Michigan
Your A to Z guide for Michigan-Alabama football in the ReliaQuest Bowl
TAMPA, Fla. – It may not be in Pasadena for the Rose Bowl, but a New Year’s Eve bowl game still is a battle between the two winningest programs in college football.
Michigan and Alabama head down to central Florida for the Dec. 31 ReliaQuest Bowl in a rematch of last season’s Rose Bowl and College Football Playoff semifinal.
This is the first non-playoff postseason game for the Wolverines since the 2020 Capital One Bowl, also against the Crimson Tide. Michigan also last played in Florida in the 2021 Orange Bowl, which served as a playoff semifinal.
This year’s bowl can serve as a warm weather destination for Michigan snowbirds. Here’s everything you need to know about the 2024 ReliaQuest Bowl, from tickets to weather to travel.
Michigan-Alabama game info
Kickoff: Noon
Where: Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida
The teams: Michigan (7-5, beat Ohio State 13-10) versus No. 11 Alabama (9-3, beat Auburn 28-14)
How to watch: ESPN (streaming on Watch ESPN, Fubo, DirecTV and Sling TV)
Michigan-Alabama betting odds: Alabama -10.5 (Michigan a massive underdog in bowl matchup with Alabama)
How to buy tickets
The ReliaQuest Bowl has partnered with Ticketmaster to offer $80 for regular seats and $170 for club seats. There are still several tickets in this price range.
You can also find tickets on the secondary market for around $83 to $91 from Stubhub, Vivid Seats and SeatGeek.
Weather forecast
It will most likely be ideal Florida weather with a temperatures of 75 degrees, according to the 10-day Weather Channel forecast. There is also a 15% chance of rain.
Alabama running back Jase McClellan (2) celebrates his touchdown during the Rose Bowl game against Michigan in Pasadena, Calif. on Monday, Jan. 1, 2024. Michigan beat Alabama 27-20.Neil Blake | MLive.com
Historic battle
Michigan and Alabama football is as classic as college football gets, from the uniforms to fight songs to the bands.
New Year’s Eve will also serve as a tiebreaker in the series between the programs. The Wolverines and Crimson Tide are tied 3-3 in their previous six games.
The first matchup coincidentally took place in Tampa in 1988 when the game was known as the Hall of Fame Bowl. The Wolverines won 28-24 on a last-minute touchdown pass from Demetrius Brown to John Kolesar.
The Tide won three of the next five, including wins in 1997, 2012 and 2020. The other two Michigan wins both took place in overtime, including the 2000 Orange Bowl (behind the arm of Tom Brady) and last season’s Rose Bowl (behind the legs of Blake Corum).
Big screen viewing for homebound Wolverines
Three Emagine Theater chains in Michigan, including the one in Saline, will show the ESPN broadcast.
Tickets cost $20, and doors open at 11:30 a.m. Emagine Saline, 1335 E. Michigan Ave., has tickets available at Emagine-Entertainment.com.
Seating is limited to theater capacity, Emagine officials said in a Dec. 19 release.
The other two Emagine locations are in Royal Oak at 200 North Main St. and Novi at 44425 West 12 Mile Road.
Read more: Catch Michigan-Alabama on the big screen at this theater south of Ann Arbor
Michigan fans watch the pregame show before the Rose Bowl against Alabama in Pasadena, California on Monday, Jan. 1, 2024.Neil Blake | MLive.com
Gameday parking
The parking lots open at 8 a.m. at Raymond James Stadium. All parking is available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Car and motorcycle parking costs $40, while premium parking costs $50. Buses, camper and limousines can park for $160 in Lot 8. There is no overnight parking available on stadium property.
All parking is mobile. A limited number of parking spaces are available to be purchased in advance by clicking here.
Prepaid parking for cars and motorcycles is $35, while prepaid premium parking is $45. Prepaid RV parking is $140.
You can also park north of the stadium at Al Lopez Park and Tampa Jesuit High School. Taxis and rideshares drop off passengers at the pedestrian bridge on Dale Mabry Highway northwest of the stadium’s Ford Gate. Pickup for rideshares is at Steinbrenner Field lots or the mass transit location across from the bridge.
Flights to Tampa
Need a last-second flight to Tampa? Expect some spend some on a plane ticket.
Tickets from Detroit to Tampa for Dec. 30 are as low as $378 on Spirit and $688 on Delta.
Where to tailgate, party in Tampa
You are able to tailgate in your parking spot near the stadium. You must keep lanes clear for emergency vehicles.
There are certain restrictions, like no throwing or kicking balls, no tents without prior approval, no kegs, no amplified sound systems, no fireworks and more. The full parking lot rules can be found here.
Tampa is known for its waterways, which you can explore on the Pirate Water Taxi or Yacht Starship. There’s the trolley that takes you around the Ybor City Historic District, home to cigar rolling and the 120-year-old Spanish-Cuban eatery Columbia Restaurant.
There are also dozens of golf courses, including professional ones like TPC Tampa Bay and Saddlebrook Resort Tampa.
What to bring and what not to bring
Here is a full list of prohibited items for the stadium.
Michigan defensive lineman Kris Jenkins (94) celebrates after beating Alabama 27-20 in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California on Monday, Jan. 1, 2024.Neil Blake | MLive.com
New coach’s first bowl game
Head coach Sherrone Moore ended the regular season on a high note with an upset over national title contender and rival Ohio State. Now he gets his first crack at a bowl game, something that has been a thorn in many a Wolverine coach’s side.
