M' sports: You never really know 0 unny thing about college sports s, you never really know. Just when it looks as if the signs all point in the same direction - to anoth- er four-loss season, say, as was the widespread forecast for Michigan's football team at this time last year - they have a way of surprising you with a U-turn. Just when you think the script has already been penned - poof The dreaded rebuilding year is rewritten *o Michigan's second national hockey title in three years. You never really know. You can't, not when you're talking about a group of athletes barely old enough to vote. Not when they're also learning to live away from home, wash their own laundry and even, on occasion, make an appear- ance in class. They aren't pros. You never know what might happen. That's why college sports are special. hat's why, in particular, a year like the past one - in which Michigan's foot- ball and hockey teams won national titles, as everyone knows, and six other teams (soccer, softball, field hockey, men's JIM cross country, OSE women's track ose and women's Beef swimming) won Big Ten titles, which nobody knows - is more, special than most. It was an unprecedented year for Michigan, a year in which a campus rallied around team after team and was rewarded with more sports success than in any other year in recent memory. q The best part about it? Easy. It was ii so unexpected. Consider what hap- pened in the fall. Even the truest of maize-and-bluebloods had to admit, last August, that the outlook was less than rosy for a group of Wolverines that lost four games for four straight years. The schedule was a mountain, we said; the quarterback was a mouse. Week after week, as the team contin- ued to surprise everyone - even its staunchest fans - the anticipation lilt, and the frenzy on campus grew with it. By December, the schedule had been beaten; the quarterback had grown into a hero and a national celebrity. And Michigan students - the ones not on the field - were loving it. It was an excitement so contagious that at one point it led University President Lee Bollinger - a former law school dean who's as academic and 4hel-minded as they come - to throw n his doors and invite a postgame street party into his house. The presi- dential carpet may have been soiled, but it was worth it. Soon after, the men's basketball team (an exciting team, if not a consistent one) got in on the action, springing to life to win the first-ever Big Ten Tournament. The Wolverines were as hot as anyone in the country, and it looked, it seemed, it had to be, that they ere poised to make a big run in the AA tourney. They didn't. They lost. Just like that. Careers were ended, fans were stunned. So it works both ways. You never really know. And just a few weeks later, as Red Berenson's hockey team - one year removed from the graduation of its most heralded class ever - completed ai improbable, impractical, seemingly possible run to the NCAA champi- onship, that frenzy was back. The fans were beside themselves with excite- ment. The campus was alive. And why? Because nobody expected it. Nobody thought it could happen. Even after it happened, it was hard to believe. It represented all that was great about college athletics. You never know. And that is why, as we head to Ann Arbor - some, for the first time, others, for one last time - ~can look forward to the coming r sports with optimism. The football team adds to the mix the best group of freshmen in the nation; the hockey team returns most of last year's title team. The men's basket- ball team looks like it might be in some serious trouble, with a depleted squad and little help on the way - but then again, you never know. So go to a football game at the Big *use. Go to a hockey game at Yost. Or, if you need a quiet couple hours and you're sick of the library, got to Crisler and catch a basketball game. Even if you've done it all before, some- thing will sneak up on you. Something will surprise you. Something always does at this level. UIte£ktigun 3thzlg 4 NEW STUDENT EDITION , E SECTION SEPTEMBER 8, 1998 Football wins first title after 50-year wait By Nicholas J. Cotsonka Daily Sports Writer PASADENA, Calif. Long after the trophy has tar- nished and this newspaper has yellowed, tales will be told with chest-bursting pride of these Michigan Wolverines and this Rose Bowl, of this team's character and its comebacks, of the emotional energy shared by those lucky enough to behold the marvelous magic made on New Year's Day. The greatest football season in school history ended here as the rosy twilight glinted off the San Gabriel foothills. Michigan's 118th team won the 84th Rose Bowl, 21-16, and finished No. 1. Nothing can spoil it. Not a controversy about how the game