The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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JANUARY 2018 THE WOLVERINE 69 BY JOHN BORTON E veryone remembers the day Tshimanga Biakabu- tuka and the Wolverines ran wild on Ohio State. Almost no one remembers the near sideline mutiny play- ing a role in Michigan's 31-23 upset win over the undefeated and No. 2-ranked Buckeyes in 1995. Rod Payne remembers. He and his offensive line mates were at the heart of it. Biakabutuka's Michigan-re- cord 313 rushing yards stand as one of the most jaw-drop- ping numbers in the history of the series. Even the man carrying the football couldn't believe it. "I've been playing football for six years, including high school, and I've never seen holes like that," Biakabutuka said afterward. "Any one of you guys could have run through them." Ohio State head coach John Cooper also gave it up for Michigan's maul- ers on the offensive line: "They beat us up front unmercifully." Lost in the glow of victory were three interceptions thrown by the Wolverines. Each one increased the blood pressure of Michigan's All- American center, who insisted U-M could run all day. "I knew we could dominate from play one," Payne recalled. "I was like, 'Man, these guys are soft. Let's push 'em.'" Following the first interception, he emphatically stressed running the football upon his return to the sideline. "Then we get cute," he said. "I un- derstand we need to take our shots, but we drop back and throw another interception." The run rant grew louder this time, and finally boiled over on a third- quarter pickoff in the tight game. "We go back out, and the first play of the drive, they decide to take a shot," Payne recalled. "First play, we throw another interception. "At that point, I was livid. I was the first one to come off the field, cussing. I took my helmet, right be- fore I got to the sideline, and threw it from the sideline all the way to the stadium wall. I smashed my helmet." He also dented and singed some eardrums along the way. The rest of the offensive line took his cue, and n o b o d y — i n - c l u d i n g M i c h i - gan's coaches, in Payne's recollec- tion — wanted any part of them. The Buckeyes scored off pickoff No. 3, pulling within two at 17-15. The next time Michigan touched the ball, it cashed in a touchdown on a 65-yard drive consisting of eight straight runs. The Wolverines never looked back and put a punishing mark on the se- ries history. "We were men playing the game, and the coaches relied on us as men," he said. "They let the men take the game. Our teams were led like that." Payne learned from the best, he insisted. The self-described cocky, mouthy, Miami kid quipped that his goal initially was to "not get kicked out of college." A l m o s t i m m e d i a t e l y, though, he discovered the special place he'd landed in the fall of 1992. "Michigan is just a superior university to the schools out there," he said. "There may be schools with a good year, or a good program. None of them are Michigan." He encountered superior effort, like captain Corwin Brown making himself physi- cally ill in gutting out a per- sonal record time in a 1.5-mile camp run. "Guys were really compet- ing and going for their best mile and a half," Payne re- called. "Corwin Brown had this incredible time he had to beat. "The way he dug down, the way he gutted himself. The anguish and the pain and the suffering — take all the greatest torture scenes in every movie and make it self-inflicted, to beat a mile-and-a-half time. We saw Corwin Brown do that. "When you see a guy that would rather die than not make that mile- and-a-half time, you knew there was something different about the way guys held themselves to a standard at Michigan." Then he encountered offensive linemen like Steve Everitt, Joe Co- cozzo and Doug Skene, and quickly learned the ferocity required of Mich- igan's men up front. He witnessed the biggest chest and best bench press he'd ever encoun- tered in defensive lineman Ninef Aghakhan. "He looked like The Incredible Hulk," Payne said with a laugh. "He was huge and intimidating. He looked like he was in King Xerxes' army. Dark, mysterious … Ninef Aghakhan!" The very first day of two-a-days, Aghakhan and Everitt met in a one- on-one pass rush drill. Payne has WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Rod Payne Learned To Lead, Forcefully Payne was a third-round pick of the Cincinnati Bengals in 1997 after he became the 12th U-M center to be named an All- American. He was a first-team choice by the American Football Coaches Association. PHOTO COURTESY MICHIGAN ATHLETIC MEDIA RELATIONS Payne "Having that precedent, guys like Steve Everitt and John Vitale, I wasn't going to let this tradition down."