Our trip to Pasadena promises to be picture perfect

NICHOLAS J. COTSONIKA The Greek Speaks

I saw a picture of the Rose Bowl once. Maybe it was on television or in a book somewhere, in full color, filled with sun-tanned fans who had come to see champions play. The picture looked awfully distant, though, like the ones you see on postcards from faraway places that you just know you'll never visit - places so perfect, you wonder if they actually exist at all.

And now we're going to see it for real. The Rose Bowl. On New Year's Day. Michigan, our school, is the Big Ten's best, the nation's best, ready to face Pac-10 champion Washington State with a chance to win the national championship.

After so many years of heartbreak, of hearing about other people's parties in California, I wonder if this is all just a mirage. It's so hard to believe, I feel a bit warm inside. It feels like I'm going to Tahiti. I can hear the Michigan Marching Band, playing the "Hawaiian War Chant."

It's picture perfect.

Michigan State is going to the Aloha Bowl. We're going to Pasadena, college football's paradise, every fan's promised land. We're going back to where we belong.

For most of this century, Michigan has been an unmovable monument on top of the sport. The program has more victories than any other, experiencing few moments of mediocrity.

The Wolverines won the first Rose Bowl, 49-0, over Stanford in 1902. That game was stopped with nine minutes remaining because of a mercy rule, leaving officials so dismayed they canceled future games - replacing football for events as strange as ostrich races. At least things were more competitive.

Football didn't return until 1916, when Tournament of Roses officials took their heads out of the ground. Washington State defeated Brown, 14-0, that year, but we made our return soon afterward.

On Jan. 1, the Wolverines will make their 17th Rose Bowl appearance, best in the Big Ten. If they win, the victory will be their eighth, best in the Big Ten. Is it any wonder that Michigan now has 32 conference titles, best in the Big Ten?

We're going back to where we belong. It's picture perfect. But there's more.

Our 17th appearance may be the sweetest. In this era of 85-scholarship equity, no school - no matter how powerful in the past - will dominate forever. Look at Miami (Fla.), Texas and Alabama - none are in a bowl. Look at the past four Michigan seasons, each of which ended with the Wolverines losing four games. Look at the future: Rose Bowls won't happen every year anymore.

And somehow, despite what all the critics said in the preseason, this so-called down-and-out school has risen again. It may rise higher than it has since 1948, the last time it was crowned a national champion in football. It may rise higher than the 1947 team (whose members are having a reunion in Pasadena this year, if you need an omen), which went 10-0 and won the Rose Bowl but lost out on the national championship to Notre Dame.

The team that won the first Rose Bowl may win the last real Rose Bowl, before the Bowl Alliance arrives in Pasadena next year and old traditions die forever. Well, it's picture perfect.

These Wolverines have achieved in the true spirit of Michigan, a public school that gives talented, motivated people a forum in which to succeed.

Lloyd Carr hasn't been a head coach since he worked with high school kids in the 1970s. Quarterback Brian Griese nearly left school after wallowing in a backup role last season, not long after he faced public ridicule for an instant of anger outside a campus bar, but he's back. There are so many others, but they all blend into one, which may be the very reason why they'll all be in Pasadena together.

Charles Woodson? Well, like I said, I wonder if this is all just a mirage. He's so quick, he could have beaten those ostriches in 1913. But when you think about it, he's the only star we've got. Everyone else is just a Wolverine, and that's enough.

No current player has seen the Rose Bowl either. None of them spoke about the national championship above a whisper until last week. And now, when they see a picture of that stadium on a postcard, they'll be mailing it to their mothers.

I can only imagine what they'll be writing on the back, the wish-you-were-heres and I'm-glad-I-worked-so-hard-to-play-football. Hi, Mom, this is where I belong.

As for me, I don't think I'm going to send any postcards. I might just walk down to the stadium and see it for myself, touch the wall, maybe, and make sure it's real, shaking my head in the sun.

- Nicholas J. Cotsonika can be reached at cotsonik@umich.edu

JOHN KRAFT/Daily
Students count down the days to Pasadena.

12-10-97