The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/495628
WHERE ARE THEY NOW? That's why I was shocked we would get to the game and we would not throw the ball," Welborne recalled with a laugh. "We wouldn't throw the ball in the game. Bo would not let us throw. We only threw the ball on third down when everybody knew we were throwing. He would let Mo [assistant Gary Moeller] just go in practice and we would open it up. It was lights out. "Not that I was Anthony Carter, but I knew that even when they didn't throw much, they threw the ball to him. I was just thinking at some point they were just going to throw it to me. It never really happened that first year. In the second year, I didn't want to move because I felt we had unfinished business, because in practice we were so good. The next year, I knew we were going to be fantastic." And they were — just not with Wel- borne in the receiving corps. He was doing his part in practice to slow them while playing safety, a move Schem- bechler suggested and Welborne ini- tially resisted. Like he always did, Welborne put the team first and bolstered a second- ary that would become one of the na- tion's best. The Wolverines won three straight Big Ten titles after he made the switch and were a few plays away from winning a national champion- ship in 1988 and again in 1989, Wel- borne earning consensus All-America honors his last two seasons. Many projected him as a first-round pick in the NFL Draft. Still, part of him envied his teammates on the other side of the ball. "All of a sudden that year the pass- ing game changed and in a couple years [quarterback] Elvis [Grbac] came in, and [receivers] Desmond Howard, Derrick Alexander and Chris Callo- way started to catch more passes … John Kolesar and Greg McMurtry," he recalled. "The receiving corps really started to take off." Welborne continued to thrive on defense, but still dreamed of playing basketball for the Wolverines. He spent summers running with the members of the eventual 1989 national cham- pionship squad — one that trumped Smith's UNC team in the regional semifinals — and didn't look out of place battling with Rumeal Robinson, Terry Mills, Glen Rice and the like. "I used to play with them all the time, all summer long," he said. "All I did was play basketball. We were ready." Schembechler, though, needed his standout to concentrate on football, es- pecially after a position switch. Instead of playing baseball — his other sport — Welborne concentrated on hon- ing his DB skills in the spring, while teammates McMurtry and Mike Gil- lette spent their time on the baseball diamond. Welborne never fully got rid of the itch to play other sports, but he never complained. "I wasn't doing exactly what I wanted to, but it turned out to be a fan- tastic move, especially for the team," he said. "And at least I still got to re- turn punts." The irony is that it was a catastrophic injury on one of those returns that