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