FootballSaturday, September 17, 2016
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where they were and why did this 
happen. He was livid. It was a bad 
locker room.”

Later, Falk went to the visiting 

coaches’ locker room to see Colorado 
coach Bill McCartney, who was an 
assistant at Michigan before he took 
the Colorado job.

Falk: “I went in to see him after the 

game. Of course, Bill McCartney is a 
really religious guy. Very religious. 
And I walked into the coaches’ locker 
room after the game, and I said, ‘Well 
Bill, congratulations, but that was a 
really tough loss 
for us.’ And Bill 
looked at me and he 
says, ‘Well Jon, you 
know, the Lord was 
with us today.’ And 
I looked back at 
him and said, ‘The 
Lord was with you 
today? 
Bill, 
that 

was nothing but a 
long pass.’ That’s just the way it went 
right there.”

Morrison: “My wife now, my 

girlfriend at the time, as a lot of 
people tend to do, they leave games 
early. She had no idea that we lost 
the game. I saw her back at the 
apartment, I came right home, and 
I think I got a ‘Congratulations.’ 
She obviously didn’t know what 
happened in the game.”

***

‘It’s a lifetime thing’

After one of the wildest finishes in 

college football history, the Wolverines 
still had eight more regular-season 
games to play. They fell to No. 7 in the 
poll, behind the fifth-ranked Buffaloes. 
They still had a chance for a Big Ten 
championship, but moving on from 
the devastating loss proved to be an 
arduous task.

Morrison: “I don’t know if we 

did, I’ll be honest. You go back and 
you say, we played this Notre Dame 
team and we beat them in the last 
second, and probably riding as high 
as a team could have at the time. 
We’re moving up in the ranks, we’re 
going to play this team that in our 
minds, we had them beat. But that 
only goes so far. Obviously you gotta 
finish the job.”

Moeller, 
in 
the 
following 

Tuesday’s edition of the Daily: 
“You never get over it. You’re not 
supposed to. It’s a lifetime thing.”

Falk: 
“That 
was 
such 
a 

disheartening game that it just took 
an awful lot out of our football team 
for the rest of the year.”

Moeller: “Everything in sports 

doesn’t come out your way, and 
sometimes you’ve got to live with the 
tough ones, and not let it conflict with 
your growing in the next month or 
the next two years or whatever. You 
gotta continue to grow and continue 

to want to do well.”

Without the Hail Mary, Michigan 

would have finished with its first 3-0 
non-conference record since 1986, 
preparing to take the next step beyond 
a Big Ten championship.

Rosenberg: 
“So 
that 
Hail 

Mary changed the story from a 
breakthrough moment to one of the 
worst in the team’s history.”

Guynes: “That game screwed our 

season up, honestly. We won a lot 
of games still, but I think that game 
put a funk on us as a team and it was 

such a tough week 
afterward because 
that’s all you saw. 
So obviously being 
an 
athlete, 
you 

get home, you’re 
watching 
ESPN, 

and that’s all they 
keep 
showing. 

You’re 
just 
like, 

‘Dude, let’s move 

on to something else.’ That funk 
lingered over that Michigan football 
team for that season.”

Rosenberg: “If they had just held 

on and won that, people would have 
said, ‘Is this the best team in the 
country?’ Because they would have 
accomplished more than anyone 
else. Now, you could argue that these 
things kind of even out — I mean, 
they barely won one the week before, 
and they lost that one — but to lose 
one like that, it was in the stadium, it 
was silence.”

In 
the 
following 
two 
weeks, 

Michigan beat Iowa and Michigan 
State but then welcomed No. 3 Penn 
State to Ann Arbor. Still reeling from 
the Colorado game, the Wolverines 
lost a close one, 31-24, and the Nittany 
Lions finished undefeated to win the 
Big Ten.

Morrison: “We played Penn State, 

which had a fantastic offense that 
year, probably one of the better ones 
ever, and we needed a stop late, and 
we didn’t get it. I can’t help but think 
we just didn’t have a lot of confidence 
in our ability as a team for finishing. 
You can hide that, fake it all you want, 
but I still think it had something to 
do with the way (we lost). I think we 
were a better team than an 8-4 team, 
I really do.”

Michigan’s last two losses came 

against Wisconsin and Ohio State, and 
the Wolverines finished 8-4 by beating 
Colorado State in the Holiday Bowl. 
But the two teams that beat them by 
a touchdown or less — 12-0 Penn State 
and 11-1 Colorado — ended up at Nos. 2 
and 3 in the polls, respectively.

The Buffaloes’ only loss came on 

Oct. 29 against eventual national 
champion Nebraska. The following 
spring, both teams proved their talent 
in the NFL Draft, where Colorado 
had a whopping 10 players selected — 
including Westbrook and Salaam in 
the first round — and Michigan had 
five. Wheatley, Law and offensive 

tackle Trezelle Jenkins were all first-
rounders. The miraculous play that 
connected the teams in college followed 
them for years.

