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Michigan

Sights and sounds from Michigan's win over Iowa at Kinnick Stadium

clayton-sayfieby: Clayton Sayfie10/02/22CSayf23
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(Photo by Matthew Holst/Getty Images)

IOWA CITY — Michigan Wolverines football handled Iowa, 27-14, Saturday afternoon at Kinnick Stadium. Here are some sights, sounds and random observations from the game.

The Iowa wave

It was our first experience with the Iowa Wave, a tradition that started in 2017. At the end of the first quarter, Patients of the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital head to the top floor, and fans turn to wave, showing their support.

The Michigan team joined in, too, led by sophomore quarterback J.J. McCarthy, who promised before the game that he’d participated.

“I’m going to be waving my butt off,” he said earlier in the week, via the Detroit News. “At the end of the day, football is just this amazing game we get to play. … It’s just really awesome to be able to include them and let them know, ‘We see you. You inspire us.’”

Michigan’s blue pants

Michigan wore blue pants for just the eighth time in program history, improving to 7-1 with the look. The lone loss came in the College Football Playoff last season. The Maize and Blue won with blue pants against Iowa in the 2021 Big Ten championship game, as well.

The blue bottoms looked great in the Iowa City sunshine on a gorgeous day for football.

Blue collars

Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh gives his players blue collar shirts for the first road game of each season. The Wolverines try to embody that personality on the road. In reality, Harbaugh tries to take that type of mindset into each and every day.

“It’s a great win to keep moving on and improve when you win,” Harbaugh said. “We can get better in all those things. Really good after a win, especially as a Big Ten win, especially against a team that really prides themselves on a blue collar mentality. Hard working team, physical team, hustling team. 

“I’ve always been enamored with it. Always try to have our teams be about that, that blue collar mentality. Even looked it up one time. The whole blue collar started in Iowa. I can’t remember the town. Somewhere on the west side of the state. Maybe Des Moines, I think. Smaller town. Guys were wearing blue jump suits, working in a mine. Call them blue collar workers, people that do manual labor, people that do work.”

It wasn’t pretty, but Michigan punched in, got to work, punched out and headed home. The Wolverines will look to do the same thing next week at Indiana.

Pink towels

Based on an Instagram post from Michigan radio broadcaster Jon Jansen, we realized before the game that the Wolverines didn’t cover up the pink walls in the Iowa visitors locker room. Then, the Maize and Blue came charging out of the tunnel for the game, some players with pink towels in hand. We figured Michigan was embracing the quirky Iowa tradition, and that’s exactly what the players were doing.

“Gemon [Green] was telling everybody, ‘Grab a pink towel and wave it around,” Michigan senior EDGE Mike Morris said. “We just wanted to embrace everything they threw at us.

“They had a pink locker room, thinking that it’s going to be some kind of adversity. I really didn’t notice it, until we sat down and someone said pink. I like the color, so we just embraced it.”

Boo birds

Iowa fans were not happy with their offensive coordinator, Brian Ferentz, and booed with the offense on the field on several occasions.

“When things aren’t going well, trust me, it’s my fault,” Brian Ferentz, son of Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz, said a few weeks ago. “The buck stops with me.”

They also took exception to quite a few calls. Multiple were showed on the video board, and Michigan might’ve gotten a break or two (the cut block call, for one), but others weren’t shown, a sign that the presentation team didn’t want their fans to know they were likely the right calls. The officials, from our view, also missed a couple pass interferences on Iowa.

It’s also amazing how much the Iowa faithful loves its special teams. Hawkeyes punter Tory Taylor is one of the best in the country, having won two of the last four Big Ten Special Teams Player of the Week honors. He got as loud of a cheer as anybody, and he’s got a huge leg.

All in all, Iowa has some great people, reminiscent to last year’s trip to Nebraska. The fans were extremely friendly and great hosts, congratulatory to Michigan fans and telling them to beat Ohio State at season’s end.

Crowd noise

The crowd noise was deafening on a few occasions, particularly once Iowa got some momentum back in the second half. Michigan had a fast start, scoring on its first drive, but McCarthy fumbled for a loss of 21 yards, gave the Hawkeyes a short field and got the crowd (some of which had already left!) back into the game.

“The crowd does a lot,” Morris said. “We definitely felt a momentum shift. But we love it. We love the hate. We love everything about it. All we had to do was nut up, and pull on our big boy pants. We love it.”

Michigan executed well enough at the end, and had the luxury of having built a 20-point lead. It would’ve been an epic collapse had the Wolverines lost the huge edge, but it never got closer than 13 points in the second half.

Deflecting praise

Going back to his days at Stanford, Harbaugh likes to deflect praise and have his players receive the attention after big wins. He did it again this week with FOX’s Jenny Taft, bringing over a trio of Wolverines to conduct the postgame interview.

Michigan takeover

Those Michigan players, and others, celebrated with fans in the tunnel. By the time the clock hit 00:00, it was all Maize and Blue, a takeover of Kinnick Stadium. Late in the game, Iowa even played ‘Mr. Brightside,’ which has become Michigan’s anthem.