The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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8 THE WOLVERINE ❱ SEPTEMBER 2024 W hen you're at the bottom , they don't respect you. "When you're in the middle, they ignore you. "When you're at the top, they hate you. "So, for us, we're just going to keep rolling." — Sherrone Moore O h , t h ey 're h a t i n g M i c h i - gan football again, after far too many years of disrespect and getting ignored. Three straight smackdowns of Ohio State, three straight Big Ten championships, three straight College Football Playoff appearances and a 15-0 national championship run will produce such animus. Add one more to the list. When you threaten the pocketbooks and pride of the ruling powers, they try to run you out of the college game. Sometimes it works. Jim Harbaugh's gone, but Mich- igan isn't going anywhere. The Wolverines will take all the hate anyone chooses to dish out. Fielding Yost's crews did while running over everyone in go- ing 55-1-1 from 1901-05. Fritz Crisler's Mad Magicians did when they bedeviled opponents in the late 1940s. Bo Schem- bechler's teams did while winning The Ten-Year War against Woody Hayes and Ohio State, 5-4-1, and dominat- ing Michigan State so badly (17-4) that a Lansing-based broadcaster claimed Schembechler "ruined the rivalry." Lloyd Carr's teams nearly ruined Penn State's fan base by winning nine straight in the series, starting with the 34-8 "Judgment Day" demolition leading to a national title in 1997. Those Michigan teams reveled in the hate and more than evened the score via physical dominance. That's football at its purest — moving large, proud humans where they don't want to go. Wearing them down. Making them tap out. It's been Moore's specialty as an of- fensive line coach. He put it on full display in State College last year, run- ning the ball 32 straight times without a second-half pass in beating Penn State as the suspended Harbaugh's stand-in. Some critics poked fun at Moore's depth of emotion afterwards. No matter — he'd already forced the opposition to weep, and kept it up, from the Buckeyes to Bama and beyond. Now he gets a shot at doing it again, against one of Michigan's toughest sched- ules ever. He's doing it without J.J. McCar- thy, without last year's starting offensive line and with many insisting a No. 9 rank- ing for the Wolverines will get blown up. Moore sees what they don't see. When it comes to indicators of immi- nent success, he summoned up a pair of observations. "Number one, the way they walk in the building, the way they carry them- selves, the way they take care of the new locker room, which is beautiful," Moore offered. "We've got an undefeated re- cord, and we keep track of everything. Keep track of how the locker room is. And it's been awesome keeping track of the building and everything we do. That's been great." Now, a tidy locker room isn't going to beat Ohio State. But the discipline, the precision and the focus that keeps it pristine marks the same discipline, precision and focus it takes to blow a hole in the Buckeye front defensive wall, clearing the way for senior tailback Donovan Edwards to break hearts from Ashtabula to Zanesville. The Wolverines learned out of desperation coming from the ash heap that was 2020 what it takes to get to the top. It starts with making your bed. "The culture has been estab- lished," assured senior safety Ma- kari Paige. "Make sure our shoes are right, make sure the M is right — small things that help us win games. Every detail matters. That's something that's been established. "It's the players, the leaders of the team upholding it as well. It's not just a him thing. It's an us thing." Second, the physicality will remain intact. Moore guarantees it. He became animated in describing: "Just watching our guys in practice, and when you have the vision of the head coach and you stand behind and you see everything going on, you watch the quar- terback, you watch the line, you watch the D-line, you watch the defense's eyes, you hear the communication that the defense does, and you hear the pads go [slamming his fist repeatedly into a palm]. You're like, oh yeah, we're going to be good. You can feel it. You can sense it. We don't re- ally care about what other people think. We're just ready to go. The guys are work- ing their tails off, and they're excited." The defending national champions will feel plenty of love from 110,000- plus on opening night. They'll soak it in, along with hate from the vanquished, and keep rolling. ❑ WOLVERINE WATCH ❱ JOHN BORTON Loved Or Hated, U-M Is Ready Head coach Sherrone Moore has already led the Wolverines to victory in situations of adversity, such as last year's win at Penn State when he was serving as interim coach. PHOTO BY MICHAEL MILLER Senior writer John Borton has been with The Wolverine since 1991. Contact him at jborton@thewolverine.com and follow him on X (Twitter) @JB_Wolverine. "