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Taylor, Johnson, Jamison and Massey named captains
By: Dan Feldman
Senior nose tackle Terrance Taylor was speaking with reporters Monday when fifth-year senior defensive tackle Will Johnson walked by.
“Nobody cares, Terrance,” Johnson said.
“It's your 42-year-old birthday, Will,” Taylor said before turning back to the reporters. ““You see he's losing his hair? You see that?”
In the Michigan football team's losingest season in 129 years, the seniors have grown especially close. Their teammates rewarded that camaraderie in a Sunday night vote for captains that was announced to the team Thursday.
The Wolverines elected an all-time-most four captains — Taylor, Johnson, fifth-year senior defensive end Tim Jamison and fifth-year senior tight end Mike Massey.
"These four men have provided tremendous leadership and represented our program at the highest level throughout the season," Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez said in a statement. "Their peers have elected them captain, the highest honor that a Michigan football player can receive. Mike, Tim, Will and Terrance are great ambassadors for this program and will be great alumni."
The quartet will serve as game captains against Ohio State on Saturday and will be listed as the permanent captains for the season. Rodriguez didn't name captains before the season, which is what the Wolverines had done in the past.
Taylor, Johnson and Jamison make up the first trio of captains who played in the same position group.
“Will shows you on the field,” Taylor said Monday. "I show you on the field and I'm not scared to say anything that's from my heart. And J Mo (Jamison) is somewhere in the middle. It's just a group that you have that's handling different parts of the team. That's one of the things that's really important.
“Put together, we're good leaders — all three of us.”
Apparently, Taylor's leadership style rubbed off quite a bit on Johnson.
“For some reason, Will's starting to talk more,” Taylor said. “I think he's been hanging around me too long. You see that little outburst he just had? The old Will wouldn't have did that.”
Massey is the lone senior on offense. He, along with his brother Pat, a defensive tackle who was a captain in 2005, became the second set of brothers to serve as captains for Michigan. Mike Mallory was a captain in 1984 and his brother, Doug, was one in 1987.
Rodriguez has used the system of picking captains at the end of the season because it rewards those who step up and lead most effectively during the season. Voting at the end of the season also allowed Rodriguez to name all 15 seniors game captains at least once.
"I like doing that because then every senior — they put all the work in throughout their career — can say 'Hey, I was a captain for Michigan,' " Rodriguez said this summer. "I think that's a pretty neat thing for them to talk about, put on their résumé, and they certainly deserve that."
Rodriguez also introduced a system in the summer that identified leaders from each class, called "apostles." The "apostle" system ensured players of all ages had a voice in team affairs.
“A freshman or sophomore might see something I don’t see, and he can pull one guy to the side and encourage him and get on him hard,” Jamison said. “If it was only two (captains), you wouldn’t see everything on the team. I feel like it’s going to be great.”
But it was the senior captain Taylor who gave the Wolverines their season-defining speech after losing to Northwestern last Saturday. In the postgame locker room, he told his teammates he loved them and never to let a season like this happen again.
“He's a resilient kid, and he's always fighting,” redshirt sophomore left guard John Ferrara said. “You can tell by his words. His words are very powerful, and they'll stick with me for the rest of my life.”