ended, with Washington State begging for one more second, one more play and one more gasp of life. Not a split decision among the voters, who awarded half of the nation- al championship.to Nebraska by a minuscule margin. No, nothing can spoil this. Nothing can top this. Nothing could quell the crowd's cheers, even a half-hour after the game, when the fans were still chanting with the band, "WE'RE NO. 1!" "I will cherish this game, this university, for the rest of my life," said senior quarterback Brian Griese, who was named the game's most valuable player. "You have opportunities in life, and those who stand out are the ones who take advan- tage of those opportunities. It's just sweet for us to capitalize on an opportunity to make history." The Wolverines are the winningest program in the NCAA and won their 32nd Big Ten championship this past season, but they finished 12-0 for the first time ever to win their first national championship since 1948. They consider it their 11 th national championship; time may consider it their most unlikely. When the season began, recovering from four consecutive four-loss seasons seemed daunting enough. An unblemished record and a national championship weren't in the picture. "If you would have told me then," defensive end Glen Steele said, "I would have laughed." After all, Michigan didn't win a national championship in coaching legend Bo Schembechler's 21-year era of eminence. Bo never went 12-0. Though he ended up emerging from Schembechler's shadow, standing alone in the bright, California sun as the winner of four of the five major coach of the year awards, Michigan coach Lloyd Carr's mission simply had been to silence the critics who had hounded him since his hiring three years ago. "Nobody gave us a chance to be in the Rose Bowl, let alone win the national title,' said all-purpose star Charles Woodson, the Wolverines' game-breaker who became the first primarily defensive player to win the Heisman Trophy this past season. "Everybody thought we were going to go 8- 4 again. We played hard every week to get to this position. We all felt we could go undefeated; we just had to go out and do it." They went out and did it the way they had all season - by doing what no one but themselves thought they could. Griese, a one-time walk-on who had lost his starting job and rode the bench a year ago, threw his longest two passes of the season for touchdowns. Both were to wide receiver Tai Streets, who hadn't caught a ball in three of his last four games because his fingers, two of which were dislocated, wouldn't let him. And when it was over, they knew it would never be this good again. They walked off the field, their faces flickering in front of flash bulbs, glittering with triumphant tears. Having overcome so much, emotion overcame them. "We won all the major awards, the Heisman Trophy, coach of the year," said senior co-captain Eric Mayes, whose knee injury ended his career in October but couldn't keep him out of uniform for his final game - and his finest hour - as a Wolverine. "We're undefeated, ranked No. 1 ... this may be the single greatest season ever, in college football history." WARREN ZINN/Daily On Jan. 1, 1998, tight end Mark Campbell exalted Michigan's Rose Bowl victory with pride. After all, he and his teammates had just done the near- Impossible by Michigan standards - they won the national championship. The Wolverines' 21-16 victory over Washington State secured the title. In surrising stle hockey captures second nationatitle in three tries By Pranay Reddy Daily Sports Writer BOSTON - With the score dead- locked at two goals apiece between Michigan and Boston College in the NCAA Championship game, Michigan assistant coach Mel Pearson approached the dry-erase board hang- ing on the wall and scrawled two words - deja vu. Pearson was referring to the 1996 title game, in which forward Brendan to give the Wolverines another 3-2 vic- tory and their ninth NCAA Championship in school history on April 4 at the FleetCenter in Boston. Deja vu - all over again. "When we finally won it (in 1996), it was a monkey off everyone's back at Michigan," Berenson said. "This game, we shouldn't have been here, we shouldn't have won - yet we did. And it's an even greater feeling." Langfeld's goal was set up by a pass eral occasions during overtime, includ- ing two pipe-knocking shots on the net. "If a few bounces would have gone our way it would have been a different game," Boston College forward Marty Reasoner said. "Sometimes you don't get those bounces." Although the victory eerily remind- ed many of Michigan's championship victory in 1996, this past season's Wolverines are far from similar. While that team was led by sea- fz __________________________________________________