Morrison: 
“Ironically 
enough, 

when I played professionally in 
Indianapolis two years later, my 
roommate was from Colorado. He 
was an offensive lineman. We were 
sitting on the couch that night, and 
he gets his rookie card or baseball 
card delivered to the house, his first 
one, and he starts reading the back. 
And it says something to the effect 
of ‘Helped Colorado beat Michigan 
on a last-second Hail Mary pass by 
leveling hard-charging linebacker 
Steve Morrison.’ I swear to God, it’s 
on his card. Couldn’t make this stuff 
up. And I’m like, ‘You had somebody 
make this. This can’t happen. We’re 
roommates now.’ That was probably 
one of the first times I got a chance 
to actually laugh about it and actually 
put it behind you.”

Most of those involved with the 

game 22 years ago did so, but all of 
them are still left with the sour taste of 
a life-changing defeat.

Tyrone 
Wheatley, 
running 

back, 1991-1994: “I was there and I 
was on the sidelines and I thought 
we had the game won. And to have a 
Detroit native come in the freaking 
building and steal one from us and 
go back to Colorado wasn’t a great 
feel. Just certain things you kind 
of carry with you and it sticks with 
you, and I didn’t play that much in 
that game. You’re just like, ‘Man, 
if I was healthy, maybe could have 
helped a little bit.’ It’s still a bad 
feeling. I think that was also a year 
that we had national contention 
aspirations and things of that such, 
so just a bad taste.”

Morrison: “God bless the Big Ten 

Network, but when that came out, 
that game was on. And people would 
call, ‘Hey, you’re on TV right now! 
And I’m like, ‘Yeah, 
OK. It’s either the 
Michigan 
State 

game 
when 
we 

lost — that, the 
Penn State game 
where we lost or 
the Colorado game. 
Which one is it? 
Because I’m not 
watching 
any 
of 

them. For a long 
time.’ ”

Madej: “We’ve had our fair 

share of great wins. I was on the 
field when Anthony Carter scored 
that touchdown against Indiana. I 
remember in the press box watching 
the catch by Desmond Howard 
against Notre Dame. Last-minute 
field goals, last-minute touchdowns, 
last-minute plays. It goes both ways. 
Sometimes you get the bear, and 
sometimes the bear gets you. And 
unfortunately, that day, the buffalo 
got us.”

Guynes: “Never been in that 

situation since then as a player. I made 
it to the (NFL) and bounced around, 
went to the CFL, NFL Europe, arena 
ball and stuff, so played a lot more 
football after U-M, but nothing to 
that magnitude of emotional ‘What 
the hell?’ And that’s all I can really 
call it is just an emotional ‘What the 
hell just happened?’ ”

In May 1995, eight months after the 

Colorado game, Moeller resigned after 
a drunken incident at a local restaurant. 
His defensive coordinator, Carr, took 
over. Michigan lost four games in 

each of Carr’s first 
two seasons before 
breaking out with 
an 
undefeated 

season and national 
championship 
in 

1997.

Asked 
if 
he 

ever thinks about 
what could have 
happened 
if 
the 

Wolverines 
had 

beaten 
Colorado, 

Moeller said, “Oh, I don’t know. Yeah, 
but they don’t erase ’em and change 
the plays very often. … Boy, if the kids 
could have gotten that one, what a 
great record that could have been, or 
a great win that could be.”

With the tailspin of the Rich 

Rodriguez and Brady Hoke years still 
more than a decade away, the “Miracle 
at 
Michigan” 
didn’t 
permanently 

stunt the team’s momentum, but 
it represented a key point in the 
trajectory of the program.

Rosenberg: “That game might 

have changed the course of Michigan 
football if you think about it. Because 
that team was really good. They 
finished 8-4, which was like the 
apocalypse at that time in Michigan’s 
history. … They lost to Penn State, 
which was one of the two best teams, 
but they were in it with them. I 
don’t know, maybe they go 10-2, or 
whatever it is, and Moeller doesn’t 
feel as stressed and doesn’t have the 
incident next May. Who knows what 
happens? … Even if the incident does 
happen, if they had a better year, 
maybe they keep him.”

The Buffaloes are back in town 

this weekend for the teams’ third 
meeting since that 1994 classic. 
McCartney retired after that season, 
and Colorado has had more than its 
share of struggle in the two decades 
since, going 117-141. The program 
maintained decent success under Rick 
Neuheisel from 1995 to 1998, but it 
has gone through seven head coaches 
since 
McCartney, 
suffered 
four 

double-digit loss seasons and not had 
a winning season since 2005.

And while both programs have 

shifted several times since they created 
a miracle, this weekend’s matchup 
brings back memories for everyone 
who stood in silent Michigan Stadium 
that day.

Falk: “That damn game lives in 

my soul. It really does. Every time 
I see Colorado, every time we play 
Colorado, I want to beat them as bad 
as I can for them to remember the 
day they beat us.”

FILE PHOTO/Daily

Linebacker Steve Morrison captained the 1994 Michigan team that lost to Colorado.

“You never get 

over it. You’re not 
supposed to. It’s 
a lifetime thing.”

“All those 

involved will 

never forget it.”

