5
TheMichiganDaily, www.michigandaily.com

into the air. Law jumped again to try 
for the interception, but Westbrook 
snatched the ball out of the air and fell 
into the end zone for the touchdown.

Jackson 
on 
the 
broadcast: 

“Stewart, with time, lets it go … 
he’s got three people down there … 
the ball is up in the air … CAUGHT! 
TOUCHDOWN! 
CAUGHT 
BY 

WESTBROOK 
FOR 
A 

TOUCHDOWN! 
INCREDIBLE!”

Westbrook, 

in the following 
Monday’s 
edition 
of 
the 

Daily: 
“I 
have 

never 
had 
a 

feeling like this 
in my life. It was 
tipped. There was 
nobody else around. It was just me 
and the football. All I had to do was 
catch it.”

Gary Moeller, Michigan head 

coach 1990-1994: “I can’t believe 
this one. That’s about what was going 
through my mind. I can’t believe this.”

Stewart: “I saw the ball go up 

in the air, and I saw this big ol’ arm 
come out of nowhere, and it was 
Michael. … I’m like, ‘This dude went 
up to get this!’ And before you know 
it, I looked to the sideline, everybody 
was running on the field. I saw Rae 
Carruth jumping in the air, and 
James Kidd. I was like, ‘Oh my God! 
We caught that!’”

Winters: “I just figured, ‘OK, I’m 

gonna take the closest guy to me, 
and he’s not catching the ball.’ So as 
I jumped up to swat the ball down, I 
can kind of see at the time someone 
coming from my right. I didn’t know 
who it was at the time, but you watch 
him and you see his side. I’m trying 
to knock the ball down and Ty was 
trying to intercept the ball, and we 
just collided shoulder pads. From 

my vision and what I always recall, 
it appeared that the ball hit right 
between our shoulder pads. We 
bumped shoulder pads, and the ball 
hit directly on our shoulder pads 
and bounced up in the air, and Mike 
Westbrook dove and caught it in the 
end zone.”

Stewart: “This is exactly how 

we draw it up. 
Literally. 
Some 

people say that. 
No, I mean, that’s 
exactly how you 
draw it up. One 
hundred percent.”

Falk: 
“For 

Kordell 
Stewart 

to throw that as 
high and as long 
as he did, you 
gotta 
give 
the 

man credit. It was a heck of a throw. 
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a guy 
throw a 70-yard pass like that. It 
was 70 yards in the air.”

Irons: “I don’t think we could 

have defended it any better, or them 
doing anything out of the ordinary. 
We practiced that play — it just was 
a fluke play, and it happened. We had 
the right defense that we wanted, and 
we executed what we were supposed 
to do. I just think he made a hell of 
a play.”

Morrison: “I was a coach for a long 

time. We always looked for a better 
way to build the mouse trap. We let 
guys behind us. You just can’t do that. 
We let a guy with a cannon of an arm 
throw a ball that still, to this day, 
I’ve not seen a more beautiful ball. I 
haven’t. It was pretty spectacular.”

Guynes: “I was probably just sitting 

there hoping to get out of here with a 
‘W.’ I don’t recall seeing it live. What I 
do recall is when it happened and I saw 
the ball in the air coming down, I was 
waiting for somebody to throw off the 
reaction. I’m hearing this roar coming 

from the Colorado sideline, and I stood 
up, and I’m like, ‘Man, they caught the 
ball.’ That’s when everything kind of 
kicked in. I stood there for a minute, 
in disbelief and shock like everybody 
else, and I just kind of sat back down 
like, ‘This just happened. These guys 
came into Michigan Stadium and stole 
one from us.’ ”

Doug 
Kanter, 
Daily 

photographer: 
“I 
remember 

everyone was just following the ball, 
and it was going toward the end zone, 
and I was just shooting, shooting, 
shooting. Photographers have this 
thing that if you saw it, then you 
missed it. I actually was shooting 
when the ball was coming down, but 
afterwards, a couple seconds later, 
I looked up and I still didn’t know 
whether he had caught it or not or 
who had caught it.”

Several reporters had already begun 

to come down from the press box to the 
concourse through the seats.

Michael Rosenberg, then Daily 

reporter, now at Sports Illustrated: 
“If you go at the wrong time, it’s a 
nightmare, right? Well, I was at the 
wrong time, because it was the end 
of the game, but there was nobody 
moving. It was a wide-open aisle.”

Rachel Bachman, then Daily 

reporter, now at the Wall Street 
Journal: “I remember walking down 
a stadium aisle from the press box, 
thinking about how I would write 
the Michigan victory. I was about 
30 rows from the field when Stewart 
launched his pass. When it became 
clear that Westbrook caught it, the 
stadium just froze.”

Falk: “I can’t overemphasize how 

disheartening it was.”

***

‘You just felt numb’

The Michigan players on the field 

stood still in shock or remained on the 
ground. Morrison put his hands on his 
head. Other players such as Law and 
free safety Stephen L. King fled the end 
zone as the Buffaloes stormed from their 
sideline to where Westbrook had landed.

