Psst, Coach Rod: Spread DEFENSE!!

Joelontheroad will resume tomorrow with recollections and ruminations on Chicago ’68.

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By Joel Thurtell

I sure learned a lot on Saturday, August 30, as I tromped across the University of Michigan

The Victors tromp down Hoover expecting to trounce the Utah Utes. Joel Thurtell photo.

campus in Ann Arbor, heading for Michigan Stadium and the season opener against those sad-sack Utes. The way to beat your rivals is to wallop them BEFORE the game.

Oh, those poor, unfortunate Utes! Too bad they trudged all the way from Utah to suffer a miserable defeat at the hands of the newly re-created Michigan Eleven.

For it did seem that the Utes in their blood-red jerseys must already be wounded as we tromped down State Street, passing hordes of maize and blue garbed students, many in their cups already and certain the game was over and the Wolverines were winners.

We turned onto Hoover and walked among a throng of fans wearing yellow shirts. I myself had suddenly remembered this custom and donned a frayed yellow shirt before leaving home.

Alongside us for awhile a young man in maize and blue coached us on how to dismiss the Utes.

“Fuck U-TAH! Fuck U-TAH”! he kept saying.

Fans getting ready for victory on Hoover. Joel Thurtell photo.

So, so sure. Marching to victory. I’d been reading news accounts for months about this new coarch, Rich Rodriguez, the Wunderkind from West Virginia who was so popular there that the university in that state sued to try keeping him. Or to punish him for coming to Michigan.

Michigan lost their season opener a year ago to an upstart team using something called a “spread offense.”

It didn’t take long for the old veteran coach, Lloyd Carr, to retire and make way for the new coach, Rich Rodriguez, who invented the “spread offense.”

It is confusing, I grant you. But it is not mayonaisse or mustard, two spreads familiar to all of us. No, the “spread offense” is supposed to level the playing field and make teams with smaller players a match for teams with mammoth players. That’s what I got from my reading. Michigan was going to switch from the offense the professional teams use and become a great national champion team using the “spread” offense.

Couple of problems that I knew about from my reading. The only experienced quarterback quit the team because he didn’t feel he’d fit into the “spread” offense. So that left a couple of freshmen who’d never played in anything but high school football games. That might not be so bad, except the spread offense leaves much of the work to the quarterback, who isn’t supposed to huddle, but just call plays and keep rolling up the poor defenseless opposing team like a Confederate general at the Battle of Bull Run.

Man, was it hot. Hot, hot, hot. I’d nearly frozen two bottles of water for the game, but when my

Fans Matt Mason, center, and Joel Thurtell, right, sweltering at UM-Utah game. Joel Thurtell photo.

friend and host Matt drove up to our house, he reminded me that we’re not allowed to take water bottles into Michigan Stadium. I forget why. It’s either 9/11 or maybe they thought we’d spike the bottles with gin. I put the bottles back in the fridge.

I really wanted some water. My doctor says, “Don’t get dehydrated,” and she’s a University of Michigan doctor, too. But she has no clout at Michigan Stadium. That’s run by the Board in Control of Intercollegiate Athletics, don’t you know. Same outfit that hired Coach Rod and let Coach Lloyd take a hike. Same ones who brought us the “spread” offense and don’t want me carrying water into their precious stadium. Oh yes, and the people who brought us Hungry Howie’s Pizza.

Would have been fine if I could have gotten into the stadium to buy some water. But I need to mention that the great University of Michigan is building “sky-boxes” on top of the stadium so it can charge huge amounts of money from rich people dumb enough to fork over those huge amounts of money so they can sit in air-conditioned cubes watching Michigan football thinking they’re richer than you and me.

Well, of course, they are. And the air-conditioned part doesn’t seem all bad. But I was entering the stadium on a gift ticket. Not likely I’d ever pay for a sky box.

Unfinished sky boxes looom over Michigan Stadium. Joel Thurtell photo.

Not likely I’d get into the stadium at all, is the way it seemed for a while. Seems the great University is still building those sky-boxes and the construction is making it hard for the regular customers who pay, some 108,000 and more on this particularly hot day, to get in and find their seats. We arrrived at the gate to Section 16, our section, and it was locked. All sorts of older men wearing yellow shirts that said “STAFF” were hanging around inside the gates, but they weren’t letting us in. We stood at the head of a long line of people. Some of them were not happy. Some of them were saying ugly things. I man in a yellow shirt marked STAFF with a bullhorn told us to be patient. People said unkind things to him.

Can you imagine that? Not happy because they couldn’t get in to Michigan Stadium to watch a football game they bought tickets for. Matt, an old hand at this, suggested we walk around the stadium and see if we could find an open gate, which we did. We walked a long way, then doubled back toward Section 16.

I had one thing on my mind: Water. Man, was I thirsty.

Sure enough, we found a stand selling water. Four dollars for a bottle. Can you believe it? Four bucks! Warm water, too. We paid. We were not happy. I understood why some of the people waiting in line were saying unpleasant things to the men in yellow shirts that said STAFF.

By the time we got to Section 16, the gate had been opened. We’d wasted our time walking around. Oh well. We could hear the game going on. The kickoff had already taken place. Getting water and finding a john seemed more important. Finally, we squeezed into our seats. Matt has had these same two seats for more than 20 years. He knows the people sitting behind us.

