1966-2024 Bleeding Maize and Blue

Posted on January 28, 2024 by Mike

Michigan football and me. Continue reading →

I undertook this entry to explain what it was like to be a die-hard fan of a football team for fifty-eight years. I supposed that this might be of passing interest to some people (outside of New England, where no one gives a fig about college football), but, in fact I undertook it mostly to see if I could figure out to my own satisfaction why I have cared so much about an institution with no intrinsic value. Furthermore, over the years it has changed so dramatically. The only constants were the huge stadium, the winged helmets, and the school colors—maize and blue (mostly blue).

Before attending U-M: When I was still in grade school (not before—my family did not have a television set) my dad and I often watched professional football games on our black and white television set. This was remarkable for two reasons: 1) my dad seldom watched anything on television; 2) it was one of the few things that we did together. I distinctly remember that a white football was used for night games. Also, until the rule was changed, a runner was not considered “down” until his forward progress was completely stopped.

I knew Otto as #14, but in the days before face guards he must have been #60.

My dad was a fan of the Chicago Bears. My recollection was that his favorite player was Ralph Guglielmi, but he never played for the Bears. I must be wrong. My favorite team was the Cleveland Browns. In the early days my favorite player was #14,Otto Graham. Later, of course, I lionized the incomparable #32, Jim Brown.

Before I went to Rockhurst my dad also took me to one game in Atchison, KS. It involved my dad’s Alma Mater, Maur Hill. I don’t remember the opponent or result. However, Maur Hill was 2-6 in both 1960 and 1961, and so they probably lost.

The Dallas Texans moved to Kansas City in 1963, my sophomore year at Rockhurst, and were rechristened the Chiefs. Through his company, Business Men’s Assurance (BMA), my dad had two season tickets. He went to all the home games, and sometimes he brought me with him to the games at Municipal Stadium. I became a fan of Lenny Dawson¹, Curtis McClinton², Fred Arbanas³, the one-eyed tight end, and the rest of the players. I remained a big fan of the Chiefs while I was in the army and for a decade or so after that.

While I was in High School I attended every football home game. So did all of my friends and most of the other guys. My attitude was really more of a “be true to your school” thing than an appreciation of the game at the high school level. In fact, we all attended all of the basketball games as well. The guys at Rockhurst were proud that they were able to go to one of the very best schools in the area, and they supported all of the teams.

Before arriving in Ann Arbor I did not yet hate Woody or the color scarlet.

Undergrad at U-M:While I lived in Kansas City I did not follow college football very closely. Only three major colleges in Kansas and Missouri had football teams, and one of those—Kansas State—was perennially a doormat. I knew very little about Michigan football. I knew about the intense rivalry between Ohio State and Michigan. I had heard the song, “We don’t give a damn for the whole state of Michigan.” I had read about a few Michigan greats such as Tom Harmon and Germany Schulz. I knew that Michigan had the largest stadium in the country and usually won the Little Brown Jug. Woody Hayes (but not his counterpart Bump Elliott) was already famous.

The student section started on the 50-yard line and went around to the middle of the end zone.

However, it was not until I actually started living at U-M that I came to appreciate the importance of football at the university. Cazzie Russell had led the Wolverines to three consecutive Big Ten titles and to final four appearances in 1964 and 1965. Nevertheless, in the fall of 1966 when I arrived at my dorm absolutely no one talked about basketball even though the previous year’s football team had been a horrendous disappointment. The 1964 team had won the Big Ten and clobbered Oregon in the Rose Bowl. The 1965 team finished only 4-6 despite outscoring the opponents 185-161. Nevertheless, like nearly everyone else in Allen Rumsey House, I purchased season tickets in the student section of Michigan Stadium (no one ever called it The Big House) for a very low price and never gave a thought to going to basketball games.

I followed the marching band up

to the stadium for almost every home football game⁴ during the four football season in which I lived in the dorm. I have recounted in some detail those experiences in the 1966 season here. The last two games of my senior year were ones for the ages. On November 27, 1969, Ohio State was 8-0 and widely considered the best collegiate team of all time. They were riding a twenty-two game winning streak.. Michigan was 7-2, but one of its losses was out of the conference. Since this was the last game of the season, if U-M won, they would be tied with OSU for the the Big Ten championship. The league’s rules dictated that if there was a tie, U-M would go to the Rose Bowl because OSU had been there more recently. Michigan, a huge underdog, won the game 24-12. Wikipedia devoted a very long entry to this historic game. It is posted here.

I knew two of the stars of that game fairly well. They were both sophomores who had spent their freshman year living on the second floor of A-R. At the time I was the president of the house and had some interactions with both Thom Darden, a defensive back who was an All-Pro with the Cleveland Browns, and Bill⁵ Taylor, who scored the most famous touchdown in that game.

Michigan had hired a new coach, Bo Schembechler, for the 1969 season. He had a heart attack just before the Rose Bowl⁶, and so he was unable to coach. The team lost to the University of Southern California 10-3. In retrospect it is hard to believe that one of the most famous Michigan teams of all time did not score a touchdown in its last six quarter.

1970-1973: During the next four years it was somewhat difficult for me to follow the team too closely. In 1970 I was at my parent’s house in Leawood, KS, for the first three games, all of which were won by the Wolverines. For the remaining games I was at Fort Polk, LA (introduced here), for basic training. I learned the scores of the games, but there was no television available, and so I missed the second game of the “Ten Year War” between Schembechler’s troops and those of Woody Hayes. OSU won in Columbus 20-9. The two teams again tied for the Big 10 title, but OSU went to the Rose Bowl because of the “no repeat” rule. In those days Big 10 teams were not allowed to participate in other bowls.

In 1971 I was in the army at Sandia Base, NM (introduced here). The barracks had only one television, and none of the soldiers could afford to purchase one for their rooms. Michigan was 10-0 going into the OSU game in Ann Arbor, where they won a squeaker 10-7. I am pretty sure that I watched that one in the MP Company’s Rec Room. That team lost to Stanford in the Rose Bowl 13-12. Michigan was heavily favored and held the lead, but the team was done in by a fake punt by Stanford on a fourth and ten and a last second field goal. I must have watched that game in Leawood. A few days later I flew to upstate New York to finish my military career at Seneca Army Depot (described here).

In 1972 I was working as an actuarial student at the Hartford Life Insurance Company (introduced here). I watched the team on television whenever they appeared. I remember going to Jan Pollnow’s house for one of the regular-season games. I do not remember which one it was, but it was definitely not the season-ender (better known as The Game) at Ohio State. I am certain of that because Michigan won all of its first ten games, but they lost that one 14-11. This was a heart-breaker. Michigan had a first down at the OSU one-yard line and could not punch it in. The two teams tied for the conference championship, but OSU went to Pasadena, and U-M stayed home.

This man deserved to play inn the Rose Bowl.

In 1973 I was still at the Hartford. Once again the Wolverines won their first ten games. The Big Ten by then was known as the Big Two and the Little Eight. “The Game” was held in Ann Arbor. At the end of the third quarter the score was 10-0 in favor of OSU, but U-M tied it with a touchdown and a field goal. I am pretty sure that I watched that sister-kisser by myself in my apartment in East Hartford. I had a Zenith color portable with rabbit ears. The reception from the two ABC stations (New Haven and Springfield) was not great.

U-M’s quarterback, Dennis Franklin⁸, broke his collarbone in the fourth quarter. This was a decisive factor in the vote that sent the Buckeyes back to California. In two years U-M had lost only one game, but it did not get to go to a bowl game.

By this time Bo Schembechler had installed an option offense that emphasized running. For quite a few years U-M’s quarterbacks were better known for running and blocking than for throwing the pigskin.

Back in Ann Arbor for 1974-1976: In 1974 Sue and I moved to Plymouth, MI, and I enrolled at U-M as a graduate student in the speech department. I bought a season ticket in the student section. A few details about my personal involvement with the team during those years have been posted here.

A little more should be written about the 1974 season. The Wolverines breezed through the first ten games. They even had a 10-3 lead at halftime of The Game. However, OSU kicked three field goals and Mike Lantry⁹, who had earlier kicked a 37-yard field goal, pushed a shorter one very slightly to the left as time ran out. The miss cost U-M the conference championship and a berth in the the Rose Bowl.

Dennis Franklin, who lost only two games in his entire career as starting quarterback at U-M, never got to play in a Rose Bowl, or any other bowl for that matter. That was simply a travesty.

