well.

  Notre Dame would replace Michigan with teams like Wake Forest and Clemson, while Michigan would replace Notre Dame with—well, probably teams like Wake Forest and Clemson, if not Central Michigan, Western Michigan, and Eastern Michigan.

  But within that equation, Notre Dame was making a couple of bets: first, that the athletes, who had come to Notre Dame partly to play teams like Michigan, wouldn’t raise a peep, and Swarbrick was surely right about that; and second, that all those RVs that Michigan fans drove to South Bend could readily be replaced by RVs driven by fans from Virginia or North Carolina or Georgia Tech.

  The players don’t have any real choices. But the fans do, and whether they’re willing to keep shelling out a thousand bucks for a football weekend—or will start spending their Saturdays going to soccer games or mowing their lawns—remains to be seen.

  The NFL was created as a business to make money, but the college game was supposed to have higher ideals. That was getting harder to argue. With each year, each season, and each decision, it was becoming increasingly apparent that the people who love college football have less and less in common with the people who are running it.

  CHAPTER 13

  A TOAST TO OPEN HEARTS

  Friday afternoon, September 28, 2012: Hang around the Midwest long enough and you’ll hear just about every Big Ten fan say, “I love fall!” It makes a lot of sense when you experience our famously frigid, gray winters, and our surprisingly steamy summers—and even more sense when you see how Big Ten football provides three months of relief from it all.

  In Big Ten towns, life begins anew not in spring, but in fall—the blooming flowers be damned. Come May, the school year has just ended and everyone’s leaving.