'Nothing Happened And I'm Furious About It'

Fifty-six to seven.

Fifty-six to seven.

I want to tell the audience something before we start. I had a whole thing written for today. I came in Sunday, I sat down, I wrote out a whole thing, and I'm not going to be able to use any of it.

Use it.

I can't use it, the thing was for if it went badly. Or if it was close. I had two pages here. I had the bar, remember the bar, please beat Grambling normally, that was the bar, and I had a version where they cleared it and a version where they didn't, and the version where they didn't was, honestly, that was the better piece of writing.

Of course it was.

And then they went out and beat Grambling. Normally. And now I've got a sheet of paper and nothing on the other side of it.

We could talk about the football game.

The football game's over, Marcus.

That is generally when we talk about them.

I'm aware of what we do here.

Sometimes I wonder.

Here's my actual problem, and I'm being straight with everybody. Nothing happened. Fifty-six to seven and nothing happened. No injuries. No suspensions. Nobody said anything stupid. One penalty in the entire football game.

One.

One penalty. A hold. That's it. That's the whole crime report from a college football game in the state of Michigan. What am I supposed to do with that? Four hours a day, five days a week, and they hand me a clean sheet.

You'd rather they were bad.

I would never say that on the air.

You would.

I'd rather they were interesting, and those used to be the same thing around here, and I've made a very comfortable living off of that, and now I don't know.

Alright. Do the first drive. Because the first drive is the only part of this game where anything was happening and I want to do it before I lose interest in my own show.

So the first drive. I think the first drive is the whole thing people are going to remember, and it's four minutes long.

It was the worst four minutes of my life.

It was not.

In this building it was.

Okay so, they scored right away, right? Big throw to Collier, forty-three, and then Edwards takes the next one seventeen yards in. Seven nothing, they've had the ball for about a minute.

And everybody in the stadium relaxes.

Everybody relaxes. And then Grambling gets it, and the thing everybody was worried about all week, the option, the quarterback pulling it, they actually handled that. Three times. They handled it three times.

And then what.

And then they ran away from it. Twice. Both times to the fullback going the other direction, and one of them goes thirty yards for a touchdown.

The fullback.

The fullback.

Thirty yards. To the fullback. For the young people listening, the fullback is not supposed to do that.

I think the argument is that they were all crowding the line because they were so worried about the option, and when you do that there's nobody left standing behind it. So the misdirection goes right into the empty part.

You're saying they were guessing.

I'm saying they were leaning. And you can lean the wrong way twice and it's fine and you can lean the wrong way twice and it's thirty yards.

Seven-seven. And I'm going to tell you what the sound in that stadium was, because I've heard it my whole life. It's not booing. It's a groan. It's forty thousand people going, oh, no, we know this one.

Yeah.

My brother-in-law called me at seven-seven. He picked up when I called back and all he said was here we go, and then he hung up. That was the whole phone call. Here we go.

And then it never happened again.

Say the number.

Grambling did not get another first down for the rest of the game.

Say it again.

Not one. They finished with five first downs and four of them were on that drive. One of ten on third down. Seven punts.

Eighteen tackles for loss.

Eighteen.

Now that, see, that's a number I can actually say out loud on the radio. Eighteen tackles for loss. That means something to a normal person. That means every time they handed it off somebody was already there.

On paper it's a monster number. I want to say the other part though.

Say the other part.

It's Grambling State.

I know it's Grambling State.

I'm not going to sit here and act like we found something out.

Nobody's asking you to. But eighteen. Come on. You can't have nothing.

I'm not saying nothing. I'm saying it's an FCS team and their whole thing is running it and they couldn't run it after the first drive. That's a real thing. It's just not a big thing.

That's the least fun sentence anybody's said on this station this year.

Kowalski Heating and Cooling, family owned since nineteen seventy-eight, twenty-four hour emergency service, ask about the fall furnace inspection. Five one seven, four four two, oh nine oh nine. Tell them Dave sent you. Marcus.

That's not their number.

It's close.

It's not close.

They know who they are. Alright. The catch.

Here we go.

No. Stop. I'm not doing a bit. I want everybody to understand that this is not a bit. I am genuinely still upset about this and I know that's stupid and I don't care.

Go ahead.

Ten seconds left in the half. Fourth and goal from the two. They've already tried three times, they've run it three times and gotten nowhere, and instead of running it a fourth time the coach throws it, and McCray goes up and catches the ball in the end zone. He catches it. Everybody in that building saw him catch it.

And then.

And then some fella in a headset in a room I have never seen decides that the ball moved a little when he hit the ground. And the rule now, apparently, is the ball has to survive the ground. Survive it. It's a football. It's not a witness. What is it surviving? When did we start talking like this?

It's been the rule a while.