Detroit 1976-1979: For the next three football seasons Sue and I lived and worked in Detroit. I watched every game that was shown on television, but my memories are not too distinct.

The 1976 team lost a conference game at Purdue when the kicker, Bob Wood, missed an attempted 37-yard field goal at the end of the game. It was the first conference loss to one of the Little Eight since my senior year seven years earlier.

However, this team pummeled Ohio State in Columbus two weeks later to win the conference championship and qualify for the Rose Bowl. They lost that game to USC (whom else?).

The story the next year was eerily similar. The Wolverines were shut out in the Little Brown Jug game, but they defeated Ohio State in Ann Arbor. They then lost to Washington in the Rose Bowl 27-20.

It sounds like a broken record, but the 1978 team led by Rick Leach¹⁰, Harlan Huckleby¹¹, and a very stout defense, somehow lost to Michigan State before beating the Buckeyes again in the last game of the Ten Year War. USC then defeated the Wolverines in the Rose Bowl again thanks to a “Phantom Touchdown” awarded to Charles White¹² by a Big 10 ref.

I have two very vivid memory of this period of Michigan football. I remember that I was on a debate trip for Wayne State. For some reason one Saturday afternoon I was absolved of the responsibility of judging for one round. I found a television set and watched Michigan beat up on one of the Little Eight.

The other memory, of course, was the dramatic touchdown pass from John Wangler to freshman Anthony Carter on the last play of the Indiana game in 1979. The game, which was crucial for Michigan’s title hopes, was not televised. But the film was shown on all the highlight shows.

It was a period of frustration. It appeared that Bo’s coaching style could easily produce very good teams. They were always in the top ten and often the top five/. However, they were never good enough to win the last game of the year. Nevertheless the players were heroes to me and to all of the other die-hard fans.

I later read Bo Schembechler’s autobiography, Bo, co-written by Mitch Albom. In its pages he speculated that he might have driven the guys too hard on their trips to Pasadena. They did little besides practice. Most Michigan fans just thought that the team needed a passing game.

Michigan Replay: Most U-M football games were not telecast in the Detroit area while we lived there. However, every Sunday evening Bo Schembechler appeared on a half-hour interview show with Jim Brandstatter¹³, who had been an offensive tackle on some of his very early teams. Sue and I watched these programs every week. When we moved to Enfield, one of the few things that we missed about the Motor City was watching Michigan Replay on channel 4.

I recently discovered that the Michigan Replay shows have been archived by the university and posted on the Internet here. I recently watched the show about the 1980 version of The Game in which neither side scored a touchdown. The first thing that I noticed was that Brandstatter just dwarfed Schembechler, who was himself a lineman in college. The second thing that caught my eye was Bo’s outfit. He was decked out in plaid pants and a grey sports jacket with a Rose Bowl pin. It was 1980, but Bo;s wardrobe was still in the seventies. I wondered if his wife saw this outfit before he left the house.

On the show Bo was charming and gracious. He always credited the players. What was so attractive about his approach on the show was how clear it was that everyone on the team gave 100 percent, and Bo loved them for it even when they failed. When Brandstatter heaped praise on the team’s defense, Bo insisted that the offense, which did not score a touchdown, did its part by running twice as many plays as the Buckeyes. His slogan—”Those who stay will be champions”—never rang truer.

Bo v. the world as seen from Enfield 1980-1989: The Wolverines finally found a passing game, or rather a receiving game, in #1, Anthony Carter¹⁴, who was by almost any measure the most amazing player in the history of college football. He was named a consensus first-team All-American three years running. During those three years Michigan was definitely a running team. In the first two Butch Woolfolk¹⁵ rushed for more than 1,000 yards. In 1981 he set the single-season U-M record with a total of 1,459 yards.

Nevertheless, the “go to guy” was Carter. He was always the first read on a pass attempt and the last read on most. The two quarterbacks who passed to him, John Wangler¹⁶ and Steve Smith¹⁷, are remembered mostly as footnotes in tales of Carter’s heroics.

The 1980 season was the most memorable one for me. Bo’s coaching staff had been depleted in the off-season. He had to hire many new coaches, including Gary Moeller, Lloyd Carr, and Jack Harbaugh¹⁷. The team had a very shaky start. It barely beat Northwestern in the opener and the lost two non-conference games. The fans were dejected, but the team—especially the defense—seemed to get better with each game. The three games before The Game were all shutouts, and the Wolverines racked up 86 point. The 9-3 win in Columbus was ugly, but the victory over Washington in the Rose Bowl was absolutely beautiful.

I have several vivid memories of the period. Most of them are disappointments. I can picture in my mind Cris Carter¹⁸ making a fabulous catch for a touchdown. My recollection is that it won the game for the Buckeyes, but this was not the case. Jim Harbaugh, my favorite Wolverine of all time, rewrite the record book in that game and threw a 77-yard touchdown pass shortly after Carter’s reception had brought the Buckeyes back to within a field goal.

The 1986 team fumbled away the Little Brown Jug that had been on display in the Michigan Union since 1977 and also lost decisively in the Rose Bowl. I do not remember either of those. I do remember that Jim Harbaugh guaranteed that U-M would beat OSU. They did, but only because of a missed field goal. I remember many field goals missed at crucial times, but this was the only one by an opponent that I can recall.

Michigan won the jug back in 1987, but that team won only seven other games. They did beat Alabama in the Hall of Fame Bowl.

Bo’s penultimate team might have been his best job as a coach. Without any great stars it lost its first two games and tied Iowa at Kinnick Stadium. It then won four straight decisively, edged Ohio State in Columbus, and then won the Rose Bowl by upsetting Southern Cal 22-14.

The first game of Bo’s last year was the worst. Rocket Ismail zoomed for two touchdowns on kick returns, and #1 Notre Dame defeated #2 U-M in Ann Arbor but won the remainder of its regular-season games. In the Rose Bowl the Wolverines lost to USC by a touchdown. Bo was incensed by a holding call on a fake punt that had gained twenty-four yards. After the game he resigned as head coach and took a job as president of the Detroit Tigers. He was fired from that job in 1992.

Bo had had heart problems for a long time before he died in 2006. His legacy was smudged by his son Matt’s claim that Bo knew about sexual shenanigans by long-time university doctor Robert Anderson.

Gary Moeller years 1990-94: I think that it was during Moeller’s five-year tenure at U-M that I stopped watching U-M games. His first team lost a close game to Notre Dame and two regular-season games. However, they closed out the season with five wins (tied for first in the Big 10) and handily defeated Ole Miss in the Gator Bowl. The team had developed a passing attack with Elvis Grbac¹⁹ and Desmond Howard²⁰.

The next year the team lost to Florida State, but won its other ten regular-season games. The highlight was a completely horizontal 25-yard touchdown reception by Heisman-winner Howard on a 4th down against Notre Dame. However, the Wolverines were humiliated in the Rose Bowl by Washington.

The team had three ties but no losses in Grbac’s last year. It went to the Rose Bowl again and this time defeated Washington. Tyrone Wheatley was the star

Todd Collins took over at quarterback in 1993. The team lost four regular-season games, but they closed out the season with a 28-0 mauling of OSU and and equally decisive bowl victory over NC State.

Ty Law, one of the greatest defensive backs ever, could not prevent the miracle.

1994 was the last year in which I watched Michigan football live. The disastrous game at home against Colorado was followed by losses to Penn State, Wisconsin, and OSU.

I remember storming out of the house at the end of the OSU game. I went for a long walk, and I was still upset when I returned. The team’s victory over Colorado State in the bowl game did little to mollify me. The stress of these games was becoming too much for me.

Gary Moeller was allowed to resign after being arrested in May of 1995 for drunk and disorderly conduct at Excalibur, a restaurant in Detroit. He served as an assistant coach in the NFL until 2002. He died in 2022.

Lloyd Carr with four-year starter Chad Henne.

Lloyd Carr’s years 1995-2007: Lloyd Carr was named interim head coach after Moeller’s untimely exit. It was made official after the team won eight out of the first ten games. I expected U-M to lose the finale against #2 OSU, and I did not get to see the 31-23 upset in which Tim Biakabutuka rushed for an astounding 313 yards. That team ended the season at the Alamo Bowl, where lost to Texas A&M. The 1996 team also beat OSU and lost its bowl game.

