Michael Cohen
College Football and College Basketball Writer
HOUSTON — The private plane carrying two of Michigan football’s most ardent supporters was waging an unexpected battle with a stormy Texas sky as kickoff for Monday night’s national championship game neared. It had taken off from Baltimore a few hours earlier but encountered rotten weather on the approach into Houston, where many of the local airports were closed amid a lingering tornado warning. Air traffic control diverted the flight toward Austin instead, instructing the pilot to bob and weave around three separate storm cells.
But after circling for about an hour, the pilot had another idea. “We’re making a run for it!” he told his passengers. “We’re heading for Sugar Land,” a southwest suburb of Houston roughly 16 miles from NRG Stadium. His tactic worked. The plane landed safely with a car service ready and waiting to whisk its passengers from the Baltimore Ravens toward an eventual Wolverines’ triumph in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game.
Ravens head coach John Harbaugh was eager to see his younger brother, Jim Harbaugh, capture the program’s first outright title since 1948. And defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald was keen to watch his successor and close friend, Jesse Minter, perfect the system he’d installed in Ann Arbor two years prior, during Michigan’s first trip to the College Football Playoff. They arrived on the partway through the first half, with the elder Harbaugh surprising the other for an impromptu in-game hug.
“It was a timeout,” John Harbaugh would later say. “It didn’t look like he was doing anything, you know? He had a minute. Gave him a hug. Why not?”
Beyond the familial ties that will forever bind these footballing brothers — especially after John beat Jim in Super Bowl XLVII when the latter was leading the San Francisco 49ers — their embrace along the sideline offered an important reminder of…
Source link : https://www.foxsports.com/stories/college-football/brotherly-ties-ravens-connection-laid-foundation-for-michigans-championship-defense
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Publish date : 2024-01-09 09:13:29
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