One of them is a football expert. I think he must work for Coach Rod, because he kept giving Coach Rod advice.

“Throw the ball!” he yelled so loud I’m sure Coach Rod could hear him. At some point that

Ute fans wore red shirts. Joel Thurtell photo.

afternoon, the quarterback passed the football, so I bet Coach Rod did take his advice.

When the football was punted by a Ute, which means it was kicked, and a Michigan player looked ready to catch it, the man behind me yelled, “Take a knee!”

There was nobody close with a knee for him to grab. But I watched, and sure enough, the player caught the ball and bent a leg and kneeled. I was really impressed that Matt had seats near a guy with such influence over not only Coach Rod but also over the players.

After awhile, the expert behind us started saying the Utes looked tired, worn out. That was funny, because they looked to me like they were playing real well. I’m not very well versed in football, but I could tell from the scoreboard that they were carrying and passing the ball for lots more yards than Michigan.

But this guy kept saying the Utes were tired. I said something about it, and Matt explained that Coach Rod had told a newspaper that he brought a conditioning expert to Ann Arbor and the Michigan players were in better physical shape than the Utes. So what was going on, see, is the adviser to Coach Rod who was sitting behind me was actually being sarcastic. He was being kind of mean to Coach Rod, I thought, and I wondered if Coach Rod knew that his friend in the stands was making nasty remarks, kind of two-faced.

Michigan 10, Utes 25. Joel Thurtell photo.

When the score got up to 25 for the Utes and only 10 for Michigan, I heard some other experts for the University of Michigan saying the Utes should not really be the Utes at all, because “Ute” is the name of an Indian tribe and using it as a monicker for a football team is disrespectful of Native people. I wondered if the Utes knew this. Also, I wondered if the Native people called Utes knew about it. Or cared. If they did, it might embarrass and take some of the steam out of the Ute players and they might REALLY get tired.

Once I got in the stands, I learned from some of the really knowledgeable people around me that the Utes were using a “spread” offense, too. Darn! The idea was to trick the Utes and have this new strategem to knock them over, really take them by surprise. But it turns out the Utes use the “spread,” too. They’ve been doing it for awhile are are good at it. What’s the point of using the “spread” if the other team uses it, too? It seemed like a really dumb question, though, so I didn’t ask it.

I kept swigging at that warm water. It was really warm, especially after I went to the bathroom. The men’s room at Michigan Stadium is designed kind of like a big horse’s trough, but with the trough on the ground and instead of horses drinking from it, men pee into it. Not to get into details that everybody knows anyway, but just to mention that this is a two-handed exercise, I had to put my water bottle in my pocket while I used the john and so my water was next to my body, which was hot, and my water bottle got even warmer.

All during the first half of the game I kept smelling something that made me really hungry. It was Hungry Howie’s Pizza being cooked. Hungry Howie’s is the only pizza you can buy in Michigan Stadium. It is the Official Pizza of Michigan Stadium. Matt made a wisecrack about how bad Hungry Howie’s Pizza is, but I said I was hungry and would eat it no matter how bad it was. Well, at half time, I got in a long line and waited to order some Hungry Howie’s Pizza. When I finally got to the head of the line, they ran out of pizza. I felt like I couldn’t wait, I was so hungry. I was starving. But soon enough, they came back with more of these little boxes with little pizzas and I paid 12 dollars for two of the boxes because I was so hungry.

Matt and I sat under a tree in the shade and ate Hungry Howie’s Pizza. There were kids playing

Kids in tree at Michigan Stadium. Joel Thurtell photo.

in the tree. I swear Hungry Howie’s is absolutely the worst pizza I’ve ever eaten. And I had two boxes of the awful stuff! But as I say, I was hungry, so eat it I did, taking the last box into the stands and munching it. Have you ever chewed cardboard?

I tried to see if the Utes were getting tired yet. They weren’t.

Michigan’s neophyte quarterbacks were playing like high school quarterbacks, big surprise. It was embarrassing. It was so embarrassing in the second half that people stopped talking about how the Utes were using an Indian name and shouldn’t be.

Then Michigan started to play some ball, or rather, the Utes started making dumb mistakes and getting big penalties and Michigan got some more points. To me, who doesn’t know much about football, every play looked like it was disconnected from the ones that went before and after.

I heard the quarterback is really, really important for a “spread” offense, and I wondered how it came to be that Coach Rod let the only real quarterback leave the team. The expert, Coach Rod’s friend behind me, didn’t seem to know. He kind of ran out of advice. He’d been telling the quarterbacks to pass, and they’d passed, but mostly their throws were bad. I think the expert kind of got tired of trying to help. Sure, the players tried to do what he said, but they just didn’t seem to know how.

The Michigan people were pretty quiet when we left the stadium. Nobody was coaching us on what nasty words to call the Utes.

But while I sat on that hard stadium bench, I was thinking of a new strategy I’d like to tell Coach Rod about. He can keep his “spread” offense or not, as he chooses. But I have a way he can stop other teams like the Utes in future games. It’s better than the “spread” offense, see. Know how the “spread” offense needs a really, really good quarterback? Well, on defense, you don’t need a quarterback. Just spread your players around the field in different places for every play and the offense will get confused and not know what to do.

It makes as much sense as “spread” offense.

Spread DEFENSE, Coach Rod. Give it a try!

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com