During Carr’s thirteen years as U-M’s football coach I was extremely busy at work. If I was not traveling on a given Saturday, I was certainly in the office from dawn to dusk. I had a small TV on which I occasionally watched football, but I don’t think that I ever watched a Michigan game. I did not even check the scores until I was sure that the game was over. I told people that my favorite weekend was U-M’s bye week.

The 1997 team featured perhaps the greatest defensive back of all time, Charles Woodson, who had been a freshman phenom in 1995 and a consensus All-American in 1996. He was also used—to great effect—as a kick returner and wide receiver. The team won all of its games, but in The Game it needed a tremendous effort from the defense and special teams to overcome a moribund offense. It faced a very good Washington State team in the Rose Bowl.

I watched the game with my friend Tom Corcoran. Woodson was Superman without the cape, but the rest of the team struggled. With a 21-16 lead U-M had the ball with 7:25 to play. Michigan got two first downs passing (once to Woodson) before Wazoo took over on its own seven yard line with sixteen seconds to play. After a hook and lateral play and the most egregious example of offensive pass interference that I have ever seen WSU moved the ball to the Michigan twenty-six. The clock ran out as the WSU quarterback tried to spike the ball. They should have had a play ready to run. I remember telling Tom that I could not believe that this was what I was hoping for. I never wanted to go through anything so nerve-wracking again.

So, U-M was named national champion by the Associated Press, but the coaches voted for Nebraska, which was also undefeated.

The next three years were bizarre. Michigan turned into “quarterback U”. Tom Brady²⁴ and Drew Henson²⁵ battled for the starting job for two years. Brady eventually prevailed. Henson started for U-M in his junior year, which was typified by a 54-51 loss to Northwestern that must have made Bo rip his hair out (if he had any left). Nevertheless, those three teams won bowl games over Arkansas, Alabama, and Auburn.

The last seven years of Carr’s coaching career were drearily predictable. There were only two quarterbacks. U-M beat OSU in 2004, John Navarrre’s senior year. Henne lost four times in The Game. They were all good teams, but …

I watched onlyone game. I was visiting my dad in Overland Park, KS, the weekend in 2004 when U-M played San Diego State (coached by Brady Hoke) in Ann Arbor. U-M, which had lost to Notre Dame the previous week, were behind at the half. The on-the-field female correspondent stuck a microphone in Coach Carr’s face and asked him what he expected in the second half. He said, “I expect a comeback.” U-M did win, but it was really ugly.

The worst and best games were in the last year, 2007. The loss to Appalachian State in Ann Arbor was, at the time, the low point of Michigan Football in my lifetime. The victory over Florida (coached by Urban Meyer and led by Tim Tebow) in the Capital One Bowl was a pleasant surprise. U-M had four turnovers, but Henne passed for 373 yards and was named MVP.

Coach Carr was living in Ann Arbor in 2024.

Rich Rodriguez and Brady Hoke 2008-2014: I felt strongly that after Carr retired U-M should have hired Jim Harbaugh. After a long career as a quarterback in the NFL he had coached the Raiders’ quarterbacks for two years and then transformed a horrible University of San Diego team into conference champions in only two years. Stanford hired him in 2007, but I suspected that he would have accepted any reasonable offer from U-M. Instead someone decided to pay West Virginia University $2.5 million to allow its coach, Rich Rodriguez, to forsake the Mountaineers and come to Ann Arbor.

I saw two of the games of the Richrod/Hoke era in person. Sue and I were in Ann Arbor in 2008 for the team’s home debut against Miami University. It was a horrendous game. I suspected that Miami would have won if its quarterback had not been injured.

It took a couple of years, but Rodriguez was able to field a pretty good offense built around Denard Robinson. The big problem was on defense. Richrod hired Greg Robinson to coach the defense, and the results were absolutely pathetic. U-M fans were not accustomed to teams running up the score on them, but it became commonplace.

The other game that I viewed in person was in Hoke’s regime, but it was also horrendous. It was a night game played at Rentschler Field in East Hartford in 2013. More than half the fans were wearing Michigan’s colors. It was very close up to the end. Michigan ended up with a 21-14 victory.

That game increased my appreciation of the alcohol-free atmosphere of Michigan Stadium. Some UConn fans were really obnoxious. However, the team’s play did not impress me at all.

Michigan somehow beat OSU in Brady Hoke’s first appearance in 2011. That team also defeated Virginia Tech 23-20 in the Orange Bowl. However, it was downhill from there. The 2014 team’s record was 5-7, which caused Hoke to be fired. The Athletic Director who had hired him, Dave Brandon, resigned.

Jim Harbaugh pre-Pandemic 2015-19: My career as a cowboy coder had just ended when Jim Harbaugh’s stint as U-M’s head coach began. He brought “an enthusiasm unknown to mankind” and a basket of new ideas. He took all of the players to Rome as part of Spring practice. He conducted coaching clinics in the southeastern U.S. These radical approaches to the job and the fact that he almost always spoke his mind engendered a lot of enmity against him in the community of coaches.

The 2015 team was much improved. After losing to Utah on the road to open the season the Wolverines won nine of the next ten games. The only blemish was a loss to MSU in Ann Arbor that was reminiscent of Keystone Kops, On the last play of the game the snap to the punter went astray leading to a 27-23 victory for Sparty. In The Game at the end of the season the team was clobbered by OSU, but the Wolverines delivered an even worse thrashing to the Florida Gators in the Capital One Bowl.

Harbaugh with Wilton Speight, who lost an entire season to a back injury.

The next four years were more of the same—one or two stumbles early, lots of very promising victories, and a blowout loss in The Game. In these years, however, the bowl games were also losses. Fans were becoming upset with Harbaugh, but those OSU teams were extremely good. Their teams were loaded with five-star recruits, and U-M’s quarterback always seemed to get hurt near the end of the season.

MGoBlog and BPONE: MGoBlog was founded by Brian Cook in 2004. I must have discovered the website that covered all of Michigan’s sports shortly after that because I am pretty sure that my dad told me that he was impressed by how much I knew about the U-M football team even before he moved to Enfield in 2005. The emphasis of the blogs was on football, of course. The most amazing aspect was that someone (Brian at first, later Seth Fisher) charted and analyzed every play of every U-M football game.

Brian and Seth also appear on the Michigan Insider radio show that was hosted weekly by Sam Webb on WTKA and was streamed on MGoBlog.com. Craig Ross, a lawyer who was born a year or two before I was, also appeared on the show. Ross was a super-fan of all of the U-M sports.

Top row: Sam and Seth. Bottom row: Craig and Brian.

I have spent an inordinate number of happy hours reading and listening to these guys and the other members of the MGoBlog crew. I especially appreciated the analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of U-M’s opponents that was provided by Alex Drain.

Brian, who was a very talented writer, often bared his soul about sports and his personal life. He invented the acronym BPONE, which stood for Bottomless Pit of Negative Expectations. It described a state of mind when one can no longer appreciate the positive aspects of viewing sports because he/she (hardly ever she) is convinced that they will be overwhelmed by negative aspect in the end. BPONE is precisely the reason that I gave up watching the Wolverines on television. Once you have seen Colorado’s “Miracle at Michigan” or the bungled punt attempts against MSU and Appy State it was difficult to keep them out of your mind.

Harbaugh’s glory years 2021-23: I should pass over without mentioning the monumentally stupid college football season of 2020. U-M won two of the six games in which it was able to field a team of players who did not have Covid-19. I blame Trump, who insisted that all the teams should play during the second wave of the most infectious disease anyone had seen.

Aidan Hutchinson was the best defensive player since Woodson.

In preparation for the 2021 season Harbaugh had dramatically reshuffled his assistant coaches. The primary goals were to design offenses and defenses that would be effective against the ones used by Ohio State. The players recruited for these new schemes were big, tough, and smart. Harbaugh promised that he would beat Ohio State or die trying.

Expectations for the 2021 season were not high in Ann Arbor, but there were some scraps of good news. Aidan Hutchinson³⁰, the All-American defensive end, returned. Cade McNamara and five-star freshman J.J. McCarthy seemed promising as quarterbacks.

In fact, this was a very good team. It lost a heart-breaker to MSU in the middle of the season when Kenneth Walker III ran for 197 yards and five touchdowns, but the Wolverines still entered the Ohio State game with a surprising 10-1 record. The team played an inspired game and defeated the Buckeyes by a score of 42-27. They then annihilated Iowa in the conference championship 42-3. They were ceded #3 in U-M’s first appearance in the College Football Playoff. The team was outclassed by eventual champion, Georgia, 34-11. Nevertheless, this was was the most accomplished Michigan team since the 1997-98 team that was named national champion by the AP.

