0
0
Three straight losses spells major concern for the 2010 Michigan
football team, with the most recent defeat coming at the hands of
Penn State quarterback Matt McGloin, who made his first career
start last weekend. It's getting late in the season, and Michigan
is desperate for its sixth win - and bowl eligibility - for the first
time in three years. Will it come against Illinois?
2010 Schedule
Connecticut (Sept. 4): Denard ran all over
UConn. He proved he could pass the ball too,
and Rich Rod's hot seat began to cool down.
Iowa (Oct. 16): Michigan State was no fluke -
Big Ten defenses can find a way to stuttdown
the Wolverines' potent offense, Iowa did, too.
Daily Football Beat
Nicole Auerbach, Ryan Kartje, Tim Rohan and Joe Stapleton Notre Dame (Sept. 11): After UConn, the ND Penn State (Oct. 30): A former walk-on making
game was Denard's encore on steroids, with a his first career start at QB? Apparently, that's all
game-winning drive. PSU needed to beat Michigan in Happy Valley.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
BREAKDOWN: In Illinois, the Wolverines
get their first taste of a dual-threat QB. Well,
besides their own that is.
THEY CALL HIM SHOELACE: The story of a
mother, a father and their son, the Wolverines'
sensational signal caller, Denard Robinson.
Cover photo illustration by Max Collins
Center spread design by Marissa McClain and Sarah Squire
Massachusetts (Sept. 18): Michigan squeaked Illinois (Nov. 6): Last year's Illinois game was
bythe Minutemen, winning by less than a touch- IU h1 the one that broke the camel's back. Michigan
down. A win is a win is a win. [ hopes to avoid a repeat of that this time around.
BowlingGreen(Sept.25): Michigan piled on the Purdue (Nov. 13): There isn't much hope for
points against the Falcons, somewhat curing the the Boilermakes this year after losing basically
Massachusetts hangover. everyone to injury. Nothing's a'W' now though.
Indiana (Oct. 2): The Wolverines survived their Wisconsin (Nov. 20): Michigan has had some
first Big Ten test - but defense was once again trouble stopping good running backs. Bad news:
suspect. Denard saved the day with 494 yards. Wisconsin has two.
MichigantState (Oct. 9): The game itself didn't Ohio State (Nov. 27): With the injury to iT
live up to the hype, due to enard's three INT.mIt Floyd this week, Terrelle Pryor and OSU might
was over by halftime, State's third in a row. manage to score on every possession
Denard Robinson stood
at home plate, looking KENNY BROWN
down at his red running DENARD'S H S TRACK
spikes. They used to be -HST
red, at least. After years COACH
of racing, they were more
a mix of brown and dark-
er brown. But he'd never "H e always runs
get new ones. He was too
superstitious, and the faster when he's
holes aren't that bad, he
told everyone who asked. chasing someone."
He felt the dirt of
Deerfield's baseball dia-
mond below his spikes.
After so many practices,
it made no difference to
him that he wasn't on an
actualtrack. His back was
turned to the other mem-
bers of his state champion
4x100 relay team, and he
looked straight into the
eyes of his coach, Kenny
Brown. He was ready.
So Brown smacked a pair of 2x4s together to simulate the
sound of pistol fire, and Denard spun around on his heels. The
coach knew that without a headstart, the others didn't stand a
chance - he was too fast.
Denard remembered as he ran what coach Brown had told
him: drive your elbows, keep control, stay focused. As he
gained ground, he heard him again. Elbows, control, focus.
Elbows, control, focus.
He was gaining on Witty, and the record continued to spin
in his head. Elbows, control, focus.
"He always runs faster when he's chasing someone," Brown
says.
At Deerfield High School, speed is power. If you have it, kids
respect you for it. Students would challenge other students to
race between classes and after school. It's how Dorothea and
Thomas Sr. met. It was how a lot of people met around here.
Brown wouldn't let Denard forget that this was just the
beginning though.
He slipped inspirational clich6s in conversation with
Denard at every opportunity. Brown is all about pride, and
most importantly pride in being a teammate. The book Team-
mates Matter sits in a drawer in his desk, and his teams have
all seen it.
on the back wall of his classroom, a poster reads: Attitude
is a little thing that makes a BIG DIFFERENCE. Photos have
accumulated around the message over the years. Now, four
newspaper clippings and two pictures fill up almost a quarter
of the wall - Denard is in all of them.
