Initially, I wanted to write a story about what it was like to step into the Big House for the very first time. Then our travel plans went south, and then the game itself happened. So instead of just one story, this is a collection of tales from one of the craziest weekends of all time.
How Not to Travel Michigan
Somewhere in the middle of Michigan, on the side of I-94, a digital billboard protrudes from an idyllic tree line teetering on the edge of autumn. It reads: “What’s worse than Ohio? Tariffs”. No, the answer was actually our hotel in Canton, Michigan.
The town itself, or at least the retail area we drove through, was actually pretty nice. I think we just got unlucky.
But we should have realized what we were in for when we pulled into the plaza for the hotel. In addition to housing our place for the night, it was also home to an Arby’s. Except for the fact that the “Y” light was out, so it read “Arb’s”. Nobody is cool enough with Arby’s to shorten its already short name any further.
When we stepped out of the car, a cornucopia of unpleasant smells awaited us. The kind of smells that take up residence at low-rated hotels. That’s part of the deal when you travel on a student radio budget, though.
That would have been all fine and good, except for the fact that the hotel overbooked our rooms, forcing us to the motel side. We examined the only available room: a ground-floor single bed.
While walking over, the front desk clerk warned us that the bathroom wasn’t good. “How bad could a bathroom be?” we thought. As long as the faucets work and the toilet flushes, it gets the job done.
When we checked it out, the bathtub looked, as KRUI’s Peter Augustyniak said, “like a badger and a raccoon had a fight in it.” The scratches covering the basin crossed the threshold from incidental to concerning, in addition to the tub’s general discoloration.
When we said we didn’t want any part of that Tarantino-movie-waiting-to-happen, they found two other rooms, somehow. Both smelled overwhelmingly of cigarettes, like the scent was baked into the walls themselves. And because we live in 2026 and not 1926, that wasn’t going to fly.
We returned our key cards, got our deposits back, and hit the road again. Back an hour and a half in the opposite direction to Kalamazoo to crash with a friend.
After 11 hours of travel, walking into the Fairfield was what Kevin must have felt like in Home Alone 2. The lobby was opulent, and everything from the walls to the mirrors seemed to be backlit. We even got a complimentary breakfast in the morning, taking our mooching to never-before-seen levels. In the end, it worked out pretty well for us.
The Big House
Ann Arbor is one of those towns that feels like a blip in the multiverse. Next to an apartment complex that can’t be more than a decade old sits one that looks like it’s been there since the conception of Michigan football. Next to that, there’s a pair of quaint Victorian-style homes.
We drove to FedEx to print our spotting boards and materials for the game, and were handed one more stroke of bad luck as the office was closed for an employee lunch break. We had to get back into the car and drive further south to find a new one on the edge of campus.
Still with plenty of time to spare, we parked in a restaurant lot for 30 dollars and walked about a mile towards the stadium.
For such an imposing-sounding place, you’d imagine the Big House off in its own secluded part of town, with nothing but parking lots and grass around it. However, it’s actually extremely integrated into the athletic part of campus. Directly next door to the west is the Crisler Center, where the Wolverine basketball teams play. Across the street on the east side of the stadium is a coffee shop and more housing units. To the south is a golf course that doubled as a tailgating lot.
As we walked towards the regal-sounding Levine Tower and the media gate, we caught glimpses of the stadium through the fence. On the other side, we saw nothing but rows of bleachers.
When we got up into the press box and looked down at what lay below, it was equal parts stunning and surprising. It sounds counterintuitive, but the biggest stadium in North America doesn’t feel that big until there are people inside.
Michigan opened the gates a full two-and-a-half hours before kickoff, and a steady trickle of people began to file inside. As the time ticked toward kickoff, that trickle became a stream, then a river.
Suddenly, the amount of empty silver seats became harder to spot than those filled by maize and blue, and players emerged from the black nothingness that is the chasmic tunnel.
It’s at that point that you start to think about all of the history and all of the players that have come through this stadium. Playing in the Big House, and by association calling a game there, feels like a rite of passage.
