The Spartan Weekly, The Truth's Worst Nightmare

Michael Caples

ANN ARBOR – The most important victory for the green and white this Saturday did not happen in Spartan Stadium, but in Ann Arbor, their rivals to the south. The Spartan faithful continued to roar hours after the final snap of a football in Michigan, as they watched the Michigan Wolverines lose to Appalachian State, an I-AA team (division two football), 34-32. That final snap, a field goal attempt by U of M to cap off a fourth quarter comeback, led to collegiate sports history; the ensuing blocked kick crowned the Appalachian State Mountaineers as the first division two team to beat an Associated Press ranked division one school. The Michigan Wolverines, ranked fifth in the nation, had fallen; their national championship hopes crushed. Mass excitement followed in East Lansing; mass hysteria in Ann Arbor. The crazed maize and blue, in a public outrage unmatched since Vietnam, snapped, holding a witch hunt for the one they blamed most: head football coach Lloyd Carr.

Carr, carried off by an angry mob, was tied to the same goal post that kicker Jason Gingell had been aiming at for the win only a few moments earlier. The one-time coaching legend was now the scapegoat, the figurehead for the four consecutive years of failures by the U of M program. Taped, tied, and humiliated, the hysterical mob heaved anything in sight at the man. Bottles, cans, chairs, and rocks littered the surrounding area, all symbols for what they truly wished to do: destroy him.

Sunday morning, the Michigan Stadium maintenance crew entered the Big House to find Carr still there, deceased and covered in the Sunday papers. The Detroit Free Press headline of “APPALLING” was taped across his forehead and his bare chest.

A preliminary autopsy found that Carr had died the day before from a massive heart attack between 3:20 and 3:40 p.m. Doctors believe that the mob followed through on the attack because they were all too furious to even notice.