Denard may have left Deerfield Beach, but the coaching
never stopped from Brown. He still calls his star sprinter
every week, once before Michigan's games and once after to
talk about the result.
The lessons in humility shine through in these conversa-
tions: Denard whispered the good news about being named
Michigan's quarterback, to protect the feelings of his team-
mates who were presumably within earshot.
Brown still jokes with him about "getting all Hollywood,"
and after Michigan's win over Notre Dame, he joked that he
heard the Irish's defense was bad. Denard had demolished
them for 500 yards.
He still makes Denard chase for it.
"Stay tuned for next week, Coach," Robinson told him.
Twenty yards or so away from the tent, Dorothea Robinson
seems tobe looking for something.
She's been pacing in the driveway behind the tailgate's
final row of chairs for much of the first quarter, and now that
the Wolverines trail 21-7 in the second quarter, her pacing
becomes more intense.
Still, she remains silent. After Denard throws an intercep-
i
tion, his fourth in two games, she stands calm at the back of
group, oddly unfazed by her son's mistake, unlike the rest of
her family. If only she could calm her son down.
"He's getting anxious again," Thomas Sr. says, still staring
at the television.
Suddenly, she stops watching. She walks out to the curb
and talks to the children who aren't watching the game. If
she sticks around, watches her baby struggling, she's bound
to burst. They've invested so much in him, like they have with
all seven of their kids, and she knows how hard he's worked.
Denard's aunt Mary Louise leans over, "She's always so
nervous," she says, gesturing toward Dorothea, who's fiddling
with the spread on the food table.
It's halftime now and the family begins digging into the
potato salad and fried chicken, just outside of the tent. "They
can't play that conservative with Shoelace," Kent says angrily,
stomping toward the rest of the group outside of the tent.
But Dorothea just watches as the party eats, looks back
toward the television and crosses her arms. As the second half
starts, she stops pacing and her eyes fixate on the television,
and it seems different this time, as if she's convinced herself
to watch. She smiles slightly and starts to react with the rest
of her family. She stays calm at first, but as Denard runs for a
first down, she charges into the center of the tailgate, "Go!"
she yells, above the noise of the rest of the group.
They knows her outbreak has been building, ready to bub-
ble over. She recoils to the back of the group and continues
STAFF PICKS
The Daily football writers do their best
to predict, against the spread, what
happens in the 2010 football season.
Lee Quackenbush
Joe Men's Glee Club
Stapleton President
to watch. But as she looks on with the same frozen, solemn
face, something changes. He's hit - and hit hard. The rest of
the Michigan offense heads back to the huddle, but some are
congregated around the ball, around Denard, who's still lying
there. He's not getting up. Thirty seconds pass and he's still
down.
"Come on baby, get up!" Denard's aunt Mary Joyce shouts
at the television.
"He's going to get up. He's alright," Rose, his grandmother,
says.
From behind the group, Dorothea speaks up. Her voice is
subdued, but with an edge. She's giving him an order.
"He better get up," she says.
The group quiets down. They don't know what else to think
They're all wondering what's wrong. Is it serious?
Her son was never really injured in high school. It was just
a bruise here, a sore muscle there. But now he's hurt all the
time, he's always in pain. What's going on? Can he keep get-
ting back up?
She can only stare at the screen while coaches and trainers
surround her son. When he was growing up, she was always
hovering. She barely let him ride with his peewee team 200
miles up the road to Sarasota. Now, he's across the country,
hurting, and she can't help.
"I know he just wants to get in so bad," she says.
Denard continued to grow, kept getting better, moving from
dragging a tire on the pavement to the baseball diamond track
practices to the Friday night lights of Broward County. In
two years as Deerfield's quarterback, coach Art Taylor drilled
a mantra into Denard and his teammates, like they were hit
troops. He called, they responded on command.
"A man is determined by how he handles..."
"Adversity," they'd respond.
It was the lodestar of Taylor's teams. It was something Tay-
lor made Denard understand in his junior year of high school,
as life was about to reinforce a familiar lesson.