I've been watching this sport since I was six years old and I could not tell you what a catch is. I couldn't. Nobody could. Ask an actual official what a catch is, on the record, and watch him find something interesting on his shoe.

Dave.

And here's the thing that gets me, and I've thought about it more than I want to admit. That stadium went nuts. Absolutely nuts. My nephew was up in the north end and he said he's never heard it like that in his life and he's been going since he was a kid. And it was over a play that did not matter at all. It was twenty-eight to seven.

It was twenty-eight to seven.

I know what it was.

So it didn't matter.

I know it didn't matter. I'm not saying it mattered. I'm saying I'm mad about it, and those two things get to both be true at the same time.

Okay.

Anyway. That's all I've got on it.

That's it?

That's it. I ran out.

You want the nice thing?

Do the nice thing.

Fourth quarter, they've got the backups in, Grambling's got their backups in, and Milivojevic goes in at quarterback.

The kid who lost the job.

The kid who lost the job. Four for five, a hundred yards, two touchdowns in the fourth quarter.

A hundred yards on five throws.

One of them's a five-yard drag to Merlino with nobody within ten yards of him and Merlino runs it fifty-four. And then he hits Whiting for eighteen on the next drive.

And the sideline.

The sideline lost it.

Did you see the sideline? The starters are off the bench. Everybody's off the bench. For the backup, in the fourth quarter, up forty.

That's the part I liked.

I'm not going to make it more than it is. It's the fourth quarter against their twos and you're not supposed to learn anything from that. But the kid started most of last year and then he lost his job in August and he had to stand there and hold a clipboard for three and a half quarters, and then he went out and threw it around, and everybody on that team was happy for him. That's just a nice thing. I'm allowed to like one nice thing a year.

You've had two this month.

Don't do that.

Who is Chris Piw. Pih. Help me.

Piwowarczyk.

Say it slow.

Pih-wuh-WAR-chick.

Piwowarczyk.

Close enough.

Walk-on linebacker. Started. Over a scholarship kid, over Stodghill, in the first game of the year, and had two tackles for loss.

The idea, as I understand it, is he's shorter and thicker and stronger and Stodghill's the quicker one, and against a team that's just going to run it straight at you, you want the thick one.

You want the thick one.

That's a simplification.

It's a good one, though. I understood it. Kid's twenty-two years old. Coach is twenty-eight.

Six years.

Six years between the head coach and the guy making tackles. There's an assistant golf pro at Eagle Eye who's older than that whole arrangement.

Sure.

I don't know where I was going with that.

Let's get to it, because I know why everybody's calling and it isn't the fullback. Saturday. Eastern Michigan. Their quarterback is Noah Kim.

Seventh year.

Noah Kim started at quarterback for Michigan State in twenty twenty-three, and now he's a seventh-year graduate student at Eastern Michigan and he's coming back to East Lansing to play against Michigan State. He got a waiver.

He went to Coastal Carolina in between, then Eastern.

Seventh year of college football. Sit with that for a second. He's been in college longer than some of these coaches have been coaching.

Twenty twenty-three was a strange year to be the quarterback here.

Twenty twenty-three was not a football season. That was a legal matter with a game attached to it on Saturdays. There was a new coach every week and nobody knew who was in charge of anything and the whole country was watching it for reasons that had nothing to do with football.

And he was the quarterback for it.

He was the quarterback for it. And I don't think anybody's ever seriously argued that a single part of it was his fault.

No.

Now. I said things on this show that year.

You did.

I did. And I'd love to tell you I don't remember what I said. I remember some of it. And some of it was about a twenty-one-year-old kid who didn't do anything to anybody.

Yeah.

So. There's that.

You want to say more about it?

No. That's plenty. He's going to get booed anyway. That's just going to happen.

Probably.

Phones. Terry in Charlotte, go ahead.

Terry, Charlotte: Yeah Dave, longtime, I'll be quick. I was awful about that kid. On the boards, in twenty twenty-three, I was one of the guys. And I've thought about it more than once since and it's not a good feeling. He was twenty-one and the whole thing was falling apart around him and we all needed somebody to yell at and he was standing there in the uniform.

What are you going to do Saturday?

Terry: I don't know. Probably nothing. Probably just sit there.

That's honest. Appreciate it, Terry. Rick in Owosso.

Rick, Owosso: I'm going to say the thing nobody wants to say. He wasn't good. That's all. Everybody's getting real sentimental this week and I'm sorry but the guy threw a lot of interceptions and we lost a lot of games and the reason people were mad is that we were losing. That's it. Nobody was being cruel, we were losing.

Some of it was cruelty, Rick.

Rick: Some of it. Fine. Not from me.

I'd push back a little. I think when a program is in that much trouble the quarterback gets all of it, and it's not really about the quarterback. I don't think you can look at that year and pull one player out of it and grade him.

Rick: You can grade anybody.

