Griese is the perfect QB to finish a perfect run

Sporting News, The, Dec 1, 1997 by Tom Dienhart, Mike Huguenin

There was a rock-concert aura on the soggy Michigan Stadium turf last Saturday. Masses of bodies surged fans screeched, a voice boomed over the P.A. for people to stay off the field, security forces loomed with a tight grip on their billy clubs. But you couldn't blame Mick and The Stones for inciting this record horde of 106,982. Nope, this was a football game. And it was a big football game for Michigan which beat Ohio State, 20-14.

You'd have thought this was a Rose Bowl-starved school battling for respect, like Northwestern in 1995. But one look into the stands stuffed thick with fans told you this was Michigan, a place where big victories used to be met with polite applause.

But the masses had to let it all hang out after a string of disappointing seasons. After all, there was more to celebrate last Saturday than another win over Ohio State. Heck Michigan fans should be used to that by now, having won eight of the last 10 over the Buckeyes. No, the real causes celebre were a trip to the Rose Bowl for the first time since the '92 season, an 11-0 record, a consensus No. 1 ranking and a possible national title. Indeed, there was a lot to go crazy about and absorb, and the man with the most to soak up was Brian Griese.

The Michigan quarterback is like an umpire in a baseball game: If you don't notice him, you know he has done a good job. Griese was at his anonymous best against the Buckeyes, hitting 14-of-25 passes for 147 yards, with no touchdowns and no interceptions. That's pretty pedestrian stuff, but Griese was smart enough to look for Charles Woodson whenever the superman changed from a cornerback into a receiver. On a key third-and-12 play with seven minutes remaining in the first half of a scoreless game, Griese found Woodson--who also ran back a second-quarter punt 78 yards for a TD and made a key third-quarter interception--cutting over the middle for a 37-yard gain. Two plays later, tailback Anthony Thomas bulled into the end zone from the 1-yard line to stake the Wolverines to a 70 lead. It was a critical drive engineered by a slow-footed, weak-armed, former walk-on quarterback who leads the nation in nothing but smart decisions.

The best call he made came last summer, when Griese opted to return for a fifth year of eligibility. He had wrestled with the thought of calling it a career after last season. Griese had spent his junior year in a battle for the quarterback job with Scott Dreisbach (remember him?), finally securing the starting post in the Outback Bowl vs. Alabama after coming off the bench to lead the Wolverines to a win over Ohio State. But a talk with his father; Bob, and brothers swayed him. Their advice was simple: Hey, you've got the rest of your life to work; why not try to build a memory of a lifetime. Bob, who knows a thing or two about perfection told him he would kick himself forever if Michigan marched to the Rose Bowl without him. Go back to Ann Arbor, son. Life will be waiting for you.

Look at Griese now, gripping a rose and living a dream. He knows the reality of the real world bites, so Griese is happy he can put it off longer as he begins to prepare to play Washington State in the Rose Bowl.

"I have one game left in a Michigan uniform and I want to win it," says Griese, who has completed 175-of-277 passes for 2,042 yards and 14 touchdowns. "The only thing I'm concerned with is winning that game. We just want to sing, `The Victors,' in Pasadena."

If he can continue doing his best impersonation of his dad, who is celebrating the 25th anniversary of helping the Dolphins post the only perfect record in NFL history, Griese may get hoarse January 2 from singing the world's most famous fight song. A victory in the Rose Bowl likely would earn the Wolverines the national title--and Griese surely would be serenaded--ad nauseum--by some of those bodies who squeezed into Michigan Stadium last Saturday.

The singing would be especially loud given the fact it would be the school's first national title since 1948. That's right. The school with all that tradition--and all of those fans--and plays in that big, fat bowl of a stadium hasn't ruled the college football world since "Give 'em Hell" Harry Truman ran the country. But it could happen this year, a year in which expectations were modest by Michigan standards.

This wasn't a team inflated with hype. Yes, the Wolverines were ranked in everyone's preseason Top 25. Seven or eight wins were possible, along with the requisite Florida bowl game on New Year's Day. But Michigan had lost four games in each of the past four seasons. Last spring, a senior class left campus without a Rose Bowl appearance for the first time since Bo Schembechler took over the program in 1969. Worse yet, the Wolverines lost to seven different Big Ten foes over that 1993 to '96 span. Hey, guys in winged helmets aren't supposed to lose to Purdue and Northwestern. But it was happening. That's where this season has been different. This Michigan team has a killer instinct, a great defense and a quarterback who's famous for playing his role to perfection.