When Corum got hurt, Edwards stepped up.

Even Brian Cook was optimistic about the 2022 team. Hutchinson was gone, but this team had two legitimate quarterbacks, two outstanding running backs, Blake Corum and Donovan Edwards, outstanding receivers, and the best offensive line in the country. The questions were on defense were quickly answered. The team breezed through its first ten games. A stubborn Illinois defense nearly engineered an upset in Ann Arbor, but the team was still undefeated and ranked #3 for The The Wolverines prevailed in Columbus for the first time since 2000 by a score of 45-23. They then sleepwalked past Purdue in the Big Ten championship and entered the CFP ceded #2.

Sherrone Moore (left) and Jesse Minter were probably the best offensive and defensive coordinators in college football.

Their opponent in the semifinal was Texas Christian. Michigan was favored by almost everyone, but J.J. McCarthy had a terrible game, and Blake Corum had been severely injured late in the season. The defense also had trouble stopping TCU’s attack; it did not help that two or McCarthy’s early passes were intercepted and returned for touchdowns. In the end the Horned Frogs won 51-45. Perhaps it was just as well that U-M lost that game. Georgia overwhelmed TCU in the final.

The 2023 team had one goal: to win the national championship. Almost all of the important players and coaching staff returned. The team was ranked #2 behind Georgia for nearly the entire season in both polls.

Two silly “scandals” were distractions. Because of allegations of recruiting violations in the Covid-19 year³¹ Harbaugh did not attend the first three games, which were blowouts of non-conference teams. Because of bizarre behavior of a low-level analyst with the unlikely name of Connor Stalions. He apparently bought tickets for people for games of prospective U-M opponents. Some of them allegedly took videos of the signs used to signal plays³² to the field. The Big Ten’s investigation resulted in the firing of one coach and the requirement that Harbaugh not be on the field for the team’s last three regular season games.

Corum was the star in overtime, but everyone contributed.

Those three very important games—were overseen by the Offensive Coordinator, Sherrone Moore. The results were decisive victories over Penn State, Maryland, and Ohio State. Michigan then shut out Iowa in the last conference championship game ever. After Seth Fisher analyzed each play of U-M’s semifinal overtime triumph over Alabama in the Rose Bowl he called it the greatest of Michigan’s 1,004 victories. The victory over Washington in the final game was less dramatic but equally satisfying.

In the end Michigan was the unanimous choice as #1, and the NCAA said that they had won the title fairly.

Denouement: Nick Saban, the long-time extremely successful coach at Alabama retired. Harbaugh resigned after agreeing to become the head coach for the Chargers, one of his old teams. Sherrone Moore was named U-M’s head coach. McCarthy, Corum, and quite a few others went pro. Some of the coaches accompanied Harbaugh to wherever the Chargers play these days.

In February of 2024 I watched the entire Rose Bowl game v. Alabama. I could not have watched it live. There were too many times in which Michigan committed unbelievable blunders that threatened to blow the game open. The FIRST PLAY was an interception that was overruled! BPONE would have overcome me. At least one vital organ would have failed.

How will Michigan do in the future? I sincerely doubt that the heroics of team #144 will ever be matched by any Michigan team in the future. College football has changed so drastically in the early twenties, and most of those changes do not bode well for the Wolverines.

I am quite happy that I got to experience this event even though I refused to make the kind of emotional investment in the team that others did. Their reward was no doubt greater.

1. Len Dawson, a Purdue graduate, led the Chiefs to victory in Super Bowl IV. He died in 2022.

2. Curtis McClinton, who went to the University of Kansas, was the AFL’s Rookie of the Year in 1962. He played nine years for the Chiefs. He was still alive and living in KC in 2024.

3. Fred Arbanas was a graduate of Michigan State. In January of 1965 he was assaulted in KC and lost vision in one eye. He nevertheless was an All-Star for the Chiefs for several years after that. He died in 2021.

4. The only one that I missed was one of the greatest U-M games of all time, the 1969 Ohio State game. I opted to attend a debate tournament in Chicago instead. This was one of the poorest choices that I ever made. I even gave away my ticket, which was on the 50-yard line halfway up.

5. I never heard anyone call him “Billy” in the year that he lived in A-R. He was generally known as BT, just as Darden was commonly called TD.

6. This game was attended by my parents while I watched on TV in Leawood! I was on my holiday break from classes.

7. Michigan easily won all ten games before the OSU game. The combined scores of it first three home games was 140-0.

8. Dennis Franklin had a cup of coffee with the New York Lions. He lived in Santa Monica, CA, in 2024.

9. Mike Lantry was my age. If he had gone to U-M after high school, he would have played when I was an undergrad. Instead he went to Vietnam. Although he held many records for kicking when he graduated, and he was a first team All-American, he is best remembered for three crucial kicks that he missed in the 1973 and 1974 OSU games. In 2024 he was living in Florida.

10. Rick Leach was still alive in 2024. His professional career was as a baseball player, mostly riding the pine with the Detroit Tigers.

11. Harlan Huckleby played six years for the Green Bay Packers. He was still alive in 2024.

12. Charles White played for the Cleveland Browns and the Los Angeles Rams. He led the NFL in rushing in 1987. He died in 2023.

13. Jim Brandstatter was in the same class as TD and BT. He tried out for the NFL but never played. He had a very long career in broadcasting. He was still alive in 2024.

14. Anthony Carter’s official height was 5’11”, and his weight was 168 lbs. I was two inches taller and 23 lbs. lighter when I entered the army. So, I was much skinnier than Carter. However, compared to nearly all football players, Carter was a midget. He set an incredible number of records. You can find them on his Wikipedia page, which is posted here. Carter was still alive in 2024.

15. Butch Woolfolk was a track star as well as one of the all-time great running backs at U-M. He also had an outstanding professional career. He was still alive in 2024.

16. John Wangler had to fight for the quarterback job his entire career at U-M, and he did not make the grade in the NFL. Nevertheless he will always be remembered for that pass in the Indiana game and his victories in The Game and the Rose Bowl. He was still alive in 2024.

16. Steve Smith started at quarterback for U-M for three years. He played for a couple of years in Canada. He was still alive in 2024.

17. Jack Harbaugh was the head coach at Western Michigan and then Western Kentucky, where his team won the Division I-AA national championship in 2002. The most important aspect of his career at U-M was probably the introduction of his son Jim to the nicest football town and best program in the country. Jim hired him as an assistant coach in 2023 (at the age of 84), and he was on the sideline coaching away when the Wolverines finally won it all in 2024.

18. Cris Carter was a phenomenal receiver, perhaps the best ever, but he had difficulty staying out of trouble. He was suspended for his senior year (1988) at OSU and then had a long and checkered NFL career. The high spots were lofty enough to get him into the Hall of Fame. Since his retirement after the 2002 season he has had had a few jobs in sports broadcasting.

19. Elvis Grbac had a reasonably successful, at least in financial terms, eight-year career in the NFL. He retired to become athletic director of his old high school in Cleveland. Believe it or not, he had a brother named Englebert.

20. Desmond Howard, who went to the same high school as Grbac, had a very successful NFL career and an even more successful career as an analyst at ESPN. I sat next to him on an airplane once during the early days of his career there.

21. I was astounded to learn that in 2023 Tyrone Wheatley had been hired as the head football coach at Wayne State in Detroit. He had a long and successful NFL career with the Giants and Raiders.

22. Todd Collins was never a big star at U-M, but his NFL career, which started in 1995 lasted until 2010, although on two different occasions he took a few years off. He was never a starter, but he evidently was widely considered a reliable backup.

23. Charles Woodson was just as good in the NFL as he had been in college. He played from 1998 to 2015, an astonishingly long career for a defensive back. The greatest interception of all time can be viewed here. In 2024 Woodson worked as an analyst for Fox.

24. Tom Brady became the greatest quarterback of all time in the NFL.

25. Drew Henson dropped out of school after his junior season and signed a contract with the New York Yankees. He bounced around in the minors before and played only eight games with the Yankees before retiring in 2004. He then tried the NFL, where he saw very limited action over a five year career. He was still alive in 2024, apparently working for a company that advised players on economic matters.

26. John Navarre was drafted by the NFL, but he played in only two games. In 2024 he lived in Elmhurst, IL.

27. Chad Henne played fifteen years in the NFL, mostly as a backup quarterback. His last few years were with the Chiefs. He retired in 2023.

