Pregame
Getting to that game, Purdue was a popular pick to win. You guys were 3-0, and despite some close calls, you had beaten Florida. But by the time we get to that game, Purdue is 2-1, Michigan is 3-0. Yet, Purdue, home game. A lot of people thought the Boilermakers had a strong chance at winning that game. Not to mention Tarik Black was out for the first time.
What was it like being a player hearing, if you did hear, any of that noise that Purdue had a real shot to upset you guys?
Let me just say this: There’s no single slouch in Big Ten Football or major college football. You have to show up every week. Was that the year they beat Ohio State, as well?
This was the year before.
The year before. So I think things like that. You’re going to play at Purdue. You understand what’s at stake, you understand that you’re walking into a tough environment. Even prior to that, we heard the grumblings of their locker room situation and all that, which kind of transpired with the things Wilton had to deal with — getting to the locker room, changing and getting to the hospital – all the things that happened after he got hurt that day.
The locker room was a disaster.
It was a disaster. Have they updated that at all since? I would hope.
I have no idea. But I know being in the postgame press conference and even before the game –
It was a closet.
It was a cinder block, it was 95 degrees outside, there was no air. It was a terrible situation.
Yup.
I digress.
We certainly weren’t underestimating them by any means. They’re a good team. They had one of the bigger teams we played that year, especially throughout — their middle linebacking corps were just some really big guys compared to some of the other Big Ten linebackers. A lot of the teams had evolved into the faster, more athletic linebackers. I felt like they had the more traditional, big group that can hit hard, fill the gaps and create a lot of problems with pressures they were bringing.
Now getting to the actual game—
I want to backtrack before we get to that. I’m sure you know this or are getting to this, but my head coach at Houston, Tony Levine, who had benched me, was the co-offensive coordinator and special teams coach on the other sideline at Purdue. So I wanna take it back to pregame, because this is the first time he and I had reconnected since I had left Houston. He had gotten fired after my sophomore year. I ended up transferring to Michigan, and this was really the first time seeing each other in three years on the field for pregame.
He and I always had a great relationship at U of H. For an 18-year old kid living thousands of miles away from home, he really took on a father figure role for me. It was really tough as the next few months transpired my sophomore year for us to still have that relationship off the field, but our working relationship ran into some major complications with what went into those decisions. Our relationship was certainly affected, so for us to reconvene on the field before the game was cool.
But I remember telling him, ‘I’m looking to move to New York after this season.’ I just did an internship with Steve Ross there last summer. I really love it there, I’m excited to move onto the business world. And he looked at me dead in the eye and said, ‘I have a feeling you’re gonna be seeing the field today.’ And I said, ‘Well, I hope. That’d be nice!’ And the way the rest of it played out was kind of ironic after that conversation.
Definitely some closure that happened that day, whether it was before the game, during the game or after the game. Just a wild, full-circle moment that you hear about guys circling games on the schedule, but I remember the schedule came out, seeing that and knowing he was there and literally circling it. And saying, ‘If there’s one game I want to play, it’s this one.’ So to be able to do it was pretty special to me.
I had him on my list to talk about, so I’m glad you brought him up in the pregame, because I didn’t know about that.