SOUTH BEND, Ind. - They hit the road, and for the first time in six years, the road did not hit back. In fact, what Michigan did Saturday in the shadow of Touchdown Jesus was enough to make Lloyd Carr consider an entire season of away games. They came, they saw, they trashed the place. Shredded gold everywhere you looked. Notre Dame's ranking as the second-best team in the nation seemed like a typographical error once the Wolverines had finished.
Since this is a new season, let's try a new approach."All we did," said quarterback Jon Kitna after the Lions' 9-6 defeat in Sunday's season opener, "is take the pressure off ourselves today of having to try to go undefeated."Ba-dum-bump.Uh ... he was joking.But there's something you haven't heard in a while. And here are some things you hadn't seen in a while: passes that were strong and on target. A defensive line that swarmed the quarterback. Two blocked field goals. A first-round draft pick who actually dressed for the game.
But enough about the quarterback. Let's talk about the running back. We spend so much time in Detroit on who's taking snaps, we forget that our biggest stars have been the men who take handoffs: Billy Sims, Barry Sanders.And now Kevin Jones?"Yeah, I thought about that my rookie year," says Jones, 24. "There's a tradition here I want to be a part of. But last year wasn't a big indication of it."
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.