28. This is my favorite figure of speech. It is called preterition.

29. Thankfully Walker played only one season for MSU. He was drafted by the Seahawks.

30. In 2024 Aidan Hutchinson was the cornerstone of the rebuilt Detroit Lions.

31. Brian Cook and the other MGoBloggers call this incident “hamburgergate”.

32. I was shocked to learn that it was illegal to go to other teams’ games to scout. I also assumed that everyone tried to “steal” signals and that teams took measures to make this nearly impossible. The NFL has installed technology that allows the coaches to talk to the players on the field. College coaches refuse to consider this arrangement.

1972 SEAD January-April Part 1: The Stupidity Intelligence Office

Posted on November 9, 2020 by Mike

Working at SEAD. Continue reading →

I worked in the Intelligence Office at SEAD for a little less than three months. I worked with the same five people for almost that entire time. I find it puzzling and a little irksome that in 2020 I can remember none of my co-workers’ names, and I also can recall very little that I personally did there.

I attribute this failure to three things.

Almost nothing even slightly memorable—especially compared to SBNM—happened in those three months. There were no incidents whatever.
My work was totally routine. I remember nothing but typing and routine filing.
I had a bad attitude. My thoughts kept gravitating toward my ETS day.

Here are the four people who were already working in the Intelligence Office when I arrived:

The Chief Intelligence Officer (CIO) was a civilian. I had almost no dealings with him. I have only a vague idea of what he did. I had no idea whether he worked for the CIA, the DIA, or some other acronym. He had a private office and lived off-base.
The Assistant Intelligence Officer (AIO) was an Army lieutenant. He was not a lifer. I worked with him a little and even socialized with him once. Nevertheless, I would not hazard a guess as to his job description. He also had an office and lived off-base.
The chief clerk as a middle-aged woman who had worked with the CIO for several years. I thought of her as my boss. She with us at her desk in a rather large area with three desks surrounded by shelves and filing cabinets, but no walls or dividers. She lived off-base.
A PFC had been working in the same area as a clerk-typist for a few months when I arrived. I am not sure whether he was classified as an MP or a clerk-typist, but he lived in the barracks. He and I got along very well, and we socialized together a little. I was a SP4, and so I outranked him, but even at the end of my time at SEAD he knew the job better than I did. So, if he said something needed to be done, I did not question it.

When I arrived at the Intelligence Office there was a backlog of paperwork. The quantity of reports, letters, and what-not was a little more than the two people in the big work area could easily handle. On the other hand, there was not enough work for three people. After I was there for a couple of weeks, the backlog had disappeared, and my PFC friend and I had plenty of spare time.

Towards the end of January the three of us in the big work area were joined by another soldier, a sergeant who was TDY¹, which meant that his was a temporary assignment. He did not know how to type, and so we had very little work for him. We also did not have a desk for him. So, he just sat on a chair in our workspace and twiddled his thumbs. I would have found his situation very stressful. My brain needs to be occupied. When I try to relax my thinking, I generally fall asleep. In my first summer job I had little to do, but I was required to look busy. It was a difficult situation for me. The link for the blog describing that summer will be linked here.

I think that the sergeant on TDY was still there when I ETSed in April. I never did find out what his next assignment was.

The soldiers in the office wore the winter version of the “Class A” uniform. This consisted of:

A dark green suit coat that had space for all of the badges, insignias, and medals.
A light tan long-sleeve dress shirt.
A plain black tie.
Trousers that were, I think, the same color as the coat.
Black dress socks.
Plain black shoes, which were not ideal for walking through the snow that was on the ground from the day that I arrived until the day that I left.
An olive drab “garrison” or “envelope” cap. This was the most practical headgear. In 1972 soldiers ALWAYS wore headgear outdoors and NEVER wore headgear inside. The garrison cap could be folded once and kept on the belt when indoors.
We also had a government-issue overcoat and raincoat. I never used the latter.

I am pretty sure that we hung up the coats somewhere as soon as we got to the office. I only had one suit coat, and I worked Monday-Friday. I don’t remember how we managed to have clean uniforms every day, but I cannot remember any problems. There must have been really good laundry service.

The attention of the officers seemed to be primarily directed toward convoys. Every so often the people in charge of handling the materials stored at the depot would load up some trucks with the goods that were needed at another post in the eastern U.S. The Intelligence office would presumably designate the route and the timing of the delivery. MPs served as armed guards, which was considered by most as a much more interesting assignment than driving around in the snow at SEAD.

Nobody from the MP Company—or anywhere else—ever asked me what we did at the Intelligence Office. If anyone had asked, I would have replied that I had no idea what the officers did. My job was simply to type and file forms.

What they did ask me about was a civilian employed in the Personnel Office, which occupied the other half of the building in which we worked. She was considered—by far—the hottest female on the base and, I venture to say, the hottest in this area of the country. Several guys manufactured various excuses to walk down to our building to ogle her. The MP’s all worked shifts, which meant that everyone in the company had off-duty time available during business hours every day to devote to visits to the Personnel Office. Quite a few made a habit of it, but no one made any headway.

My co-workers and I had some mundane dealings with the Personnel Office. For example, we sometimes borrowed or lent some supplies. Our involvement with this lady, who was always personable, convinced us that she had no interest in the MPs.

This is a rough schematic of the Intelligence Office. The Personnel Office and the lobby would be below the drawing.

The first day that I arrived at my new workspace I noticed one peculiar thing, but I did not mention it until I was fully trained, and we had eliminated the backlog of paperwork. Appended to one of the walls near the doors to the two offices was a sign that read “Intelligence Office”. I proposed to the PFC that we erect by the door that everyone always used to get to our work area a similar sign that indicated that our area was the “Stupidity Office”. We designed, created, and posted a rather realistic sign. The CIO and AIO got a chuckle out of this, but, needless to say, they made us take it down.

The 201 files for all of the military personnel on the base were stored in our office. I don’t know why; we never consulted them. They contained everyone’s test scores, deployment history, and lots of other things. I was often bored, and I occasionally looked through them. I was more curious about the scores on the Language Aptitude Test, which I had taken at Fort Polk in October, as described here. I scored 73 points on that test. In all of the folders that we had I did not find any other score above 10.

I was also interested in the GT scores. I had heard that the minimum score for assignment to the MP MOS was 90. Only one person in the 295th MP Company had a score that low, and it was the the highest-ranking NCO on the base, Top, our First Sergeant. I was surprised to find that no one had a higher score than mine. At least one guy in E-10-4, our AIT company, scored higher.

The most interesting 201 file of all belonged to Capt. D’Aprix. It had page after page referring to an incident that happened a few years earlier at some other post. Evidently it was all worked out in the end; his assignment at SEAD had entailed a lot of responsibility at a top-secret installation. The exact disposition of the investigation was not detailed in the folder. I never mentioned a word about this to anyone.

The lieutenant in the Intelligence Office invited me to his (and his wife’s) house for supper once. I don’t know what the occasion was. He was an enthusiastic audiophile. He played some music on his reel-to-reel tape player. I asked if the sound quality was a good as on vinyl records. He said that it was “probably better”. It probably was better after the record had been played a large number of times. I never have been able to understand how analog recording works under any circumstance.

I don’t remember what kind of music he preferred.

I hung around some with my co-worker, the PC. He was the first classical music aficionado that I had encountered in the Army. He played some of his Peter Schickele records for me. I became a pretty big fan. I subsequently purchased a couple of PDQ Bach albums. While I was isolating during the pandemic in 2020, I listened to the opera The Abduction of Figaro on YouTube (available here) while walking on my treadmill on rainy days.

1. TDY stands for Temporary Duty. No one knows what the “Y’ designates.

1970 October-November Basic Training Part 3: The Training

Posted on July 6, 2020 by Mike

The actual training Continue reading →

The first few days of our training were devoted mostly to administrative matters. We got our gear, found our platoon and our bunk, and had a few sessions with our drill sergeant to make sure that we knew how to stay out of serious trouble. There was a heavy emphasis on cleanliness. I have always been a slob, but I expected to need an attitude adjustment for a couple of years. The only part that really annoyed me was “policing the area” every morning. We all walked around the barracks and picked up trash, mostly cigarette butts discarded by the nicotine addicts who were enabled by the Army’s pricing at the PX: fifty-cents per pack.

Our chaplain resembled neither Fr. Mulcahy nor the Anabaptist chaplain in “Catch 22”.

