I tried to convince them to come in here and fight their hearts out and play together and believe in each other. But I think any coach would do the same thing. So what I did was nothing. What they did is unforgettable. |
I went into the training room after the game and Jon had tears in his eyes as I talked to him, ... I said, 'You must be in unbelievable pain.' He says, 'No, I was just thinking next Saturday is going to be the first Michigan football game I have missed in 30-some years.' |
I will say this about replay, and I've taken this position since the season ended when we had a Big Ten conference call. If they're going to have instant replay, they've got to have a coach's challenge. Otherwise, you've got a guy in the booth nobody knows, and he makes decisions on whether plays should be reviewed or not, and we get no explanation. |
I wouldn't do that to the other school. That's just me. I wouldn't do that. |
I'd be more interested in what he wanted to do. |
I'll keep my comments to those players who are here. I assume they'll all come back. |
I'll meet with them when I get back to Ann Arbor toward the end of next week. |
I'll never forget this day. |
I'm always prepared for change, or at least I try to be prepared for change, at any position. There were a lot of people outside that were considered, and the people we ended up with were quality in every way. |
I'm certainly, during the course of a week, not always going to tell you about injuries because that puts our team at a disadvantage. I hope you understand that because if you don't, you should. Because, when a team knows ahead of time who's not going to play, that helps them. |
I'm confident and hopeful those calls were properly made because if they weren't, that would obviously be an issue. |
I'm not going to talk about individual guys. |
I've interviewed every player on our team, and that's always part of the conversation. There's a lot of things that certainly should be motivating. I don't think there's anybody in this program that wants to go through that kind of season again. I think they'll do everything that they're asked to do to make sure that it doesn't happen again. |
If some things are reviewed and some aren't, then you have controversy and the whole purpose of this thing was to avoid controversy. |
If there would have been anybody loafing there, we wouldn't have run them down. |