The night of the Florida state semifinals, Denard looked
across the line of scrimmage at the titans of Broward County
football - Miami Northwestern, the No. 1 high school team in
the nation. He was on fire though. He knew it. Everyone knew
it. Two minutes remained and his team led by three, Now, on
fourth down, everything he'd worked for was just one yard
away - one yard to put away the game.
They had it in the bag. Just one more yard and they're on
their way to the state finals. Taylor sent him the call: quarter-
back sneak, up the middle. It was his play, the one he had called
for himself so many times in peewee.
But he snapped the ball, and everything collapsed. He ran
into a brick wall and couldn't push forward anymore. He
had failed. Turnover on
downs. He walked off the
ART TAYLOR field furious, a failure.
DENARD'S H. S. Jacory Harris, North-
western's quarterback
FOOTBALL COACH marched his team down
the field on a two-min-
ute, 99-yard drive. The
'A man is win would've been leg-
endary. But it was gone.
determinted by A few days later, Denard
, hadn't said much. Taylor
howhe hnGdes.-- called him into his office
to go over the film, but he.-
could barely watch.
You should've looked
before the snap, Taylor
told him. He saw then
that the right side was
wide open. His heart
sank.
Denard stormed out of
the room.
He had failed. But he
See SHOELACE, Page 8
TheMichiganDaily, www.michigandaily.com 7-
Nicole
Auerbach
I
Michigan (-1.5) vs. Illinois
No.1 Oregon (-28.5) vs. Washington
No. 2 Auburn (NS) vs. Chattanooga
No.3 TCU (-4.5) at No.5 Utah
No.4 Boise State (-27) vs. Hawaii
No. 6 Alabama (-6) at No.10 Louisiana St.
No.7 Nebraska(-17) at Iowa State
No.8 Oklahoma (-6) at Texas A&M
No. 9 Wisconsin (-20) at Purdue.
No.12 Missouri(-7)at Texas Tech
No. 13 Stanford (-7.5) vs. No. 15 Arizona
No.14 Michigan State (-23) vs. Minnesota
No.16 Iowa (-17) at Indiana
No.17 Oklahoma St. (-6.5) vs. No. 21 Baylor
No. 18 Arkansas (+3) at No.19 So. Carolina
No. 22 Virginia Tech (-15) vs. Georgia Tech
No. 23 Nevada (-13) at Idaho
No. 24 Florida State (-7) vs. North Carolina
No. 25 NC State (+4) at Clemson
Northwestern (NS) at Penn State
Last week
Overall record
Illinois
Oregon
Auburn
Utah
Boise State
Alabama
Nebraska
Oklahoma
Wisconsin
Missouri
Stanford
Michigan State
Iowa
Baylor
Arkansas
Georgia Tech
Nevada
Florida State
Clemson
Northwestern
11-5-3
101-66-7
Ryan
Kartje
Michigan
Oregon
Auburn
TCU
Boise State
Alabama
Nebraska
Oklahoma
Wisconsin
Missouri
Arizona
Michigan State
Iowa
Oklahoma St.
South Carolina
Georgia Tech
Nevada
Florida State
NC State
Penn State,
9-7-3
89-78-7
Tirn
Rohan -
Michigan
Oregon
Auburn
TCU
Boise State
Alabama
Nebraska
Texas A&M
Wisconsin
Missouri
Arizona
Michigan State
Iowa
Oklahoma St.
Arkansas
Virginia Tech
Nevada
North Carolina
NC State
Penn State
8-8-3
88-79-7
Illinois
Oregon
Auburn
Utah
Boise State
Alabama
Nebraska
Texas A&M
Wisconsin
Missouri
Stanford
Michigan State
Iowa
Baylor
Arkansas
Virginia Tech
Nevada
Florida State
Clemson
Northwestern
9-7-3
95-72-7
Michigan
Oregon
Auburn
TCU
Hawaii
Alabama
Nebraska
Oklahoma
Wisconsin
Missouri
Stanford
Michigan State
Iowa
Baylor
South Carolina
Virginia Tech
Nevada
Florida State
BC State
Penn State
10-6-3
46-31-5
2 FootballSaturday, November 6, 2010