It is the 23rd of September. It is the first day of autumn which is my
favorite season. It is the 23rd
of September and it is a cool Chicago day, breezy, with billowy clouds. When the sun did pour through, it was the
glorious gold color that makes this many people’s favorite season.
We are in week four of the college football season. Michigan is again 3-0. The Wolverines beat Notre Dame two weeks ago
for the third year in a row. It was a
spectacular game and an amazing spectacle.
It was the first night game at Michigan Stadium. They had installed lights last year.
Michigan was lucky to win the game. Notre Dame had jumped out to an early
lead. Their offense was, for the second
year in a row, cutting through the Michigan offense like that veritable knife
through butter. This was the second year
in which Notre Dame did this in the first quarter. Notre Dame looked invincible on offense and
defense. Michigan’s statistics were
dismal. They had only one first down in
the entire first quarter.
Not only that, Michigan was behind the entire game. They underperformed Notre Dame in every
statistic, at least through the first three
quarters. Notre Dame was leading 24-7
and it appeared like they would cruise on to their first win of the season. It looked like they would hand Michigan their
first loss under their new head coach Brady Hoke.
But, as I said, Michigan was lucky and won the game. For Michigan, luck had long dreadlocked hair, wore number
16, and played quarterback.
Luck had a name: Denard
Robinson. For the second year in a row,
he was the difference in this classic rivalry.
In the fourth quarter, Denard ran and passed. He
evaded tackles making the Notre Dame Defenders look hoodwinked and slow. They were hoodwinked by the most artful dodger
playing the college game today. They
were all slower than Demard but then everyone
is slower than Denard.
Michigan scored 28 points in the fourth quarter to win this
game. That is four touchdowns. Wow.
They did not take their first lead until there was only 1:12 left in the
game: 28-24. The crowd was insane. We looked like we were going to three peat
against Notre Dame. Unbelievable. Un-called for. Crazy.
Lucky.
All the Wolverines had to do was hold the Fighting Irish for the
remaining one minute and change left in the game. They could do this. The defense really looked
better than the past few years. Even though they started slow in
each game. The difference between this
year and last year is that the defense stayed lackluster throughout each and
every game last year. This year in the
three games thus far, under the tutelage of Coach Greg Mattison the biggest
difference is that the defense adjusts.
They get run over early in the game and then they adapt and get better.
So, the entire Michigan part of the record breaking crowd had some
confidence that our beloved team could hold Notre Dame and win the game.
We were all wrong.
They got the ball on their own 39 yard line. Tommy Reese, their own talented sophomore QB,
had a little magic of his own to display.
The Lake Forest High School grad drove the Irish to a touchdown on four
passes. Bam! Notre Dame regained the lead 31-24.
There was only 30 seconds left on the clock. Things pretty much looked over for like the second or third time in this game. Michigan fans began to trudge out of the
stadium. The few Notre Dame fans were
feeling pretty good about things. There
were, after all, only thirty seconds left.
Denard Robinson, however, was still our quarterback.
Notre Dame kicked off and Michigan began on their own 20 yard
line. On the first play, Jeremy Gilliam,
a Michigan receiver found himself all alone in the right flat and Denard
completed a pass to him. Gilliam
scampered for a net gain of 64 yards.
Wow… again! Michigan now found
themselves on the Notre Dame 16 yard line with like 10 seconds left. On the next play, Denard hit Roy Roundtree
for a touchdown. Thank you. Easy work.
Well, amazing work that looked easy.
Voila. In two plays, Michigan had
the lead again 35-31.
There was only 2 seconds left in the game.
At this point, it really seemed like this one was in the bag. Yet, in this game, who knows? They could run back the kick-off and
win. They did not. On the kick-off, Notre Dame fumbled, the ball
went out of the Notre Dame end zone, and the game ended. The Michigan fans were ecstatic and the Notre
Dame fans were stunned.