Sure. I just don't think it tells you much.

Thanks Rick. Denise, Haslett, hi.

Denise, Haslett: Hi Dave. I'm going to clap. When he comes out I'm going to clap and my husband says I'm being weird about it and I don't care. He came back. He didn't have to come back here. He's playing at Eastern and he could have had a normal senior year somewhere and instead he's coming here. I'm going to clap and then I'm going to want him to lose.

That's the most honest thing anybody's said today.

Denise: Well, I want us to win.

Obviously. Denise, thank you. Let's do, uh, Kyle in Jackson.

Kyle, Jackson: Honest to God, Dave, I couldn't have told you his name on Tuesday. I saw it come up on my phone and I had to look it up. I watch every game. I just don't, I don't hold onto that stuff the way you guys do.

That's most people, Kyle. That's actually most people.

Kyle: Yeah. Anyway I'm more worried about Saturday than any of that.

Say why.

Kyle: Did anybody watch Michigan and Western? Seventeen to nine. Michigan needed the whole game to beat a MAC team, in this state, on the same day we beat an FCS team by fifty. And now we've got a MAC team and everybody's already looking at Notre Dame.

Marcus.

Yeah, that's the case. I think that's the whole case for being nervous and it's a decent one. Eastern's one and one, they beat Sacramento State and they lost to San Jose State, and I don't have any more than that because I haven't watched them.

You haven't watched them.

I've got a folder about a lot of things. I don't have a folder about Eastern Michigan on a Thursday.

Kyle, thanks. Good call.

Alright, before we get out of here. The poll came out.

Miami's number one. Went up five.

Miami's number one. Ohio State two, Oregon three, Georgia four. Michigan's twelfth. And Notre Dame is out.

Out entirely. Dropped out.

Explain that to somebody who doesn't follow it closely.

They lost thirty-eight to ten to Wisconsin. Unranked Wisconsin. That's the week after Miami hit them forty-two to six. Two games, two beatings, and they're not in the top twenty-five anymore.

And we play them in two weeks.

In South Bend.

And here's what I hate. Everybody's now going to expect us to win that game.

I don't know if everybody.

More people than last Tuesday. And I want to say something about that, because I have been a Michigan State fan my entire life and I know exactly what this feels like. It is much, much easier to go somewhere and get beat by a team that's supposed to beat you. Everybody's got a nice time, you get on the bus, you go home. This is the other thing. This is where you go somewhere and everybody's already decided you're supposed to win, and then you find out.

That's fair.

I liked it better when we were just going down there to get killed.

You don't mean that.

I mean about sixty percent of it.

Louisville jumped ten spots, by the way, they beat Ole Miss pretty good. Ole Miss dropped nine.

Don't care.

Fine.

What else is on the sheet.

Somebody at Oklahoma scored nine touchdowns.

Nine.

John Mateer. Two throwing, seven running. Twenty-two carries, two hundred and three yards, seven rushing touchdowns.

In one game.

In one game. That's national offensive player of the week.

Good for him. Seriously. What a strange thing to have done.

Defensive one's a safety at Northwestern. Adrian Maddox. Two interceptions, both of them pick sixes.

Two pick sixes.

Two.

So a safety scored twice.

Correct.

And nobody on our team won anything.

Nobody on our team won anything.

We scored fifty-six points.

It's Grambling, Dave.

You keep saying that.

Because it keeps being the answer.

Fifty-six points and not one guy gets a plaque. Edwards ran for a hundred and forty-seven on sixteen carries, that's nine yards a pop, he had two touchdowns. Nothing.

Nine point one.

Nine point one. Nothing.

That's how it works. You get the award for who you did it to.

Then what are we doing.

Beating Grambling. Normally.

Oh, don't. Don't use my thing on me.

Saturday. Eastern Michigan, here, and I want to say one thing about their coach because nobody else is going to.

Creighton.

Chris Creighton has been at Eastern Michigan for something like twelve, thirteen years. When he got there that program was a punchline. Nobody wanted that job. And he took it to bowl games. Slow. Nobody gave him a thing.

He's very good.

He's been a head coach somewhere since our guy was in grade school, and I'm not saying that as a shot at our guy, I like our guy. It's just a funny sentence to say out loud.

It is a funny sentence.

So don't let anybody tell you this is a walkover because of the name on the helmet. Kim's in his seventh year, and they've got kids from Hartland and Howell and Portage and Trenton on that roster, guys from around here who we didn't take, and they will show up.

Joey Mattord's from Hartland, yeah.

From Hartland. And on Saturday he's going to want to run the ball down our throat in front of everybody he went to high school with.

That's the thing I'd watch.

That's it. That's the show. Noon Saturday, we'll be on at ten with the pregame, bring us your calls. Marcus, thank you.

Yep.

Go Green, everybody. Try to enjoy one of these.