The only formal teaching that I remember from those first few days was a lecture by the chaplain. He inveighed for close to an hour about cursing. He was, not too surprisingly, against it. He was especially appalled by expletives that involved mothers. He spoke tenderly about his own mother, and he asked all his listeners to bring to mind images of their mothers before they used any kind of rough language.

I have argued that the 1095 oration in Clermont by Pope Urban II that launched the First Crusade was the most successful ever in terms of results. This speech by the chaplain certainly would rank at the other end of the spectrum. In fact, it is very hard for me to imagine that there could possibly have been more cursing in our company in the next seven weeks than there actually was. Virtually every sentence out of anyone’s mouth was replete with imprecations. The word “fuckin'” was the most common, and it was an ongoing challenge to insert it in the most unlikely place in the sentence. Consider this masterpiece: “What bullshit have they got for us this after-fuckin’-noon?” “Mother” was added perhaps half of the time.

Everyone took aptitude tests during the first week. I remember five of them: math, English, listening to dots and dashes, mechanical aptitude, and language aptitude. I hated the mechanical aptitude test. They showed pictures of tools with no scale provided and asked what they could be used for. If the tool did not look familiar, you could not determine whether its length was two inches or ten feet.

My dad told me that he had scored so badly on a similar test in World War II that they accused him of cheating on the other tests. No one called me on my score, but it was definitely out of line with the others.

The English and math tests were scored like IQ tests—100 was average, 115 was one standard deviation higher, 130 was two standard deviations higher, etc. Together they are called the GT test. The top score was 160. I got 160 in English and 152 in math. I thought that I had answered all the math questions correctly, but I must have made a mistake or two.

The language aptitude test was limited to those with a certain minimum score on the English test. Around 20 percent of us qualified. The test presented a made-up language with a list of vocabulary and syntax rules. The language had no suffixes or prefixes, but it did have infixes that consisted of two or three letters somewhere in the middle of the word. They could change singular to plural, present to past, or anything that a prefix or suffix could denote in more familiar languages. I learned of infixes from the workbook for the linguistics class that I took at U-M earlier in the year. I enjoyed taking this test, but most guys spent a lot more time just looking dazed than answering any questions.

Afterwards, while we were waiting in place—which we often did—a sergeant called out an approximation of my name. He told me to report to a certain captain in the training building. The captain informed me that I had received the highest score on the language aptitude test that he had ever seen. He then asked if I would be interested in volunteering for the Army’s language school in Ft. Lewis, WA.

Ignoring the warning from my drill sergeant about the perils of volunteering, I told the captain that I would like to go to this school. I did not even question him about what languages they taught and what duties the people who learned them performed. I foolishly imagined myself as a translator attached to an embassy in an exotic location. Maybe I would prevent a war by avoiding the use of the inflammatory word “upstart”.

One of the first and most important things that our drill sergeant taught us was how to perform the role of fireguard. He showed us where the fire extinguisher was. He might have even shown how to use it. The most important thing was to wake everyone up if there was a fire.

My recollection is that lights went out at nine, and the day started at five. I might be off a little bit. During the lights-out period someone on each of the two floors of the barracks was required to be awake. There were four fireguard shifts every night lasting for two hours each. Because most guys were accustomed to staying up later than nine, the first shift was the most popular. I was accustomed to awakening early, and so when I had to stand watch I tried to get the last shift. The men on this shift bore the additional responsibility of waking everyone up, a task that I relished. My technique for getting everyone out of the sack was to walk up and down the center aisle banging two trash can lids together while singing “It’s another be good to mommy day” from the Captain Kangaroo show. You can listen to the official rendition here.

We began every day with physical training (PT). Mostly we did pushups and jogged. We also did the monkey bars and a few other exercises. I have always loved physical exertion, and this was one of my favorite aspects of Basic. I put on a little weight, but it was all muscle. At the end of training we had timed tests in all of the areas emphasized in PT. I did pretty well, especially in my weakest activity, the monkey bars. I had never been in better shape, and until I started running fairly seriously I did not reach that level again.

Everyone in our company was issued an M16, the rifle used in Vietnam. A high percentage of our training involved this rifle.

Here is how we learned that we should always refer to the M16 that we were allotted as a rifle or a weapon, never a gun: Each guy held the M16 in his right hand over his head. The left hand was on his crotch. Then we recited:
“This is my weapon” moves right hand up and down.
“This is my gun” moves left hand up and down.
“This is for fighting” moves right hand up and down.
“This is for fun” moves left hand up and down.

Before we learned how to fire the weapon, we were taught how to disassemble it and then put it back together. This is called “field stripping.” We were also taught how to clean it. This was very important. In those days M16’s had a bad reputation for jamming in the field. I don’t remember anyone in our company having trouble, but once we trained with another company that had a lot of jams. Every rifle that I saw jam was full of muck. Those guys must have never cleaned them.

This is definitely not the way that we were taught.

We got a fair amount of target practice. We were taught to keep the weapons “up and downrange”. It seems that most people now hold rifles with the barrel down. If it somehow fired in that position, the round would certainly ricochet off the ground in an unpredictable manner. If the rifle is held up, the bullet goes up. It will come down, but it will be traveling at terminal velocity, and the likelihood of hitting someone would be very low.

These rifles have no kick at all, and they are very accurate. I could consistently hit a human-sized silhouette at 300 meters, and I have terrible vision and coordination. I easily qualified when they scored us shooting at bullseye targets.

I have no recollection of anything going wrong with our rifles. Nobody shot himself in the foot. No one lost his weapon. However, there was one occasion in which I feared that my goose was cooked.

We were out in the pine woods for some reason, and we had a very long break. The ground was covered with pine needles. I had already finished the book that I was carrying. I decided to strip down my rifle and clean it. When I went to put it back together, I could not find the firing pin, which is metallic and looks like a nail and a spring that is part of the “fully automatic” feature that turns the M16 into a machine gun.

My kingdom for a firing pin!

Some guys helped me look for about fifteen minutes, but the thick cover of pine needles made finding the spring hopeless. Maybe my rifle was missing it when I got it; I would not have noticed. I could not understand why we could not find the firing pin, and the rifle would not fire without it.

The sergeant called us to “fall in” to formation for the march back. I was panic-stricken. My rifle would not work without the pin of course. I would be found out very soon, but at least we had no more shooting scheduled that day. I could not think of any way out of this that was not fraught with peril. I decided to wait until we got back to the barracks to decide what to do.

When I got undressed the firing pin fell out of my trousers. To this day I have no idea how it could possibly have gotten inside my pants (we had to blouse our trousers with cloth covered rubber bands) or how I could have failed to feel it. I was so relieved to find it that I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to work out the physics.

This episode says a lot about the mentality of trainees. How much could a firing pin cost? $5? Probably less; fifty years later one costs $8.99. Nevertheless, the idea of having to admit that I had lost such a thing was terrible to consider. I felt sure that I would have been browbeaten in private and probably humiliated in public.

After I put the firing pin in, the rifle worked fine as long as it was not switched into “rock and roll” mode, which we were never allowed to use. So, I was still in the clear until we had to turn in our weapons in the last week during the dreaded “white towel” test.

A sergeant sat at a desk with a stack of white towels. We all got busy wiping away every last speck of dirt or oil from our rifles. Finally a bold trainee sidled up to the desk with his stripped weapon laid out on a towel. I was waiting for this, but a handful of guys preceded me in line behind him. When the first guy reached the desk, the sergeant asked him if his weapon was clean. He paused, grinned a little, and then said, “I think so, sergeant.” The sergeant took a piece of the rifle, rubbed it on a towel, and made a smudge. Rejected. The next few guys made equally non-assertive responses to the sergeant’s initial queries, and their weapons were all rejected.

When he asked me if mine was clean, I loudly affirmed, “Yes, sergeant.” He replied, “Well, then turn the motherfucker in.” I quickly complied, and I felt a surge of relief.

A light bulb shone over the head of the guy behind me. When the sergeant asked him if his rifle was clean, he replied “Yes, sergeant” even more loudly than I did. The sergeant responded, “Well I guess I’ll be the judge of that, won’t I?” He quickly found a dirty spot and rejected the rifle.

After a few hours of this nonsense‐all of these weapons were already very clean‐everyone’s weapon was accepted, and the whole company was joyfully disarmed.

