Culture
Michigan stymies Michael Penix Jr., Washington to win CFP
By Lauren Merola, Max Olson, Austin Meek, Jim Trotter and Nicole Auerbach
It’s been 26 years, but finally, no one has it better than Michigan.
The Wolverines rushed for 303 yards and held flame-throwing Washington quarterback Michael Penix Jr. in check to emerge as the College Football Playoff national champion with a 34-13 defeat of the Huskies on Monday night at NRG Stadium in Houston. The win marked Michigan’s first national title since 1997 and the completion of a long-anticipated return to the top of college football under head coach Jim Harbaugh.
The Wolverines, who entered the night ranked second in the FBS in passing yards allowed per game, held the Heisman Trophy runner-up Penix to 255 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions on 27-of-51 passing, well below the usual output from the nation’s passing yards leader (4,648). Washington’s explosive offense finished with just 301 total yards, as injuries to Penix and running back Dillon Johnson limited the Huskies’ effectiveness.
Michigan running back Blake Corum finished with 134 rushing yards and two touchdowns to set the school’s single-season touchdown record (28), padding the margin after backfield mate Donovan Edwards scored the first two touchdowns of the game, nearly doubling his own season total in one quarter. By the time Michigan held a 14-3 advantage with 2:23 to go in the first quarter, it had 115 rushing yards. Washington had allowed only two rush plays of 40-plus yards all season before Monday, when it let up three such rushes in the first half, including Edwards’ two touchdowns.
41 YARDS TO THE HOUSE 🏠
Michigan’s Donovan Edwards strikes first in the #NationalChampionship
🎥 @espn pic.twitter.com/SCuRDbtWRV
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) January 9, 2024
Washington appeared to regain some momentum by cutting the lead to 17-10 before halftime, but Penix threw an interception to Michigan defensive back Will Johnson on the first play of the third quarter, then hobbled to the sideline after a lineman stepped on his ankle during the play. The Huskies defense came up big, with the help of two Michigan penalties, to only surrender a field goal and keep the game within reach. Down 27-13 with less than five minutes to play, Penix tried to thread a pass to wide receiver Jalen McMillan on fourth down but was picked off by Michigan defensive back Mike Sainristil, who ran it back 80 yards before Corum punched in the final score of the night.
“I just feel like it came down to executing,” Penix said postgame. “I missed a couple of throws, just a couple of reads on routes and stuff like that. Just small details within our system that we do great all the time.”
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After the game, Penix had noticeable trouble walking off the field but said that “no matter what, I was going to make sure I finished it for the guys.”
“I’m not healthy, but I’ll be there. I’m good. It’s nothing major. I know that for sure,” he said. “I talked with the doctors and stuff like that. It’s nothing major. If I had to play tomorrow, I’ll play.”
“I’m just super proud of this team and how far we’ve come, always being the underdog,” Penix said. “This is the only time you all were right, but we were able to fight and push through so much adversity and just people doubting us and not believing us throughout the season. To get to this point, it’s a blessing.”
What the title means for Michigan
Michigan finally broke through and brought home a national championship in a year that at times felt more like a wild season of reality TV. This team had the right stuff to finish the job after consecutive CFP semifinal losses in 2022 and 2023, won its third consecutive Big Ten title thanks to gritty wins over Penn State and Ohio State, kept fighting for an overtime triumph against Alabama in the Rose Bowl and, in its biggest test yet, shut down Washington and its prolific offense. This was a special team on a path to destiny.
And that path was littered with drama, from Harbaugh serving a three-game suspension to start the season to the in-season investigation into Connor Stalions’ impermissible signal stealing operation to another three-game Harbaugh suspension served up as his team landed in State College, Pa. Through it all, no matter who was coaching or who they were playing, these Wolverines were undeterred. They had the No. 1 defense in college football, experienced leaders who refused to lose and the poise to play their best in their biggest games. — Max Olson, college football senior writer
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Edwards shines when the spotlight is brightest
Edwards has a reputation for showing up in big moments. He wasn’t much of a factor for much of this season, averaging just 3.5 yards per carry in a limited role. But in the national championship game, big-game Edwards reappeared in stunning fashion.
Edwards opened the game with a 41-yard touchdown burst and scored again on Michigan’s next drive with a 46-yard run. Edwards laid the groundwork for Michigan’s victory and Corum finished it, plunging into the end zone from 12 yards out to give the Wolverines a two-touchdown lead.
The two-headed rushing attack Michigan envisioned with Corum and Edwards didn’t materialize for much of the season, but it showed up in the biggest game of the year. Both players topped 100 yards on the ground, with Edwards rushing for 104 and Corum rushing for 134. When the Wolverines run the ball that way, nobody can stop them. — Austin Meek, Michigan beat writer
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What happened to Penix?
Statistically, it was not the worst performance of Penix’s brilliant season. But considering the stakes, it felt like it.
One week after putting on a dazzling performance in a College Football Playoff win over Texas, Penix was beaten and beaten down, with he and his Washington teammates falling to Michigan in the national title game. The pinpoint accuracy and explosive plays that wowed observers against the Longhorns were nowhere to be found Monday night.
He appeared in physical pain by the end, though the loss of a perfect season likely hurt more. There were opportunities for big plays, but Penix was uncharacteristically off on several opportunities. And when he was on target he was hurt by dropped passes. — Jim Trotter, senior writer
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Credit Washington’s defense
It looked early like Michigan was going to run away with the game — literally, after two Edwards touchdown runs of more than 40 yards. But credit Washington’s defense for its resilience and toughness for allowing the Huskies to hang around in this game, even with Penix not nearly as crisp as he was a week ago in the Sugar Bowl.
After all the fireworks in the game’s first 17 minutes, Michigan went punt, turnover on downs, punt, field goal, punt, punt, punt; the longest drive the Wolverines put together only went 41 yards … until that touchdown drive at the midpoint of the fourth quarter that resulted in a Corum touchdown and put Michigan up by two scores. — Nicole Auerbach, college football senior writer
A Pac-12 swan song
Monday night’s game was such a bittersweet moment for the Pac-12 conference. The Huskies finally broke through to reach the CFP and snap a seven-year drought for the conference and they win an exhilarating semifinal to reach a national championship game … and it’s the very last game for the Pac-12 as we’ve always known it, with 10 of its 12 teams set to depart for other power conferences next season. This Washington team has been a blast to watch all season, as was the entire Pac-12 conference, with surging teams like Oregon, Oregon State and Arizona and the national phenomenon that was Colorado. It’s a tough pill to swallow because it feels like if the Pac-12 had the season it did this fall a year or two ago, its demise would have never happened. Alas.
But the Big Ten is excited it will boast both title game participants as league members come August. A national championship game rematch will be a Big Ten conference game, on Oct. 5. — Auerbach
Required reading
(Photo: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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