The Play
All trip, we’d been saying that we haven’t wanted an Iowa football game this bad in a long, long time. Not Oregon last year. Not the Big Ten Championship in 2023. This one.
And after what could only be called a fever dream of a game, the score sat at 19-14 Michigan with two seconds on the clock and the ball on the Wolverines’ 16.
The two-minute drill had followed a similar script to the rest of the game. Every time Iowa had to have a play, they got it. A penalty, a fourth down stop, a tipped pass. Never when they wanted it, only when it was absolutely required.
The thing I remember thinking before the final play was that I was surprised they were even going to get a chance at the endzone at all. Iowa, driving downfield and battling the clock? The Iowa Hawkeyes?
Then, the thought of Western Michigan jumped in. The thought of how poetic a walkoff touchdown would be. And then Iowa broke the huddle.
“This is it, Hank Brown. A defining Iowa moment waits in the wings. Can he snatch it?”
They lined up with two receivers, two tight ends, and a running back.
“Empty in the backfield.”
And then there’s this brief period of silence as the ball is snapped and Brown drops back. On the radio, you’re supposed to fill that silence. I can only explain it as this strange moment of disbelief. This ball had to be caught. It simply had to. We drove all the way to Canton, halfway across the state back to Kalamazoo, and then back to Ann Arbor. This was happening.
“Hits his back foot, throws to the endzone…”
People say these kinds of things move in slow motion. This one absolutely did not. The ball ended up in Reece Vander Zee’s hands in the blink of an eye.
“Back shoulder! Is it caught? Is it caught? Oh my god, oh my god, he caught it! Oh my god, he caught it!”
Good reaction, not a good call. And then I found the right words.
“Western Michigan and the college football world, Iowa has your back! Iowa has your back!”
Collin then gave some great levelheaded analysis, and the following few minutes were a blur of hyperventilating and trying to sum up what that play meant. I always say I’m going to reserve my sports tears for when the Chicago Bears win a Super Bowl. I nearly used them after this play.
The Aftermath
On the way down to the postgame media room, “Let’s go Hawks” chants echoed through the concourse. Fist pumps, hugs, and smiles as wide as the Big House stadium bowl itself appeared on every Hawkeye fan that we passed, and there were a lot of them. I clipped off the call, synced it up to the game highlight, and posted it on Twitter and Instagram.
We listened to Zach Lutmer, Reece Vander Zee, Hank Brown, and Kirk Ferentz all talked about the play. My favorite line came from Ferentz.
“That’s why they got 60 minutes up there,” he said, smiling.
After the press conference, we snagged a box of pizza and hit the road back to Chicagoland to crash at my house.
If you’ve never sung along to Frank Sinatra’s That’s Life or My Way while cruising down a highway after a big win, I’m sorry for you, and I hope you change that as soon as possible.
At one point, I checked Instagram for the only time that night, seeing that within about 30 minutes, my call already had 30 likes. “That’s funny,” I thought, “Usually my posts end with 30.”
Then, Pete informed us that CBS picked up our call and posted it on their socials. From there, it spread like wildfire. Every 15 minutes, Pete would come back with another update, and it just increased from there.
We arrived at my house around midnight, where I finally checked Twitter. Three thousand likes and almost a million impressions.
Since then, the video version we shared on KRUI Sports’ Instagram and Twitter pages has been circulated just as much as the initial call.
I’ve heard the call played in most of my classes, and I’ve heard from people that it’s been played in classes that have no connection to me, Collin, or Pete as well.
It’s been played on ESPN Chicago, The Dan Patrick Show, and plenty of other radio stations. It’s also the first thing you hear on Iowa’s official cinematic recap of the game.
For Collin, Pete, and me, we were just in the right place at the right time. The play was a cosmic stroke of good luck that balanced and exceeded the misfortune we experienced at the start of this trip.
It might feel like we used up all of our good luck on one play, but I know there are countless signature Iowa moments still to come, and dozens of KRUI broadcasters will get their moments in the sun as well.
Stay tuned in with KRUI
Programming features, updates, special events, and more delivered right to you