I 0 0 4t LLOYD remembers the day he truly CARR became part of the club. It was 1995, and after .15: years of working as an assistant coach under Bo Schembechler and Gary Moeller, it was Carr's turn to be on top. The Wolverines started the season with four straight wins before losing quarterback Scott Dreisbach for the season. In their next seven games, they limped to a 4-3 record. Ohio State was coming to town. No. 2 in the country. 11-0. Led by that year's Heisman Tro- phy winner Eddie George and Biletnikoff Award winner Terry Glenn. ThoseWolverines had no chance. And that's exactly what Michigan equipment manager Jon Falk read in the Ann Arbor News, three days before that game. "Jon Falk came out toward the end of prac- tice, and he's just walking as only Jon can walk, and his head was down and he was walking extremely fast across the practice field, and he had a newspaper in his hand," Carr reminisces now, 14 years later. "And Terry Glenn, at a press conference, had made the statement that Michi- gan was nothing." Carr pauses, lets that sink in. "And so I remember at the end of practice, I took that paper out,*and I read it to our team." But Glenn hadn't bargained on Charles Wood- son, who covered him like a glove, stealing two interceptions. Or Tshimanga Biakabutuka, who rushed for an astonishing 313 yards on 37 car- ries. Or a 31-23 Michigan upset. After the postgame celebrations with the team, and after the media frenzy, Carr walked back into the locker room. "I'll never forget," he laughs, shaking his head. "Everybody had cleared out. I was in there, I had come back from the press conference - and there was Bo Schembechler. "And he gave me a big hug and he said - he said, 'I'm gonna tell you the same thing that Fritz Crisler told me after my first Ohio State game.' And I said, 'What's that?' "He says, 'Lloyd, you'll never win a bigger game than this one."' AN OLD-SCHOOL MENTALITY" Twenty years ago, then-Athletic Director Bo Schembechler fired men's basketball coach Bill Frieder after learning he was planning to leave for Arizona State following the 1989 NCAA Tournament. Schembechler didn't bother giv- ing Frieder a chance to finish the season. "A Michigan Man will coach Michigan," Schembechler famously proclaimed, right before interim coach Steve Fisher led the team to its only NCAA Championship in program his- tory. Even the most decorated Wolverines see Schembechler's decision as the quintessential example of the Michigan Man ideal, a story that barely needs explanation. But the real- ity of today's sports world is that that probably wouldn't happen now - even in Ann Arbor. "I think back then, you had more old-school coaches who lived by a different creed, and I think those coaches are almost extinct," says 1991 Heisman Trophy winner Desmond How- ard, who calls Schembechler, his former coach, both the "godfather" and the "architect" of the tradition. "A guylike that, they're notrreally con- cerned about any sort of negative backlash that they may receive from their decision. "I think these days now, some of the inmates - some of the inmates run the asylum. I think that'd be a rare occasion in today's sports world or athletic arena." Softball coach Carol Hutchins, the all-time winningest coach in Michigan history, points to the same basketball story to illustrate the tra- dition. And at the end, unprompted, she offers similar skepticism. "I don't know if Bo would work in today's world, but I think he had it right," she says. "He taught kids the right values." Deathless loyalty. Enthusiasm. Conviction. Fielding Yost's definition of those "right values" date back to the early 1900s. The idea of a Michi- gan Man is ingrained in the school's culture, but even those considered personifications of the term struggle to explain exactly what it means. "There's a lot of different strings attached," hockey coach Red Berenson says, shifting in his seat and looking a little frustrated. "I don't know if it will come out as clean cut and clear as you want. It's a moving target.' THROUGH RANOR SHINE Ron Kramer sits in the back row of the second floor of the Michigan Stadium press box, talk- ing and joking with other Wolverine legends. He doesn't often stay past halftime anymore, he says. But it's been 50 years, and he still can't stop coming back.' After hearing his story, it's clear that runs in his family. His tale seems to begin and end with athletic excellence. At Michigan from 1954 to 1956, he won nine varsity letters in football, basketball and track and field. He was a rusher, receiver, punter and kicker for the football team in the fall, the captain of the basketball team in the winter and a high jumper in the spring. With talent came accolades - his football number, 87, is one of juSt five officially retired by the program. He was a two-time football All- American, helped the Green Bay Packers win back-to-back championships during a 10-year NFL career and is considered to be one of the best athletes in Michigan history. But that isn't what he talks about today. If you want-to look at a real Michigan Man, he says, look at his mother. Kramer's parents devoted their lives to col- lege football, traveling to all of Kramer's games during his collegiate playing days. When his father passed away, his mother learned to drive a car so she could keep coming to Michigan Sta- dium. Each week, she brought an apple to give to the policeman who directed traffic at the cor- ner of Stadium and Main. Just so he could have a little bite to eat, Kramer says now. For 241 consecutive games, Adeline Kramer sat in section 2, row 83. Her last year at a Michigan football game was 1987, the year before she died. But Kramer vis- ited that seat a few weeks ago, and the fans in section 2, row 83 still remember his mother. In the 1960s, Kramer and a few of his Detroit Lions teammates went to a game against Wis- consin at the Big House. It started raining mid- way through the contest, so they walked back to the motor home they had taken to the game. Michigan booster Hoot McInerney told the group he was ready to leave. "I said,'Sorry, Hoot.' " Kramer says."He said, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'Mother stays 'til the end of the game.' "So here's all these big, tough football players, and we had to wait 'til the end of the ballgame. Because my mother always stood out there after the game was over and she said, 'Good game, boys,' and she always greeted them." MAKING THE TRADITION YOUR OWN Carol Hutchins used to be a Spartan. And every year, someone makes sure she doesn't for- get that. "To this day, the week of the Michigan State game, people ask me who I'm rooting for. And I'm just appalled," she says, sitting in an office with a giant, stuffed wolverine on top of the bookshelf. "I always tell them, I always root for Michigan State tocome in second. "But I'm just appalled people ask that ques- tion. To me, it's a stupid question." She gestures to her navy blue warm-ups. "Clearly. I'm blue. What part of me looks green?" It's a dumb question because it would be like asking if Bo Schembechler had still cheered for Miami (Ohio) over Michigan. Hutchins, a two-sport Michigan State student-athlete, has invested 26 years building a program from the ground up in Ann Arbor. It doesn't matter if you come here from the outside, she says. The real issue is whether you take ownership of the tra- dition. And she uses a example from East Lansing to prove that point. "Years ago, Nick Saban was the football coach up there," she says, referring to the nomadic coach who, in the past 10 years, has coached at Michigan State, Louisiana State, the NFL's Miami Dolphins and Alabama. "And I used to say to my former colleagues and friends, that's See MICHIGAN MAN, Page 7B