Here is a YouTube of the last 1:41 of the game captures the last
21 points of the game. Scoring 21 points
in the last two minutes of the game is completely wild. You see the jubliant Wolverines when they
scored with 1:12 left in the game to take a 28-24 lead. Then watch Notre Dame turn the tables and
retake the lead 31-28 with just 30 seconds left in the game. It seemed over, but oh no. Michigan scored again. No matter how, or
anyone, writes it up, you get the full magnitude of what these two teams did
that night. It is the final 1:41 of the
game, but it is 13:33 minutes long. http://www.youtube.com/watch?y=ZsHbCfgPA1c&feature=related
Win or lose, it was a great game.
Someone had to win though both teams played valiantly. It is easier for the winning side to say that
for sure but I saw it in the Notre Dame fans I talked to as they left the
stadium. We all felt the same. We were lucky to win. It is a win nonetheless.
I have been on the other side of games like that where my team has
beat the other team on almost every statistic except the score. No matter what, it is the final score that
counts. So, I had empathy for the Notre
Dame fans.
Just upon entering the stadium, we got maize colored pom-poms
(sticks with streamers on them). I
almost did not take one, thinking that I would never use it. But I did take one and was amazed, or perhaps
amaized, that I was waving it around every time something exciting happened and
every time they played the Michigan Fight Song. Here is a YouTube of the student section
with everyone waving their pom-poms. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j2UNqVSKjo
When the game ended we sat in the stands just letting everyone
else clear out and to give the traffic a head start. It was midnight and the band did their post
game show. My cousin’s son, hence my
second cousin Avo, and his buddy James were sitting in the section next to
ours. I texted him and he was still in the stadium, so they walked over and we debriefed the game. It was a very special night.
The team wore throw back jerseys to the early days when Michigan
and Notre Dame played. We bought them, I
wore the Michigan jersey and Judy wore the Notre Dame one. People called us a house divided. Some of the inebriated students were not so
kind to Judy, but she would give them the “that is unacceptable young man” look
and most apologized.
It was a great evening of football. This is longest streak of wins for Michigan
since they won the first eight games they played against Notre Dame from
1887-1908. Notre Dame had a streak of
four wins from 1987-1990.
This is certainly a classic rivalry.
9-11-11:
Michigan and Notre Dame squared off on Saturday evening of September
10. When we left the stadium it was
Sunday, September 11th. There
were commemorations during the game for the 10th Anniversary of
9-11. While playing and singing God
Bless America, the names of the eighteen University of Michigan
graduates who lost their lives that day scrolled down the huge video scoreboard.
It was a nice tribute.
During half-time, two Rangers parachuted into the stadium. That was something. They both had video cameras attached to their
harnesses. The video showed on the
jumbotron. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j2UNqVSKjo
I enjoyed the game. I was
happy with the win. Looking at the
videos, I am just getting the full measure of how exciting the end of the game
was. But, I was kind of reserved at the game. Why was I not ecstatic? It was partially due to fact that Michigan
had a lot of luck going to get that win.
But, I believe it was also partially due to the 9-11 anniversary.
When driving from Lake Forest to Ann Arbor, I could not help but
wonder and fear that this game would be a perfect stage for a terrorist attack. Thankfully, there was none. Thankfully, there were none anywhere in the
US. There was a threat in NYC but
nothing happened with the arrest of a couple of suspects. I am sure my fears of terrorism at football
games comes from the 1977 Black Sunday
movie and Tom Clancy’s The Sum of All
Fears.
On September 9th, I got an email from Luis Solana a
friend and colleague from Colgate. He
wrote, “Ten years ago on Sunday, we were in Brazil. How to forget!” How to forget indeed?
It has been ten years since the 9-11-01 attacks that brought down
the World Trade Center towers in New York City, damaged the Pentagon in
Washington, DC, and the crash of fourth plane in Pennsylvania when the
passengers fought and kept that plane from ever reaching its target in DC. It seems like ten years and it seems like
just a minute. These kinds of events
when you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when it
happened are like that.
In my lifetime, this was the biggest. It overshadowed the murders of John F.
Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. It overshadows the death of Princess Diana,
and our landing of a man on the moon. I
did not live through the Pearl Harbor attack by the Japanese that triggered our
involvement in WWII. That may have been
equivalent. I will have to ask my
parents, who experienced both.
