1996 Week 6
October 24, 1996
This weekend's matchup in the Big 10 should really be interesting. Michigan goes into Minnesota to take on the Golden Gophers. I think Michigan will be happy to leave without a major knee injury and a tie. That carpet up there really tears up the knees and ankles.
I remember the first time a game was played on carpet. It was back in the 60's and in Kansas. Some idiot over-fertilized the field and killed all the grass. So, since the Jayhawks didn't want to play in a mud pit, they felt they needed to plant some sort of grass and quickly.
Well, after much searching, they found that most of the sod farms were sold out and with winter approaching, no more sod was expected. So one coach talked to his brother-in-law who sold carpet and they bought a field of that fake plastic grass. The stuff with the individual shoots of grass. This worked great until next fall when the temperatures shot up to over 100 deg. F. The players kept sticking to the melted plastic. In fact, some linemen snuck magnifying glasses on to the field and melted the grass at the feet of the DT and kept them from rushing the QB!!
As for the other game in the Big 10, Iowa vs. OSU, all I have to say is thank God Iowa got rid of those hideous uniforms. They looked like a throwback to the old NFL uniforms of yesteryear. Hayden must have been doing some of that sulphuric acid LSD stuff when he dreamed of those uniforms.
Now if Fry wanted some stripes, he should follow the UM winged helmet stripes. Fritz Crisler came up with that idea when he was real sick one week due to a flu. He was running to the toilet alot and he became a little dizzy. He was always confused as to which toilet at U-M was the one he always used--his "lucky" stall, but then he noticed the streak pattern on the one in the 2nd stall, so knew that that toilet was his toilet.
This led him to put the same sort of streaks on the Michigan helmets, so his players would know which team's players wore which helmets. Of course Fritz' grandpa would come to the games and hang out in the locker room and, being a little bit old, would think the helmets with the lucky toilet pattern were latrines and leave messes in them. That's why Tom Harmon always had a plastic lining in his helmet, to make it easier to clean out Grandpa Crisler's messes.