How Michigan football is preparing for hostile environment at Washington: 'We’ll turn up the noise'
Michigan Wolverines football has played all five of its games inside the friendly confines of The Big House, with the overwhelming majority of the 110,000-plus fans cheering them on each week. Now, the Maize and Blue will hit the road for the first time to take on Washington in a national championship game rematch.
Husky Stadium was rated by On3’s Andy Staples as the 18th-toughest place to play in America, holding 70,138 fans. Many of the locals will want revenge for Michigan’s 34-13 win in last season’s national championship game in Houston, and with a 4:30 p.m. local time kickoff, some of the second half will be played in a night game environment (sunset is projected at 6:39 p.m. PT).
Michigan has already been preparing for loud road environments dating back to fall camp.
“We started doing that in training camp, because I didn’t want the first time for us to do silent count to be this week,” Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore said on the ‘Inside Michigan Football’ radio show. “Training camp, we’ve already practiced it, and a little bit last week.
“We’ll do some more this week, and we’ll turn up the noise in Glick and make it as loud as possible — and it gets pretty loud in Glick.”
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And then Moore invoked comments made by former Michigan All-Big Ten left guard Trevor Keegan, who’s now on the Philadelphia Eagles. Keegan has played and won at Nebraska, Iowa, Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan State, Wisconsin and more, yet he believes the Wolverines’ indoor facility named after late booster Al Glick is even louder than one iconic venue, Beaver Stadium in Happy Valley.
“Last year, Trevor was losing his mind, but he said that Glick was louder than Penn State,” Moore said with a laugh. “I was like, ‘No it was not! There’s zero chance it was louder than Penn State.’ But we’ll definitely have it loud in there and test them.”
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Playing on the West Coast, Michigan is prepared for some slight tweaks to its travel plans compared to a normal road game.
“The good thing is, when you go to the West Coast, you gain time, so the biggest thing that we’re adjusting is for Friday when we get there,” the Michigan coach explained. “We’ll get there at 5 o’clock their time, 8 o’clock here.
“We’ll have our same afternoon schedule, but knowing that the guys are going to sleep on the plane, we’re gonna let them catch up on sleep. But the next day, making sure that they get some time to sleep in and get their body clock right, but not too much.
“Usually, we don’t have any meetings. We’ll have a couple things that make sure they get their bodies going, get loose, get right and try to organize it as much as we can like a night game here.”
