Memo To Lloyd Carr: Call Jim Harkema

He took his group of college football kids out west, to that scene of usual horrors, in that goofy, flaky state called California. Another Michigan school figured to get the stuffing beat out of it by a hometown Golden State institution of higher learning.

There was nothing, really, that suggested a victory for the Washtenaw County-based university. But maybe they could go out there and give their opponents, who once again held home field advantage of sorts, a tussle and make their faithful back home somewhat proud.

They did. And more.

Eastern Michigan University – the Hurons back then, before they bowed to the PCers and became the Eagles – was hardly a bastien of good football. They still aren’t, truthfully. Maybe they will never be.

But in 1987, perhaps sprinkled with some sort of magic pixie dust, the Hurons, coached by the no-nonsense Jim Harkema, captured the Mid-American Conference (MAC) title and thus qualified for the old California Bowl, played in Fresno. Sometimes they called it the California Raisin Bowl. No joke.

So Harkema took his kids westward, marching them into an expected tail-whipping, if you listened to the sure-fire experts – the ones who bothered to even pay the California Bowl any attention to begin with.

The opposing school was San Jose State, and they were hotshot. They had a firewagon brand of offense. And they had the prerequisite of any team playing a school from Michigan in a bowl located in California: they were from California themselves.

It was the curse of the Rose Bowl that for years taunted the University of Michigan Wolverines: playing, essentially, a road game in the postseason. The Wolves would traipse onto the field, led by crusty Bo Schembechler, and across from them would be USC or Stanford, perhaps having ridden their bikes to the stadium.

But the Hurons were even bigger underdogs than any U-M team had been in a Rose Bowl. Their history was part of the reason why.

I was a shaggy student at EMU in the early-to-mid 1980’s, and there were times when it was questionable whether the MAC would even allow my school back into its conference for football. Things were that bad.

“I Survived The Big MAC Attack,” the shirts said, emblazoned on the front, and we wore them with whatever pride you muster when you’ve staved off extinction. The mighty Hurons, when I arrived on campus in 1981, were in the throes of a long losing streak in football that would eventually reach in the low teens. I remember the student body president taking a signed petition to EMU President John W. Porter, calling for the removal of head coach Mike Stock.

Stock stayed – for a little while longer, until early 1982, when he finally got the ziggy. But the losing continued, even after the Great Losing Streak had been snapped. Attendance at Rynearson Stadium for fall Saturdays was somewhere between that of a Rotary Club dinner and an appearance by Michael Richards at the Apollo.

It was right about then that the MAC launched its Attack.

Get those attendance numbers up, the conference decreed, or we won’t let you join in our football games any longer.

So the university pulled out all the stops to get as many fannies into Rynearson seats as they could. It didn’t matter how blatantly overt their efforts were. It didn’t even matter if the attendees paid any attention to the action on the field. It only mattered that they have their ticket stubs removed at the gate, and that the turnstile clicked once more.

They brought in comedian Skip Stephenson to perform after a game against Central Michigan. If you’ve never heard of him, rest easy. Hardly any of the fans had either. There was singer Lynn Anderson, who so badly lip-synced “You Never Promised Me A Rose Garden” that the school paper ran an editorial cartoon the next day of her photo being flushed down a toilet.

They even flew the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders in for a game. Male attendance soared. But the beer-filled, chunky testosterone brutes had their collective hearts sink when the girls appeared on the field. This is because instead of their signature halter tops, mini-skirts and knee-high white cowboy boots, the cheerleaders wore blue sparkly spandex jumpsuits. Too cold out for the signature suits. And no skin, no fun, you see.

While all this sideshow stuff was going on, the team wasn’t getting all that much better. But I went to most of the games, usually to see the Hurons give Northern Illinois or Toledo or CMU a tussle before collapsing into defeat sometime in the fourth quarter. Maybe 5,000 others were in the stadium with me.

Yet somehow, the university met the MAC’s requirement for attendance, and by the enforced deadline. I’d still like to measure the noses of the regents who communicated to the conference that the school had gotten the requisite tushies into the seats. Surely those books are in the fiction section of the university library.

Regardless, the MAC let Eastern stay to play football in its conference, and by the middle part of the 1980’s, the school had hired Harkema as coach. Not long after, the wins started to flow, as opposed to trickle, as before. In 1987, with Taylor kid Ronnie Adams at quarterback and Gary Patton running the ball, the mighty Hurons ticked off wins at an alarming rate. Before anyone knew it, EMU was going to the California Bowl.

Westward, ho!

The game, in December 1987, against San Jose State was a classic. Back and forth point-tallying. SJSU would score, and Adams would chuck a touchdown pass. San Jose would score again, and Patton would rip off a long run. Adams would throw another TD pass.

The Hurons scored late, and won 30-27. In fact, in the 11-year history of the California Bowl, EMU was the only school from the state of Michigan to win the thing. Western and Central each had a shot, and failed. The MAC went 4-7 against the Big West champs in the bowl.

So a school from Michigan flew home from a bowl game in California as winners. It wasn’t, at the time, a common occurrence. It still isn’t.

U-M coach Lloyd Carr might want to seek out Jim Harkema and ask him how it’s done, before he takes his Wolverines into Pasadena to take on USC.

Anyone who can survive a Big MAC Attack ought to know a thing or two, I reckon.