Home

Andre Agassi famously told us that image is everything.

Perhaps the wig-wearing tennis player could have tweaked that statement a little bit. A truer declaration would be to say that perception is everything.

Perceptions can make all the difference in the world. The proper perspective, that elusive little devil, just might be the key to happiness.

For instance, I’ve seen many athletes and parents upset with what they perceive as a lack of playing time. You see it in college as well as you do it in high school. Those people are not happy.

They think they are getting cheated by the coach, leaving them in a constant state of South Pole elfery.

On the flip side, my buddy Mike Lynch was the happiest player on the University of Montana football team in the late 1990s. Mike, a center who made in the Rudy Ruettiger mold, wasn’t the best player. Not even close.

In fact, would have taken at least 10 injuries on the offensive line before Mike would get into a game. He did not even get to suit up most of the games in his career, but nobody was happier when the Griz won a game.

Mike was the center on the scout team, and his job was to give those giant Grizzly defensive linemen an honest look in practice each week. He played every practice like it was the Super Bowl, kind of like Rudy did in that movie about Notre Dame football.

He couldn’t have weighed much over 200 pounds, and he was going nose to nose against 300-pound linemen every single day.

Those defensive linemen loved Mike, too. Superstar Griz lineman Kelley Bryant lit up when I showed up at practice one day to talk to some of the linemen for a story about Mike for the University of Montana school paper.

“You’re here to do a story on Torpedo?” the late-great Bryant asked, with the pitch of his voice raising in excitement. “That’s awesome.”

Even after nearly 30 years coaching, Mike is still known as Torpedo. I am sure that is what he is called now that he is an assistant offensive line coach at the University of Michigan. You drop that name with virtually any college football coach around the country, and he will know exactly who you are talking about.

I knew Mike was going to be a great football coach when he was still dreaming of running out the tunnel at Washington-Grizzly Stadium with his teammates. His football smarts are off the chart. That is why Griz head coach Mick Dennehy, from Butte, America, hired Mike as a restricted earning coach in 1999.

When Coach Dennehy moved on to Utah State, he took Torpedo with him. Mike then made stops at Eastern Illinois, Bowing Green and Syracuse before settling in at Nevada under former Montana State coach an all-around great guy Jeff Choate.

This year is Mike’s first in Michigan under head coach Kyle Whittingham. You probably heard about Torpedo’s first game in Ann Arbor, even if you never heard of Torpedo.

Depending on your perspective, that was the game where Western Michigan was cheated by the referees, replay official, the Big 10 and Pope Leo XIV.

It was the biggest sports injustice since a key fifth-down touchdown propelled the Colorado Buffaloes to the 1990 national championship. It was the Tuck Rule on steroids.

It was on the level of the Russians getting like 11 chances to make the last-second basket to beat the United States in the 1972 Olympic gold medal basketball game. Three chances, anyway.

The game’s outcome should be change. At the very least, the game should have an asterisk by it, whatever that means, to tell everyone that Michigan cheated.

Those refs should be fired, and we should do away with instant replay. Somebody better punch Whittingham right in the face. Jim Harbaugh, too, because he probably had something to do with it. Somebody needs to go to jail.

Actually, if you have a neutral perspective, you will feel that way, too. Other than with the punching of Whittingham, that is. That is because you can believe what your own eyes see. The clock was clearly at zero seconds when Bryce Underwood’s first Hail Mary pass was batted out of the back of the end zone.

No amount of double talk by the Big 10 officials can change that fact, even if JJ Buchanan made a remarkable catch for the 47-yard touchdown on the Hail-Hail Mary. That his catch is not talked about in the shadow of the controversy just might be the real travesty in this whole thing.

If you cheer for the Wolverines, however, you are probably just proud that the Maize and Blue literally gave 110 percent by playing until the 3,601^st second of the game. The Montana Western defense has historically played to the echo of the whistle. Well, the Wolverines played until the echo of the final buzzer.

Sure, some Michigan fans see that it was an injustice, but they will take the win.

A win is a win, and you never apologize for a win. And you can’t riot and storm the Big 10 headquarters if you lose.

Since I grew up in a household where Michigan was a bad word, unless you were referring to the lake next to Soldier Field, I was on the side that Western Michigan got the hose job to end all hose jobs.

I come from a Notre Dame family that is still fuming that the Irish were hosed even worse than that when they were left out of the college football playoffs last season. I have never in my life had anything good to say about Michigan. It wasn’t allowed.

At first, I heard about the Hail-Hail Mary on at text from my brother. Then I went home to watch SportsCenter, and my blood started to boil. I immediately sent an angry text to my buddy Peach, a diehard Michigan fan.

“Michigan lost today, and you frickin’ know it,” I wrote.

You know what that jerk did? He agreed with me. Leave it to a Michigan fan to rob me of my constitutional right to argue about how badly Michigan cheated in a football game.

So, I went to twitter and started making some witty tweets about Michigan, the school that cheated to win a national title under Harbaugh. I was going to tell the world that Michigan’s “win” was complete and total (Bravo Sierra).

Then I remembered something I had forgotten — or perhaps that I was trying to block out. Torpedo is coaching for Michigan now, and Mike is one of my favorite people in the whole world.

Mike came from California, but he is all about Montana. I think the Mining City might be his favorite place to visit.

I told Mike years ago that I would never cheer against him, and I am pretty sure I was taken out of my father’s will for writing that I was cheering for Torpedo and Syracuse when they played Notre Dame in November of 2018.

Mike would never cheat.

So, I thought about that game a little bit more and I listened to the Big 10’s explanation why they put that second back on the clock. I don’t believe them, but I was suddenly no longer mad about the situation.

Hey, mistakes happen. Referees are not perfect. The bad calls usually even out in the end.

Torpedo and the Wolverines turned a crippling upset into a character-building win. They built on that victory with an upset win over No. 11 Oklahoma one week later.

Now, Michigan is ready to make a run at that Big 10 title, and hopefully even a run in the playoffs. If Colorado can use a fifth down to win a national title, then what is one little second?

Like I said, perspective is everything.

— Bill Foley, who thinks he might have coined the terms “Hail-Hail Mary” and “Sout Pole elfery,” can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74 or Bluesky at @foles74.bsky.social. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.