Jan. 7, 1998

PASADENA, Calif. Long after the trophy has tarnished and this newspaper has yellowed, tales will be told with chest-bursting pride of these Michigan Wolverines and this Rose Bowl, of this team"s character and its comebacks, of the emotional energy shared by those lucky enough to behold the marvelous magic made on New Year"s Day.

The greatest football season in school history ended here as the rosy twilight gleamed off the San Gabriel foothills. Michigan"s 118th team won the 84th Rose Bowl, 21-16, and finished No. 1. Nothing can spoil it. Not a controversy about how the game ended, with Washington State begging for one more second, one more play and one more gasp of life. Not a split decision among the voters, who awarded half of the national championship to Nebraska by a miniscule margin.

No, nothing can spoil this. Nothing can top this. Nothing could quell the crowd"s cheers, even a half-hour after the game, when the fans were still chanting with the band, "WE"RE NO. 1!"

"I will cherish this game, this university, for the rest of my life," said senior quarterback Brian Griese, who was named the game"s most valuable player. "You have opportunities in life, and those who stand out are the ones who take advantage of those opportunities. It"s just sweet for us to capitalize on an opportunity to make history."

When this season began, the Wolverines were ranked 14th, and recovering from four consecutive four-loss seasons seemed daunting enough. An unblemished record and a national championship weren"t in the picture. "If you would have told me then," defensive end Glen Steele said, "I would have laughed." After all, Michigan didn"t win a national championship in coaching legend Bo Schembechler"s 21-year era of eminence. Bo never went 12-0.

"Nobody gave us a chance to be in the Rose Bowl, let alone win the national title," said all-purpose star Charles Woodson, the Wolverines" game-breaker who this season became the first primarily defensive player to win the Heisman Trophy. "Everybody thought we were going to go 8-4 again. We played hard every week to get to this position. We all felt we could go undefeated we just had to go out and do it."

They went out and did it the way they had all autumn - by doing what no one but themselves thought they could. Griese, a one-time walk-on who had lost his starting job and rode the bench a year ago, threw his longest two passes of the season for touchdowns. Both were to wide receiver Tai Streets, who hadn"t caught a ball in three of his last four games because his fingers, two of which were dislocated, wouldn"t let him.

And when it was over, they knew it would never be this good again. They walked off the field, their faces flickering in front of flash bulbs, glimmering with triumphant tears. Having overcome so much, emotion overcame them.

"We won all the major awards, the Heisman Trophy, coach of the year," said senior co-captain Eric Mayes, whose knee injury ended his career in October but couldn"t keep him out of uniform for his final game and his finest hour as a Wolverine. "We"re undefeated, ranked No. 1 ... this may be the single greatest season ever in college football history."