The Last 2 Seconds Make Michigan No. 1

Michigan won the first Rose Bowl football game, in 1902, before a crowd of 8,000, when the opposing team’s captain begged for mercy with eight minutes remaining and the score Michigan 49, Stanford 0. The result was so unpopular, the Tournament of Roses committee replaced football for several years with polo, chariot races and a race between a camel and an elephant.

Michigan won the 84th Rose Bowl game on Thursday, before a crowd of 101,219, when the opposing team’s quarterback could do nothing to stop the clock, with the score Michigan 21, Washington State 16. And that’s the way it ended, with the Wolverines becoming college football’s undefeated, undisputed national champions.

The game? Not Pasadena’s best ever.

The ending? As good as it gets.

“We had to fight to the last second,” said Michigan’s senior quarterback, Brian Griese, who was voted the game’s outstanding player.

Make that the last two seconds. Washington State was a mere 26 yards from the Michigan end zone when a referee came waving his arms, indicating that time had expired. Cougar players stood by, helplessly. Their fans did the same, in disbelief, as the final 0:02 ticked off the clock. Michigan’s fans stormed the field, to hail the victors.

Washington State hadn’t been in a Rose Bowl game for 67 years. It hadn’t won one since 1916, when William “Lone Star” Dietz coached the team in a silk hat, a Prince Albert cutaway coat, striped pants and yellow gloves, and let his players earn $100 per man working each morning as extras in a Hollywood movie.

To take this long and come this close, it had to be a painful experience. At least one of the losing team’s star players did his best to keep a stiff upper lip, however.

“There are no losers over here,” said the Cougar quarterback, Ryan Leaf.

As if to prove it, the 21-year-old put a cigar in his mouth after the game, on the field, and posed for photographs with his family from Great Falls, Mont.

Nine seconds remained when Leaf called a “hook and ladder” play in the huddle. The ball was at the Washington State 48. Leaf threw a short pass to his tight end, Love Jefferson. As the seconds disappeared, 0:08, 0:07, Jefferson, a junior from Garden Grove, was able to lateral the ball to teammate Jason Clayton, who took off running.

Clayton was finally caught at the Michigan 26. But he didn’t get out of bounds. And the Cougars were out of timeouts. The clock was stopped at 0:02, to move the chains for a first down. Leaf and his teammates scrambled to line up in time for one last snap.

They couldn’t.

“Two seconds,” said Washington State’s coach, Mike Price. “Two little seconds.”

Price’s face looked nearly as ashen as it had during the days leading to the game, when he was stricken with flu and confined to his hotel. A victory would have been his 100th as a collegiate coach.

It could easily have happened. Washington State scored first--the school’s first points in a Rose Bowl since that 1916 victory over Brown. And early in the second half, the Cougars still held the advantage, 13-7.

But the game turned on the throwing arm of Griese, whose father, Bob, is in the Rose Bowl’s Hall of Fame and was in Thursday’s broadcast booth for ABC-TV. In accepting the MVP award after passing for three touchdowns, Brian Griese said, “I never wanted to be part of the limelight. I only wanted to be part of the team.”

This is Michigan football’s first national championship since the 1948 season.

Everything went as well as could be expected for the visitors from Ann Arbor. The weather back home was 20 degrees at kickoff; in Pasadena, it was a satisfying 70. The sky was powder blue and the champions wore blue and maize.

2 From the time Michigan’s marching band stepped onto the field led by Ramon S. Johnson, a drum major from Downey High, the day was everything Michigan’s followers wanted it to be. Only in the final, fateful seconds did the school’s first undefeated season since 1948 threaten to slip away and spoil the party.

“It went right down to the wire, just like we thought it would,” said Michigan’s coach, Lloyd Carr.

His players held hands on the sideline, watching Washington State’s last mad scramble to line up.

Leaf took a snap from center. He flung the ball to the turf.

Too late.

“Those were the longest two seconds of my life,” said Michigan’s quarterback, Griese.

They were two seconds neither team would probably soon forget.

* TICKET TROUBLE: Michigan boosters have to pay extra to get into Rose Bowl. B1

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