We carried our weapons with us everywhere except on PT excursions. We were actually lucky. The M16 was much lighter than its predecessor, the M14, because in several areas light-weight plastic replaced steel or wood.

Don’t stand behind someone with a LAW.

The coolest part of training was the afternoon that they showed off some of the Army’s other weapons. We got to see a light anti-tank weapon (not a bazooka!). An armored vehicle was out in the field 60 or 70 yards away. An instructor put the tube-like LAW on his shoulder, zeroed in on the vehicle, and pulled the trigger. A rocket ignited in the tube and then slowly made its way to the vehicle. When it got to the target, it burrowed through the armor and then exploded.

The M60 machine gun was also impressive. It had so little kick that the presenter put the stock right in his crotch and fired off a burst. It goes without saying that we maggots were not allowed to get our hands on either of these.

The only face-to-face combat training was in the use of the bayonet. We learned that you use the pointy end to stab someone. You can use the stock end to bludgeon someone. We then showed that we had absorbed this lesson by attacking some straw figures. They did not let us use real bayonets.

I assume that this technique would come in handy if you were by yourself and your rifle was lost, broken, or out of bullets AND you had an opponent who was in exactly the same position. This happens pretty often in the movies. Who knows about real life? All that I know is that my buddies and I are ready for it.

The other half of the bayonet training involved pugil sticks, which are about four feet long and, unlike bayonets, they have padding on both ends. The trainers paired us up with someone about the same size. My opponent was the guy who played the country music station on his radio every morning. He was a little bigger, but I, the dorkiest-looking guy in the company, was more highly motivated. To everyone’s surprise I pummeled him.

By and large our outdoor training was similar to what was shown in the movie Stripes. There was one major exception. There was no obstacle course and, therefore, there was no tower in which our drill sergeant to climb and get blown up in.

Instead we went out after dark one night to a field that we had to crawl across with our rifles across our arms. Barbed wires were strung a couple of feet over our heads. At the far end trainers were firing (allegedly) live ammunition, including tracer rounds, a little higher than the barbed wire. To my knowledge, nobody in our company got hurt. I don’t remember whether everyone completed the task or not. I doubt it.

We also had a few other classes. I remember an outdoor class in which we were taught the rudiments of spotting different types of aircraft. What I learned from this class was that it was probably a good idea to save your ammunition for ground-based opponents.

There must have been others, but the only indoor class—aside from the insufferable chaplain’s lectures—that I remember was on map reading. I was astonished to discover that around half of the company was totally unfamiliar with the topic. For those of us who already knew how to read maps these classes were excruciating. I called them “nap reading”.

Several guys were indeed caught napping during indoor classes. Many had a difficult time adjusting to the routine of the routine of early lights-out and early wake-up calls. Also, the sergeants claimed that all trainees had a sleep button in their butts. Whenever they sat down they fell asleep.

Training was voluntary. The alternative every morning was to go on sick call. At the opening assembly, one of the sergeants would yell out “All sick, lame, and lazy report to …” A few guys tried this pretty often. I never asked them how it went.

I hated every minute of the experience, but Basic training had at least three beneficial effects on me. By the end I was in terrific shape. I learned that a moderate but consistent effort can produce a profound effect on your physical conditioning. I have never forgotten this.

Secondly, I got to know on fairly intimate terms some entirely different breeds of guys. To put it another way, the Army expanded my horizons. I don’t think it expanded them up, but any expansion helps.

Finally, I discovered that I was fairly gritty. I had a lot more endurance than most guys. I scored pretty high in the final physical training test. I more than held my own in most areas with guys that I would have thought were tougher than I was.

1970 October-November Basic Training Part 1: The People

Posted on July 5, 2020 by Mike

People I encountered at Fort Polk. Continue reading →

Fort Polk, which is named not for the U.S. president (which would be bad enough) but for a Confederate general, is near Leesville, LA.

I never heard anyone on the base call the town anything other than Diseaseville. That was cleverer than the nickname for the base itself, Fort Puke.

It was pretty warm there, even in October and November. That suited me fine.

These are close to what we wore. Snazzy, eh?

Our first day was mostly devoted to waiting in line for haircuts and getting gear. You could tell the barber what you wanted: Class A (no hair), Class B (almost no hair), or Class C (a little hair). A few guys were stupid enough not to pick A. The sergeants made most of them go back in. Some ended up getting three or more haircuts. My military ID had a picture of me like this. I lost it in 1975 when I lost my billfold. Sue thought that I looked like a prison inmate.

Believe it or not, the measurements for my olive-drab (OD) trousers were 29-34. I wore nothing but fatigues for eight weeks. We were provided with an OD duffel bag in which to stow our gear. My name and Social Security Number were stenciled on mine. In the barracks we were each given a footlocker. Our army-issue stuff went in the footlocker in a precisely prescribed manner. Our civilian clothes and anything else we brought or acquired went in the duffel bag.

An important lesson we all quickly learned was this: Before you interact with anyone you must check his (there were no women to interact with in Basic training) sleeves and collar to determine his rank. Sergeants had at least three stripes. They were always addressed as “sergeant”. Officers had bars, oak leaf clusters (commonly called “salad”), eagles, or stars. They were always addressed as “sir”.

This is a true story. As we were waiting in line for something an officer asked one of the men a question. He did not like the answer and said “Give me twenty, boot.”

He was ordering the guy to do push-ups. The soldier addressed happened to be in great shape. He whipped off twenty and then said “Permission to recover, sir?”

The officer replied, “Sure, as soon as you give me my twenty. I didn’t hear anything.”

This time the guy called out “One”, “Two”, and so forth as he did his push-ups and then repeated the request to recover. The officer replied again, “Sure, as soon as you give me my twenty.”

My recollection is that the poor guy had done eighty or one hundred push-ups before he realized, after hints from the peanut gallery, that he needed to say “One, sir”, “Two, sir” and so on. Otherwise the officer would think that he must be responding to someone else’s order.

If you called a sergeant “sir”, he would undoubtedly say “I work for a living.” I don’t know what officers said if you called them “sergeant”. I avoided officers.

Our DS wore his hat much lower in front.

We met our drill sergeants. Ours was younger than I was. He wore his Smokey Bear hat tilted down at a very sharp angle. He gathered our platoon together at the very beginning and told all of us that we should never volunteer for anything. A few minutes later we had an assembly in which they asked for volunteers to give blood. Of course, absolutely no one in our platoon volunteered. The sergeant had to gather us again and tell us that giving blood was the one exception. Most guys then volunteered; I did not. My blood type is A+, the universal recipient. They never need it. Also, I have a rather severe phobia of needles. It was bad enough that we got unexplained inoculations every Wednesday. I was not about to volunteer for more skin punctures.

One guy in our company had completed his service in the Navy and reenlisted in the Army. He had to start as a private, but after training he was guaranteed the equivalent of his Navy rank. He ran a loan-sharking business for the other trainees. He would loan money until pay day. What were his rates? He kept it simple. “I give you one. You give me two on pay day. I give you five; you give me ten. How much do you need?” He had no shortage of customers.

There were more enlistees than draftees in our company. The enlistees were required to serve three years of active duty; the draftees’ requirement was only two years. However, the enlistees were allowed to choose either their first duty assignment (at least 12 months) or their MOS (military occupational specialty). Neither of these guaranteed that they would not go to Vietnam. Many of the enlistees were surprised to learn this when they got to Fort Polk. They had been bamboozled by a recruiting sergeant.

The recruiting sergeants in those days had high quotas for certain MOS’s. One, of course, was infantry, but it was difficult even for them to portray slogging through rice paddies under enemy fire as romantic, exotic, or practical. On the other hand quite a few guys signed up for another MOS: “helicopter repairman”. They probably envisioned themselves in a bulletproof hangar doing interesting work and developing a marketable skill. Unfortunately, these guys learned that their job had a co-equal assignment as tail-gunner on helicopters, and their survival rate was not high.

One guy, whose last name and home town were both Houston, was a very unusual case. He was a very dim bulb. He had red hair and wore glasses that looked like the bottoms of coke bottles. He seemed more like a cartoon character than a human.

Houston’s life ambition was to be a quartermaster in the Army. Army quartermasters are in charge of supplies. They distribute field jackets, blankets, etc. He had twice tried to enlist, but he had been rejected because of his poor vision. Jack Vance solved this problem in 1941 by memorizing the eye chart. I don’t think that Houston had the mental acuity to do that, but he somehow got in on the third attempt. A lazy or overly gung-ho person probably looked the other way at his physical.

