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On Christmas Day, 1980, the Michigan football team boarded a plane at Detroit’s Metro Airport for a four-hour flight to Los Angeles.
Michigan’s coach, Bo Schembechler, was carrying some extra baggage. The upcoming Rose Bowl against Washington would be his eighth bowl game and sixth trip to Pasadena. He was still searching for his first bowl victory, with his Rose Bowl record reading as follows:
- Jan. 1, 1970: loss to USC, 10-3.
- Jan. 1, 1972: loss to Stanford, 13-12.
- Jan. 1, 1977: loss to USC, 14-6.
- Jan. 1, 1978: loss to Washington, 27-20.
- Jan. 1, 1979: loss to USC, 17-10.
“So we’ve lost them all,” Schembechler told the Detroit Free Press that year. “A football game is a football game. I don’t think about it as much as you guys in the press do.”
Schembechler’s players knew better. Michigan’s aim in those days was the Rose Bowl, not the national championship. For all of Schembechler’s success in the Big Ten, Michigan’s postseason failures had become a source of embarrassment.
“Did it affect him? Absolutely,” said George Lilja, an All-America center who played in three Rose Bowls at Michigan from 1977 to 1980. “Every interview he was in for how many years, the first thing was, ‘You’ve never won a bowl game, never won a Rose Bowl. How does that feel?’ It’s the monkey on your back.”
To finally win a Rose Bowl, Schembechler had to change his ways. He’d traditionally treated bowl preparation like a second training camp, putting players through grueling practices and even two-a-days. By the time the game arrived, players were worn out and ready to go home after more than two weeks in California.
Like Harbaugh, Bo Schembechler had a run of poor postseason performances. (Focus on Sport / Getty Images)
In 1980, Schembechler decided the Wolverines would stay in Ann Arbor until Christmas and practice in their brand new indoor facility, Oosterbaan Field House. Each day, Lilja said, Schembechler would check the forecast in Pasadena and set the temperature inside the facility 10 degrees warmer to prepare his players for the California weather.
“Bo tried to cram as much hard-hitting football into those four weeks as he could,” Lilja said. “By the time it hit my senior year, he realized we needed to be fresh for that game.”
Jim Harbaugh counts Schembechler among his biggest influences and has modeled modern-day Michigan on many of Schembechler’s principles. Michigan’s run of dominance in the Big Ten, including a 29-1 record against conference opponents the past three seasons, is reminiscent of Schembechler at his peak. Harbaugh’s record in bowl games, including six consecutive losses at Michigan, mirrors Schembechler’s, too.
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After back-to-back losses in the College Football Playoff, Harbaugh faces the same challenge his former coach faced in 1980. Michigan is playing in the Rose Bowl for the first time since the 2006 season, facing an Alabama team that is 6-1 in CFP semifinals. The Wolverines will need to play their best game to advance, something that didn’t happen in CFP losses to Georgia and TCU in 2021 and 2022.
Like his former coach, Harbaugh likes to maximize every minute of practice time. He tweaked his approach to bowl preparation this year, interspersing high-intensity practices with more walkthroughs and mental repetitions in hopes of keeping Michigan fresh for the Rose Bowl.
“It gives us the opportunity to recover, take care of our bodies,” defensive back Mike Sainristil said. “When we do have those slower tempo days, the ability to be fully locked in, be into the walkthrough, pay attention to the finer details and be there 100 percent mentally, has definitely been helping us.”
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Comparing bowl records across eras is bound to produce some incongruities. The Big Ten didn’t allow multiple teams to play in bowl games until 1975, meaning the stakes were much higher in Schembechler’s day. Harbaugh’s first five bowl games at Michigan — including his only victory, a 41-7 win against Florida in the Citrus Bowl to cap the 2015 season — were consolation prizes after the Wolverines lost to Ohio State.
In the bowl games that matter, it’s a two-game sample. Two years ago, the Wolverines faced a ferocious and motivated Georgia team in the Orange Bowl and lost 34-11. Little was expected of that Michigan team before the season, and players admitted afterward that they were just happy to be in the CFP.
Last year’s team rolled into the Fiesta Bowl at 13-0 with designs on taking the next step. The Wolverines were favored by a touchdown against TCU but shot themselves in the foot with two pick-sixes and a fumble at the goal line and lost 51-45.
“It’s easy to look back and be like, ‘We must have not prepared well for the game,’” defensive coordinator Jesse Minter said. “I think that’s a nonsense thing to say. That would discredit our players last year and their mentality. But we certainly didn’t play at our best. You look at it and try to figure out why. You try to figure out the things you can do leading up to the game. I give coach (Harbaugh) a lot of credit for putting a lot of thought into it.”
Michigan players have pushed back on any suggestion they took TCU lightly. If anything, there’s a sense that Michigan tried to do too much leading up to CFP the past two years.
The long layoff between the Big Ten Championship Game and the CFP makes it possible to cram in far more preparation than a normal game week will allow. The past two years, the Wolverines erred on the side of being over-prepared, quarterback J.J. McCarthy said, and weren’t as sharp as they wanted to be. This year, Michigan eased off the mental grind to avoid cluttering players’ minds with too much information.
“The last couple years, I felt like we fell victim to paralysis by over-analysis, getting over-detailed with too many things and over-thinking things,” McCarthy said. “This first couple weeks, we took things kind of light, easing into things. It’s been kind of fresh every single day.”
Scouting an opponents’ tendencies before a bowl game can have diminishing returns, Minter said. With nearly a month to prepare, teams have ample time to self-scout and mix in change-ups to confuse the defense. Rather than banking on certain looks, Minter said Michigan is approaching the Rose Bowl like a “training camp game,” emphasizing core pillars and preparing to adjust on the fly.
“I think it’s a fine line,” Minter said. “Personally, I tried to learn from that from last year. Tommy Rees and Nick Saban, they have the same amount of time. It’s a balance of looking at yourself and some of your own tendencies and situational stuff, looking at them and their tendencies, and also understanding that they’re doing the same thing.”
Jim Harbaugh has also adjusted his team’s preparation in advance of the CFP. With it lead to a win? (Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)
After years of postseason failures, Schembechler’s team finally got it right in 1980. Led by wide receiver Anthony Carter, running back Butch Woolfolk and a stifling defense, Michigan beat Washington 23-6 to give Schembechler his first bowl victory. Afterward, the Michigan band serenaded fans in the end zone while Schembechler chomped on a victory cigar.
“You could see it in Bo’s face,” Lilja said. “We all sang ‘The Victors’ in the locker room after the game. The way he was hugging everybody and congratulating everybody, you knew it was a huge first win for him in that bowl game.”
After seven losses, Schembechler’s postseason breakthrough finally arrived that night in Pasadena. Harbaugh is still waiting for his.
(Top photo: Ric Tapia / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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