They were shattered in Ann Arbor yesterday.
The teams appeared to be evenly matched, but I think that was misleading. What those watching saw was a well-balanced (offense/defense) team play a team with a monster offense, and one of the worst defenses in the nation. Michigan’s offense made Illinois’ defense look much worse than it was, and their defense made Illinois’ offense look much better than it was, so it looked as though it was a purely offensive battle with poor defense on both sides. I have to say, though, that despite the score, Michigan’s defense was looking better than it had been, with some key stops (especially, of course, the final one that won the game by preventing the two-point conversion). Of course, it will have to continue to improve if they’re to have any hope of beating Wisconsin and Ohio State.
[Update Monday morning]
Without looking it up, I’m guessing that Michigan now has another (dubious) record — points allowed while still winning (65).
My brother lives in Portland, so, Go Ducks!
This is the nightmare scenario. This win makes them Bowl eligible and is probably enough to help Ricky Ricardo avoid getting fired, but gives absolutely no sign that he is ever going to bring it back to the just-above-mediocre Lloyd Carr program he trashed let alone the once proud juggernaught this program used to be. The RR imposed two year slide has furthered the gap between them and OSU and allowed the SPARTANS (????). No recruit will come up to Michigan to play in the cold weather for a great program that isn’t great anymore and now MSU rather than UM will get first pick of in-state standouts. This will result in a decline that will continue until RR is replaced with a real football coach, as opposed to the snake oil salesman we have now.
I was at the Northwestern game in 2000 that held the previous record for most combined touchdowns. Some friends of mine, 2 years later, taped “54-51” to their graduation caps at commencement.
Northwestern didn’t get a lot of opportunities to celebrate those sorts of things.
Without looking it up, I’m guessing that another record broken on Saturday was most points allowed by a winning team (65). A dubious one, to be sure.