Guynes: “I remember just sitting 

on the bench, because I didn’t want 
to have to run through the Colorado 
side, and they’re going nuts over 
there. … I’m taking it all in, and I’m 
not taking it all in. I’m experiencing 
it, so to speak, but it’s just not really 
registering either. … It’s like you know 
you’re there, but you’re not cognizant 
of where you’re at, so to speak.”

Morrison: “It’s disbelief, it’s shock, 

it’s all those things rolled into one. 
You can’t believe it. That’s exactly 
how I felt, and probably to this day 
still feel. You’re stunned by it.”

Winters: “I immediately knew 

that he had caught the ball, and then 
just by the reaction of the crowd. 
I immediately put my head on the 
ground. I was in awe.”

Irons: “I was on the field for a 

little bit — I was in shock, obviously 
— but I got into the locker room, and 
it was a very somber locker room. We 
all were in shock. It was horrible.”

Falk: “We were like, ‘What just 

happened here?’ And the next thing 
you know, the whole Colorado team 
came running across that field just 
running and screaming at us and 
really putting it in our face to be very 
honest with you. I 
was shocked at that 
— of course, we 
were all in shock. 
We just couldn’t 
believe 
what 

happened. We had 
them.”

Bruce 
Madej, 

Michigan 
sports 

information 
director, 
1982-

2010: 
“I 
remember 
(equipment 

manager) Bob Bland smacking the 
desk area, and me just putting my 
hand on my head, putting it down on 
the desk area. It just was one of those 
things that you can’t believe.”

Winters: “Ed Davis and Amani 

Toomer came over and kind of picked 
me up, like, ‘Hey, man, let’s get off the 
field.’ But you could see them running 
around excited, and some of their fans 
excited, and you could just hear our 
fans, they kind of gasped. Almost a 
sigh of disdain, just ‘Wow, this really 
just occurred.’ It was just quiet.”

Bachman: 
“Today 
fans 
react 

immediately: 
People 
watch 
the 

replay, curse, file out of the stadium. 
In 30 seconds, memes are up on 
social media and people at home are 
flipping channels. That day, people 
just stood there. There was no replay 
board. No one had smartphones. 
People just stared in shock. It seemed 
like even the scoreboard operator 
took minutes to put the final points 
on the board. It probably wasn’t that 

long, but the entire sequence felt 
surreal and slow.”

Jackson on the broadcast: “There 

is no time remaining. There are no 
flags on the field. Only despair for the 
maize and blue, joy and exultation for 
the Buffaloes of Colorado.”

Rosenberg: “It was not like any 

other game I’ve ever been to, except 
perhaps the Michigan State game 
last season. Just the idea that people 
were there and nobody was moving, 
and the stadium was just a traffic 
jam, especially back then, just people 
trying to get out at the time.”

Jackson on the broadcast: “It’ll 

be hard, hard, hard to find a play 
that will be remembered more than 
this one in the 1994 college football 
season. … All those who were 
involved will never forget it, either 
for the joy of it or for the pain of it.”

Slowly, the Wolverines made their 

way to the locker room as Stewart and 
the rest of the Buffaloes raced to the 
end zone to celebrate.

Madej: “All of a sudden, the 

sounds of the excitement of the 
locker room are not there. All you 
hear are helmets being thrown into 
the bin. A couple things get tossed on 
the floor. Disappointment. Disgust.”

Falk: “It was dead quiet. Nobody 

said a word. (Moeller) walked in, 
and he didn’t say anything, and he 
just looked around and said, ‘Let’s 
get the next one. Let’s start over 

again 
tomorrow.’ 

Because that’s all 
you could say. It’s 
just a real numbing 
loss. … Everybody 
got dressed and got 
out of that locker 
room about as fast 
as I’ve ever seen 
everybody out of 
the locker room.”

Moeller: 

“(There’s) 
one 
thing 
you 
don’t 

want to do, and that’s start finger-
pointing this guy, that guy. It’s just, 
‘Hey, gentlemen, this is a tough 
football team. This is a tough football 
game, and it played like that. And 
you’ve always got to be ready for all 
conditions in any game.’ ”

Winters: “Our defensive backs 

coach, Billy Harris, came in and it 
was kind of quiet. Everybody was 
kind of sitting there on their stool 
at the locker, and I can recall him 
kicking in the door and just going off. 
Cursing, blaming people for the loss, 
‘It’s your fault! You lost this game!’ 
That kind of approach for the players, 
and he went down the line. He was 
going down the line from each player, 
and then eventually Lloyd told him, 
you know, ‘Go into the coaches’ 
locker room.’ ”

(Asked what Harris said, Winters 

replied, “I don’t think you can put that 
in the paper.”)

Irons: “He was going off. He kept 

saying, ‘30 Victory,’ asking everybody 

FILE PHOTO/Daily

Tshimanga Biakabutuka scored late in the first half and totaled 81 rushing yards in the 1994 “Miracle at Michigan” game against Colorado.

“I can’t believe this 
one. That’s about 
what was going 

through my mind.”

“It’s disbelief, 
it’s shock, it’s 
all those things 
rolled into one.”

