The Wolverine

For too long, Mealer wondered if he'd ever get there. He's appeared in 41 Michigan games, through the 2012 non-confer- ence season, but until the opener in Dallas, had never started one. A ver- satile reserve on the offensive line and consistent special teams performer, Mealer never found the breakthrough he so desperately sought. "There were definitely some times where you say, 'Can I even play foot- ball any more? What am I doing?' It seems like you do so many things wrong," he recalled. "You just have to get refocused. I had a good coach to get me on track and make me believe in myself." Head coach Brady Hoke "Elliott has really settled in. He has a presence about him in there at center … he has really been consistent, when you look at what we ask that position to do." Even as a senior, Mealer didn't ex- perience as good of a spring prac- tice as he could have. But the mental makings for a special senior season were already at work. Mealer participated with the rest of the seniors in a trip to California, dur- ing which those veteran Wolverines trained under the direction of Navy SEALs, visited the Rose Bowl, ran a football camp for kids and got to know one another at a much deeper level. The experience is one he'll not soon forget. "It put an image in our head of what we could be as leaders, as se- niors," Mealer said. "They let us set up our own mini football camp. Looking at the class as a whole, it put a picture on everything to say, 'Look, this is what happens when you lead, when you take the responsibility on yourself — people follow you.' Even though it was dealing with little kids, I thought we did a pretty good job out there." Of course, the most publicized por- tion of the trip involved dealing with much bigger individuals. The SEALs' job involved pushing the U-M veter- ans well out of their comfort zone. They proved quite adept at the task. "The hardest thing I had to do was bear crawl up a sand hill," Mealer recalled. "It felt like a mountain. I was underneath Will Campbell, and he was bear crawling up it. I had to 30 THE WOLVERINE OCTOBER 2012 workout who were falling behind, myself included," he said. "Every- body had their ups and downs, and you had to pick each other up and say, 'Hey, come on, man, you can make it.' "You got a sense of belief in each other, like this is what happens when you lead. It does work, what Coach [Brady] Hoke and Coach [Aaron] Wellman are teaching us." Throughout, Mealer and Michi- gan's other seniors garnered a clear and unwavering message: You're a senior now. There are things that are expected of you. some new friends, and fans. The SEALs promised to root for Mealer, and his massive beard, all season long. The fifth-year senior also made hang onto him, like a cub. "He crawled over, and I had to crawl us back. It felt like it took an hour to go 40, 50 feet. That was so hard. I feel like I just finished. It was so long, and me and Big Will car- rying each other … it's not an easy task." The U-M seniors pushed through that adversity, carried huge logs together on the sands of the Naval Amphibious Base Coronado in Coro- nado, Calif., and learned to overcome even more than they may have al- ready experienced. That's a tall order in Mealer's case, but he embraced the challenge along with his teammates. "You had guys throughout the Mealer felt different when he came away from those sessions — more fo- cused, more determined than ever to make his final months in a Michigan uniform all they could be. "One of the SEALs had said, 'Hey, we like that beard.' I said, 'I was thinking about shaving it, out of re- spect for you guys in the military — clean-cut and everything.' They told me, 'Hey, don't you dare cut that. That's what we call an Afghan beard. We grow those out when we go to Afghanistan. We take pride in beards. You're keeping that.'" When they backed up their en- thusiasm with a vow of season-long surveillance, Mealer realized he'd be bearded for the long haul. "When we left, that same SEAL said: 'We're going to come to a game this season, and we're going to be watching on TV. That beard better be there. If it's not, we're sending one of the teams after you,'" Mealer re- called with a grin. "I said, well then, whether I like it or not, I'm keeping it. I do like it. It's something differ- ent." "That led me to [Michigan's] camp, thinking: you've prepared the best you've ever prepared," he said. "Now go and take it. It was maybe a week and a half, two weeks before the Alabama game when I was told I was going to be the starter. "Throughout camp I really had confidence. I was playing well. That's the key to it. I had a great belief in myself to get after it." The fifth-year senior can't be mis- taken for any other Wolverine, the avalanche of facial hair spilling down as if he'd just emerged from an iso- lated encampment in Appalachia. The SEALs called him "Jeremiah Johnson," after the 1972 film charac- ter portrayed by Robert Redford, and sometimes just "mountain man." That began after he offered to go clean cut, and got rebuffed like a veg- etarian at a rib cook-off. "I grew it for no reason, kind of being lazy," Mealer noted. "When I got out there, I told them: 'Hey, I've got this beard. I'm thinking about shaving it.' Hoke and Michigan's other coaches noticed. The head coach ac- knowledged, at the end of fall camp: "His confidence level is high, and he's really done a tremendous job. He, by far in my opinion, had one of the best fall camps that I've seen an offensive lineman have." Hoke continues to preach about maintaining a low pad level and fin- ishing blocks to Mealer, but noted the Wolverines are getting high effort and steadiness out of the center spot. "Elliott has really settled in," Hoke noted. "He has a presence about him in there at center … he has really been consistent, when you look at what we ask that position to do." Not so many years ago, constantly centering interviews on the night that changed his life proved difficult. At the same time, he said, it provided healing and inspiration for others.

• Cover