UW’s ‘91 title team is headed to Houston to root on ‘our little brothers’ against Michigan
SEATTLE – A national championship team from the University of Washington will descend on Houston.
Maybe even two.
Thirty-two years after the Huskies hurdled Michigan en route to college football’s metaphorical mountaintop, history might repeat – as No. 2 Washington (14-0) meets No. 1 Michigan (14-0) in the national championship game Monday night.
UW did it with a 21-game winning streak, dating to 2022; with 10 consecutive wins by 10 points or fewer, a marathon on a balance beam; with a captivating quarterback in Michael Penix Jr. and a posse of play makers and pass protectors; with a Sugar Bowl win over Texas that reintroduced West Coast football to the ignorant and uninformed; with daring and determination and gusto and guts.
With support from a wider UW football family.
And those that came before.
“We’ve all kind of kept in touch a little bit,” former UW linebacker James Clifford said of the 1991 national championship team. “But over the past month and a half, it’s been really cool, our text threads with the group. This has almost brought us back together, in a way.
“There’s not a day that goes by where there’s not 10 to 12 different texts flying back and forth in our groups about the Huskies and where we’re at right now. We’re loving it. We have a big group heading down to Houston, too.”
Walter Bailey will be there.
Though, for the former cornerback, this still seems so surreal.
“(Former UW quarterback) Damon Huard told me a week and a half ago, ‘Dude, we’re going to beat Texas, and we’re going to be going to Houston.’ It’s not like I didn’t believe him, but it happened and it really changed things pretty quickly,” marveled Bailey, who snagged an interception and held Heisman winner Desmond Howard to a single reception in UW’s 34-14 Rose Bowl win over Michigan in 1992. “Because I didn’t know I was going to be going down there, but now I am.”
He isn’t the only Husky who made impromptu plans.
Or the only Bailey, either.
Mario Bailey will arrive with memories of previous Michigan maulings.
“When I think about the (1991-92 Rose Bowl) I honestly think about Desmond (Howard),” said UW’s wide receiver great, who posted six catches for 126 yards and a touchdown that day. “Now, I’ve got nothing but love for Desmond. But at Washington, all year long their games were on before we left our hotel. So I always got a chance to watch him, and I never saw him get stopped. But when I think of our game, he got one catch, and that was it. There was nothing. He was stifled. He was done.
“But if you look at Steve Emtman, and they all knew he was the man? They couldn’t stop him. He was still in the backfield, sacking (Michigan quarterback Elvis Grbac) and doing his thing from the start of the game to the end.”
Where the 1991 national championship team was dominant, this one’s more dramatic.
But set aside style points and weekly heart attacks, both know how to win.
“Our line wasn’t healthy (this season). Our receivers weren’t healthy. Our running back wasn’t healthy. Our safeties weren’t healthy. It just turned into something where every game has been (decided by) less than 10 points the last 10 weeks,” said Mario Bailey, sitting in the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport following Washington’s Sugar Bowl win. “I feel like that’s a wonderful thing.
“It’s like the Brady effect. Every time you’re down and you’re on Tom Brady’s team, you never think you’re out of it. You’re going to figure out a way to win. That’s how our team is now.”
Former UW defensive lineman Tyrone Rodgers saw that this summer.
(He’ll be in Houston, too.)
“I was up there a few times this year before the season, and seeing them work out, I’m like, ‘Damn, these guys are a brotherhood,’ ” Rodgers said. “I feel their brotherhood is going to be just as strong as the brotherhood we have.
“It’s going to be great to be able to celebrate and welcome a new class of kids into the same room.”
In Houston, both brotherhoods will be in full effect. The 1991 team even organized a champions brunch Monday morning. Rodgers said, “I’ve talked to at least 20-25 guys, and most of them are coming.”
Dave Hoffmann will be there, too.
“This is becoming a reunion for a lot of us,” said the former All-American linebacker, who led the Huskies in tackles each season from 1990 to 1992. “I feel like I’m going to have my whole huddle there. It’s just going to be incredible. When you have brotherhoods like that and a true team feeling, even if you haven’t seen guys in two years or 20 years, you pick up right where you left off. You always remember all the pain and joy we all went through together.
“It’ll be great to be together, rooting our little brothers on. That’s really what it feels like.”
“There’s something extra special with these young kids,” Walter Bailey added. “I can’t wait to meet them. I’m probably going to shed a lot of tears. I’m just going to hug all these kids and embrace them, because they are themselves. They are different. I don’t want them to be compared to us or anything. These guys stand alone.”
While one can appreciate the sentiment, that’s not technically true. Because when these Huskies take the field against Michigan, the 1991 team will be there, too. That includes linebacker Chico Fraley, left tackle Lincoln Kennedy (who will fly from Las Vegas after broadcasting a Raiders game Sunday) and so many more. It will also include a purple flood of more than 20,000 fans, after the Huskies’ ticket allotment sold out almost instantly.
Monday is about big and little brothers, separated by decades but connected by more than an opponent in maize and blue.
It’s also about you.
“It’s so much fun because the whole community, all of Seattle, all of the northwest, is reveling in this right now,” Clifford said. “That’s what’s so cool. You’re giving people a feeling they haven’t had in 32 years. It brings families together. It’s bigger than just our group.
“Because I promise you next Monday night there’s going to be families all over Washington with Husky gear on sitting on their couch to watch this game. It’s important. It’s amazing. It’s almost like a regional sunshine beam on the Northwest, where it’s never sunny in the winter. It’s pretty cool.”