I invite anyone from the Big Ten head office, Jim Delaney himself, to come out to Chez Knapp for a discussion on this one. I'll provide the beer & chips, they just gotta show up. Give me 30 minutes and we'll put a stop to this nonsense.
I get that we weren't Big Ten members in 1997, and Michigan is one of the foundational pillars of the conference. That's great.
But right's right and wrong's a shitass, as my grandfather used to say.
The facts, gleaned from past conversations about this very topic:
Jeff Sagarin's final 1997 rankings had Nebraska at #1, followed by 11-1 Florida St. at #2, 10-2 Florida at #3 and 12-0 Michigan at #4.
Nebraska and Michigan played roughly the same strength of schedule in Sagarin's rankings, but we throttled Sagarin's #5 Tennessee while Michigan barely beat #8 Wazzoo.
It's pretty simple. Nebraska played the #3 team in the country, Tennessee, with Peyton Manning, Peerless Price, Terry Fair, Jamal Lewis and Trey Teague, and a host of other future NFL stars on their roster.
We
destroyed them.
The Big Ten
ducked out of the national championship game - because the Big Ten and Pac-10 felt the Rose Bowl was more important than joining the Bowl Alliance. In their little Rose Bowl game with everything on the line, they barely beat Ryan Leaf and.... nobody else.
No other star or even decent player was on that Washington State roster. And Michigan barely eked out a win, and they claim their title was "better?"
They can keep their little 11th-grade shop class wooden plaque that says "National Champions" on it. It's a bone we can throw a team that hasn't won anything of significance in 70 years.
We'll take the giant crystal trophy, though. That's the real trophy, the trophy the real champ gets, and it's sitting in our trophy case as I type this. I'll go down to the stadium and take a picture of it if this writer wants to see what a real trophy looks like.
The 1998 Rose Bowl - the one in which Michigan won their "National Championship," didn't even end without controversy. Leaf was driving Washington State down for a final throw into the end zone, the ball was placed at the Michigan 26 yard line, and Leaf got the team to the line to kill the clock.
In some bizarre clock fiasco, Leaf's spike took the full two seconds - a near impossibility - and the game was declared over.
Let's contrast that to the 1998 Orange Bowl against that crazy-talented Tennessee team, which was all-but-decided at halftime (we had an 11-point lead) and was FOR SURE over midway through the third quarter when we scored 14 more. Manning got his token touchdown in the third quarter, and got pulled when we put the game away with a third TD in the quarter.
That's what pissed me off so much about the candy-asses in the Big Ten back in the 1990s. Their damned Rose Bowl was SOOOOO important that they couldn't join the Bowl Coalition, so that aural vomit purveyor Howard didn't get the chance to prove on the field they had earned their 1997 National Championship.
Because I will guara-and-GODDAM-tee you that Woodson would have filled once, maybe twice, on the Option before developing an injury or simply being in "the wrong position" the rest of the game.
That skinny runt wouldn't have fared well trying to tackle Ahman Green. Green puts a shoulder into him once and that's the last tackle Woodson would have made that game. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he would have tried to tackle Frost twice before giving up.
He gets half a share of a "National Championship" and Michigan gets a nice little High School shop class quality wooden plaque for ducking the Huskers and cowering off to the Rose Bowl. And he and they are welcome to it.
We'll take our Sears trophy and our crystal football.
You know, the REAL trophy.
It's one of these. Sorry, we have so many I forget which one was for 1997.
