The Michigan Wolverines Win Over Western Michigan Had Rich At A Loss For Words

Rich needed a minute outside before he could talk about this one. When he came back, he still did not have much.

"I don't even know what to say," he said. "I'm without speech. There is no speech."

Michigan got past Western Michigan, and the how of it left a man who talks for a living genuinely without material. He opened with the only line that felt right, and delivered it flat. "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking. Which I've been doing a lot of over the last four quarters of action."

The detail he kept circling back to was the clock. "I don't know where that last second came from."

What made it worse, or better, depending on how invested you are, was the shape of the afternoon. This had the makings of a very specific kind of disaster. "A game that had Appalachian State written all over it, with all due respect to Western Michigan," Rich said. Instead it ended with a Hail Mary in Michigan Stadium that actually worked in Michigan's favor, a reversal Rich flagged himself with a glance back at 1994.

Then came the part only a fan says out loud. "Look at Oklahoma. I guess we're winning the natty now."

He was not selling it. He was barely processing it.

"I don't know what I just saw. I have no idea what I just saw."

The closest he got to an actual description was the best line of the segment, and it works as a scouting report on the entire game. "A slow motion car crash ending with a Maserati pulling into the garage. Go blue."

"That was ridiculous."