It all started last year in Wisconsin, Michigan’s first away game. The critics were saying the Wolverines hadn’t played anyone, and that the maize and blue wouldn’t be able to play with Wisconsin in Madison.
We all know Michigan won, dominated in fact, but it was the energy and chip on the shoulder that Michigan had. The players used the famous ‘jump around’ in their favor and took the crowd out of the game by having fun on the sideline.
Similar to Wisconsin last year, the Wolverines came out with that swagger in Iowa City. Iowa is famous for having a pink locker room for the opposing team. For whatever reason, it’s supposed to have an adverse effect on the minds of the opposing team, but Michigan instead had fun with it. The players ran out of the tunnel with pink towels and were waving those in the air to get fired up.
Jaylen Harrell said after the game that he felt that this game was similar to Wisconsin last year. Michigan had something to prove against a top defense, and the players used the color pink in their favor like they used ‘jump around’ last year against Wisconsin.
“Oh, you know, it was a really good environment,” said Harrell. “We’re excited for our first road game. Like you said, Wisconsin last year we were jumping up and down taking over their place. We tried to do that this week. Today, I thought we did.”
But how did the towels come about? Mike Morris said Gemon Green had the idea. He told everyone to grab a pink towel and wave it around on the sideline. Morris said the pink locker room caused zero adversity to Michigan, but the Wolverines embraced it.
“Yeah, one of the twins, I think it was,” said Morris. “I think it was Gemon. Gemon was like telling everybody grab a pink towel and wave it around. And we wanted to embrace everything they do at us, you know, they have a locker room, thinking that it’s gonna be some type of adversity when I really didn’t notice it until we, we sat down and someone said pink and I was like, Yeah, I like the color. So we just embraced it.”
J.J. McCarthy was blunt when he said Michigan didn’t care about the locker room. He said that it didn’t faze the team whatsoever, and Michigan wanted to bring the pink to Iowa.
“Let them know that we don’t care,” said McCarthy. “All the pink locker room and bring it right out to the field? Doesn’t matter. It didn’t faze us.”
Of course, Michigan loves playing in the Big House in front of all the fans, but Mike Morris says that away games are his favorite. He loves when the team can do what it did today using the pink towels in its favor, and he loves when the crowd chimes in. Morris says that he loves the hostile environment that away games have.
“Yeah. I was gonna say I love the way I love the big house,” said Morris. “But the away, games are definitely my favorite. I love the crowd chiming in. I love the crowd being right on top of us yelling, and I like I love the hostile environment. I like being in and so it is nice. But the children’s hospital as well was was very touching.”
Late in the fourth quarter, Iowa had a chance to make the game much closer than it felt. Michigan had two sacks and two pressures that made Iowa turn the ball over on downs. Going into that drive Morris said that the team felt a momentum shift, but he said that the team embraced that and they love to feel the hate from the opposing fan base. He said the players just had to pull up their big boy pants and make some plays — they did.
“Yeah, I mean, the crowd does a lot,” said Morris. “And we definitely felt a momentum shift. But we love it. We love the like I said, we love to hate, we love everything about it. So all we had to do was nut up and pull up our big boy pants. We did.”
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