Ten years ago, I was living in Connecticut and working in
Manhattan. On that fateful Tuesday, I
could have easily been in the city at the Colgate-Palmolive offices on Park
Avenue. I wasn't. I was in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I was part of a task force that was there to
review the customer service and logistics operations of our subsidiary
there. Stan Brothers, Jim Davis, Alberto
Cardona, and I left on Sunday evening.
Luis Solana joined us but he travelled from Miami where he was living at
the time.
We spent Monday preparing for the activity with the Brazilian
team. We reviewed and revised the agenda
and our roles and responsibilities. We
asked for and analyzed more data. Stan
was the supply chain finance person on the team. The rest of us were supply chain
professionals. I had responsibility for
Latin America, so I was very interested in the results of this task force.
We kicked off the meeting with the Brazil Team at 8:30 am on
Tuesday morning. We had the VPs of
Finance, Operations, and Customer Service and Logistics in the meeting along
their key directors and managers. We
were going through the overview presentation, basically their standard business
review slide deck, by the Brazilian team when Luciano Sieber came into the
conference room and blurted out that a plane had just crashed into the World
Trade Center. We were taken aback. We asked many questions but Luciano had no more information. We just assumed that it was an accident due
to poor air traffic control or a bad private pilot. We resumed the meeting.
What seemed like just a few minutes later, Luciano burst into the
room again. He was more agitated and
shouted that another plane had crashed into the other tower of the World Trade
Center. This was clearly no
accident. While we sat there trying to
make sense of things with limited information, Charlie Catlett, the VP of
Operations, got a call on his cell phone from his wife. She told Charlie that New York and
Washington, DC were under attack and that planes had crashed into the White
House, the Capital Dome, and the Pentagon.
Under attack?? It sounded dire
and wide scale. Our meeting fell
apart. We were done for that day.
We immediately hit the internet looking for information only to
realize that the attacks were nearly not broad as Charlie's wife had
reported. We also realized the attacks
were so unexpected, brazen, and shocking that the news machine was stunned and
on its collective heels. There was
almost no information the CNN, The New York Times, USA Today, and other
websites. The whole country and whole
world was stunned. The lack of immediate
information in the immediate information age was amazing.
The media did catch up.
Once it got revved up, it was relentless, 24/7, and our eyes were glued
to the TV. We went back to our hotel and
just watched CNN International. We
called each other while watching the coverage.
"Did you see that?"
"Have you heard from your family?" There was a lot of "wows" and
"OMGs!" One of us, got tired
of watching, the news and calling home, and suggested that we go grab a quick
dinner. We all agreed. And what did we talk about at dinner? What had happened in New York, there was no
other subject.
Then we went back to our rooms and watched more. We looked at the same footage over and over
again. The towers were forever engulfed
in flame and smoke; people were jumping to their deaths; there were talking
heads of every imaginable leader and analyst.
There was nothing new and yet we watched. We could not help but watch.
The next day we tried to get back to business. We actually worked and accomplished our
mission there. We worked to take our
minds off the multitude of thought and worries that were on all our minds. We worried about the same things everyone
else worried about. Would there be other
attacks? How had these events changed
our lives, our business, and our families?
Did we know anyone that had perished in the attacks?
We also worried about something else. How and when were we going to head home? All travel was suspended. Indefinitely. I called our head of corporate security to
get his take on things. There is
something in such a crisis that became quite clear. No one knew what was going on. People were giving advice and opinion with
imperfect information. They were setting
policy because they had to. Then the
policy and advice would change as events unfolded or in this case didn't.
We were told not to fly US carriers home. OK, that kind of made sense. Then we heard, while watching CNN so much at
night, that if and when air travel resumed, it would resume internationally
only for US airlines. We sought
clarification and realized that we were basically on our own. It was no problem, we were in good hands with
our colleagues in Brazil. But, Wednesday
and Thursday, we had no clue how long we would be in Brazil.
On Friday, we heard the first flights to the US would be
leaving. As fate would have it, we ended
up on our scheduled return flight which was the first plane to leave Brazil for
the US.
It is hard to believe it has been ten years. I replied to Luis and copied Stan, Jim, and
Alberto. We have a 9-11bond and email
each other every year.
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