At Fort Polk Houston was crestfallen to discover that his enlistment contract did NOT guarantee that he would become a near-sighted quartermaster. He learned at the end of training that he was actually assigned to infantry. I wonder what happened to him.

We spent one day learning about grenades. They have two safeties—the handle and the pin. You first squeeze the handle, then pull out the pin, then throw it and duck behind something solid. A few second later the grenade is supposed to explode. You never check it. Ten or fifteen minutes would be reasonable for this lesson. We spent half a day.

Before we were rewarded with the thrill of throwing a live grenade, we had to demonstrate that we understood the technique by throwing a dummy. I was standing in line when Houston’s turn came. The sergeant handed him the grenade. Houston looked at it quizzically, squeezed the handle, pulled the pin, dropped it and then kicked it as he tried to pick it up. Even the Army would not let him throw a live one. Of course, the pencil-pusher who assigned him to infantry did not know about this episode.

One other person in our company was not allowed to throw a live grenade, my bunkmate, whose last name was Rosensomething. Everyone except me called him Rosey. I called him by his first name, Larry. He had a degree in music. Both of his parents were also musicians. He had NEVER played any sport. He had never even thrown a football, a baseball, or anything else. His best effort at throwing the dummy grenade might have gone ten yards. It was beyond pitiful.

Rosey had perfect musical pitch and a fine counter-tenor (higher than Pavarotti or Juan Diego Flores) voice. When the sergeants discovered this, they would often have Rosey call the cadence or lead us in one of our semi-obscene marching songs as we marched from one training area to another. They found this very entertaining, and they loved to showcase his abilities when we passed within earshot of other training companies.

At the start of training Rosie was in horrible condition. I was usually next to him when we jogged every morning. In our first run he was winded within the first minute or two. The sergeants made it quite clear that it was everyone’s responsibility to make sure that everyone kept up. I often had to help Rosey stay on his feet, but I did not mind at all.

On one of the final days he had to run a timed mile in combat boots. His time was twelve minutes plus, which is horrendous, but it was much faster than he could manage the first week.

There were three primary topics of conversation in our barracks:
1) How tough I am;
2) How fast my car is;
3) How beautiful my girlfriend is.
Lots of guys carried around pictures of #2 and #3. I had nothing to contribute to these conversations beyond “Nice.”

After a few weeks of Basic, everyone knew precisely where everyone else stood with regards to #1. At the top of the list was a rather small black guy from Chicago who was a Golden Gloves boxer. He was in another platoon. The most bizarre experience of the entire eight weeks was when I walked into the barracks on a day that we had off. Everyone was talking about how this guy from Chicago had punched me out. A few people were outraged because they knew that I would never start a quarrel. It turned out that he had cold-cocked a guy from another platoon. The victim wore glasses and was about my size (but heavier; everyone was heavier).

The guy in the next bunk (no clue as to his name but I can visualize him: a typical kid of 18 or 19 from a rural town) made everyone look at pictures of his girlfriend standing by his Corvette. Before he left she had sworn her undying love. He wrote to her every day. She responded. However, she stopped writing about the fifth week. Somehow he found out a while later that she was seeing another guy and even letting him drive the ‘vette. This guy wanted to go AWOL, but a few of us talked him out of it.

I had a lot of respect for one guy from Mississippi in our platoon. He was married and had a kid. He enlisted because he could not find a job in his home town. When we got paid (something like $125 per month), he immediately endorsed his check and mailed it to his wife. You could live on the base without spending any money, but a “roach coach” came to our company every day, and it was very tempting to buy a candy bar or a bag of chips. He never gave in.

The intellectual level of our company was low. On a day that we had off I went around to all four barracks to ask if anyone knew how to play bridge (which in the sixties and seventies was played by college students everywhere). There were at least three hundred people in the company, but no one admitted to knowing anything about bridge.

My only real friend, other than Rosey, was another guy from Mississippi named Todd Pyles. He seemed like a pretty intelligent guy, but that did not stop people from calling him Gomer. He had attended Ole Miss for a couple of years, but he dropped out to join the army. His attitude could be summed up by his favorite aphorism, “They can kill you, but they can’t eat you.”

At the end of week six or seven we were allowed to go to a place on the base where you could buy a beer. I doubt that I had had two beers in my life before this, but when Todd asked if I wanted to go, I agreed. We sat down, sipped our Miller High Lifes, and solved a few of the world’s problems. At one point I asked him why he had dropped out and enlisted when he could have stayed in school and avoided the draft. He said that he had problems. I asked him what kind of problems. He replied, “You know, heroin.” That shut me up.

A couple of guys went AWOL. One fellow from our platoon who went “over the hill” was a Latino named Victor. He was caught a few days later and brought back. Our drill sergeant gathered us together and told us that we should welcome Victor back and not quiz him about his attempted escape. He bugged out again a few days later, and we never saw him again.

I spent most of my spare time reading murder mysteries. I also bought a couple when, after a few weeks, we were allowed to go to the PX. I was known in the company as “the guy who reads.” I always carried a book with me. We had plenty of free time, but it usually came in intervals of only 15-20 minutes. These breaks were announced with “Light ’em up if you got ’em.” We had to sit on the ground. I would persuade someone to sit back-to-back with me while I read a few pages.

Having seen nearly every episode of “The Beverly Hillbillies”, I knew that the species existed, but I had never encountered one. There were quite a few hillbillies in our company and one in our squad of a dozen or so guys. He had a radio that was set to a local country station, and he turned it on every morning. I started every day in a bad mood for eight weeks.

There were two other subspecies that were new to me: Cajuns and Creoles. Both were very difficult to understand. We had one of the former in our platoon. I could not understand anything that he said. One of the drill sergeants had a Creole accent, which for him seemed to mean the elimination of most consonants. On one occasion one of his troops was missing. He went around screaming what sounded like “Weh ih eye ann owns?” with a heavy emphasis on the last syllable. He meant “Where is my man Jones?”

There were, of course, quite a few black guys. There had been none in my grade school and only one in my high school. Of course, there were some at Michigan, but fewer than you might think. The black guys in Basic did not seem much different from the other guys, but they all called one another “Holmes” or maybe it was “Homes”. One thing that they were adamant about was their refusal to eat pussy, not that I asked about it.

I never witnessed any overt discrimination, but who knows went on when I was not around?

The First Sergeant in any company is called “Top.” I had a run-in with ours. We were strongly encouraged to purchase savings bonds. If everyone did, they would get to post a banner boasting 100% compliance at HQ. Myself and a few others were not persuaded by this line of reasoning.

Top called our obstinate group aside while everyone else was eating lunch. He seated us in a small grandstand at a baseball field so that he could explain why saving money was good. When he finished his spiel, about half the guys, fearful of missing lunch, signed up and rushed to the mess hall.

I asked him what the interest rate on the bonds was. He said that he did not know. I told him that savings bonds at that time paid lower interest than savings accounts at banks. Elsewhere there were much better opportunities for saving than either of these. Both of these statements were true at the time.

He said that he did not believe that anyone offered a better deal than the United States government, a completely bogus argument. He also mentioned that the purchase could be deducted from the paycheck. This was a point, but if I was saving for a rainy day, I considered this period in which we were being paid so little to perform loathsome tasks to be a monsoon. I wanted access to every penny of my money.

Only a couple of us were left at the end. The lunch period was over, but Top got them to fix us something. I am not sure whether the others succumbed, but that banner never went up while I was there.

I had a similar experience with life insurance. The lady at the desk asked me if I knew what insurance was. I replied, “Yes, my father works for a life insurance company. I have worked at life insurance companies for three summers, the last two in actuarial departments. I have a degree in math, and I have passed the first two actuarial exams. I have no dependents, which makes me a poor candidate for insurance, and life insurance policies are horrible investments for someone like me.”

I suspect that she was supposed to press me to buy something, but she just let me go.

I kept a very low profile for all eight weeks, and I avoided any gathering that included officers or sergeants. In the eighth week one of the drill sergeants for another platoon in our company saw me in line at the mess hall. He challenged my right to be in line because he could not remember ever seeing me in eight weeks. The guys with me assured him that I was in their platoon. I was very proud of my anonymity.

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Tag Archives: Fort Polk

1966-2024 Bleeding Maize and Blue

1972 SEAD January-April Part 1: The Stupidity Intelligence Office

1970 October-November Basic Training Part 3: The Training

1970 October-November Basic Training Part 1: The People