Moore’s predecessor Jim Harbaugh went just 3-6 in the postseason. After a rout over Florida in the 2016 Citrus Bowl, Harbaugh’s teams lost four straight bowl games and two straight playoff semifinals. He broke the streak with last year’s Rose Bowl and national title game wins.
Brady Hoke also won his first bowl, an overtime win over Virginia Tech in the Sugar Bowl. He and Rich Rodriguez lost their other three bowl games.
The winningest coach in program history Bo Schembechler famously had issues in bowl games, going 5-12 during his 20-year tenure from 1969 to 1989.
Gary Moeller and Lloyd Carr had the most success in Michigan football history in bowl games, winning a combined 10 from 1990 to 2007. That included a 6-2 mark against Southeastern Conference teams.
Wolverine fans are hoping Moore is more like Carr or Moeller in this regard.
Want more Ann Arbor-area news? Bookmark the local Ann Arbor news page or sign up for the free “3@3 Ann Arbor” daily newsletter.
Sterling Stamping Plant is the largest in the world
Ed Daniels, vice president of North America injection and stamping operations, discusses the process of producing metal parts for Stellantis models.
Warren — Hulking metal presses line one wall of Stellantis NV’s cavernous stamping plant here, punching out the raw shapes of Jeep doors, Dodge hoods and Ram tailgates in rapid succession.
Nearby, swinging yellow robots continue the tightly choreographed work, gluing and pressing and welding smaller components to the sheet metal that eventually will start to resemble the shape of a truck or SUV.
Seven miles north, in Sterling Heights, Stellantis operates an even larger stamping plant — the biggest in the world, at 2.7 million square feet — that does much of the same work, churning out various shapes of steel and aluminum 24 hours a day.
Together, these lesser-known links in the manufacturing supply chain support all of Stellantis’ big North American assembly plants — from next-door Warren Truck Assembly Plant, where the Jeep Grand Wagoneer SUV is built, to facilities in Windsor and Mexico that make minivans and pickups.
Inside Stellantis’ Huge Detroit Stamping Plants
The Detroit News recently got a rare look inside the automaker’s Sterling and Warren stamping plants, which are key to the company’s turnaround plan.
The Metro Detroit stamping plants, the automaker’s only two such facilities in the United States, have at times struggled in recent years, facing major job cuts and worker morale issues amid slowing sales and shifting production plans. But under Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa, the facilities are expected to cram in more workload — and add staff — as Stellantis begins a new five-year strategic turnaround plan, which includes a heavy focus on its most profitable North American market.
The carmaker’s goal: grow sales by more than a third to 1.9 million annually by 2030 as it launches 23 vehicles, including 11 all-new models. The company also is directing billions of dollars of investment into its U.S. manufacturing footprint due to President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
“Stamping has never really been viewed as the sexy side of automotive manufacturing, we’re relatively invisible,” said Ed Daniels Jr., vice president of North America injection and stamping operations. “Because when you look at the commercials and advertisements, it’s always a beautiful Ram rolling off the assembly line or climbing the side of a mountain.
“But we’re the inception of that vehicle,” he said. “This is where raw materials are turned into commodities and parts.”
The Detroit News recently got a rare look inside the two plants that combined employ about 3,000 people. The automaker wanted to show off a newly-installed blanking press at Warren Stamping and other machinery like a high-speed transfer press and a robot that spots flaws in the metal.
Hiring expected
The blanking press unspools long coils of metal and chops them up into pieces that can then be shaped into roofs, fenders and floor pans. Stellantis shipped the massive machine to Warren from its idled Belvidere Assembly Plant in Illinois last year.
After upgrades to the machine, executives said it’s able to produce as many as 120,000 metal blanks per week. It will save Stellantis money since the plant will no longer need to pay a supplier to break down the coils before the metal arrives there.
The blanker addition is a big deal for the plant and signals that the company wants to bring more work in-house and invest in the facility over the coming years, said Romaine McKinney III, president of United Auto Workers Local 869, which represents workers at the factory.
The plant has already brought back all of its laid-off UAW workers, and McKinney said he anticipates more hiring to get underway if sales grow and new Stellantis vehicles come to market.
In another corner of the Warren facility, one of the fastest press lines in the world — known internally as the Hellcat — pushes as many as 15 pieces of metal through per minute. Dies that weigh up to 50 tons apiece squish the material into the shapes of doors and hoods before robotic arms snatch them out and place them on conveyor belts. Midway through a shift, workers can reconfigure the machine to make a different component, a process that takes just five minutes.
Robots check for quality
Curtis Booth, who manages Warren Stamping, said manual processes inside the plant have become increasingly automated, and safer, over the last couple decades, even as the automaker’s two stamping factories still utilize some presses that were installed in the 1960s.
The latest high-tech addition is the Automated Body Inspection System, or ABIS. It’s a camera system mounted on a robot that automatically checks the quality of components and flags anything in need of repair.
Auto plants of all kinds are increasingly turning to these types of camera systems, infused with artificial intelligence, to catch flaws in sheet metal and other components before they are shipped. Booth said worker visual inspections are still used. But in some cases the human eye has too much subjectivity, and the ABIS removes the guesswork.
Greg Bauer, who manages Sterling Stamping, said his plant has added staff over the past year, and expects to continue hiring as more work is assigned to the facility. There is no space at the plant to add more presses, but officials have figured out how to increase efficiency — quickly toggling back and forth between making doors for a Chrysler Pacifica and Dodge Charger on on a single machine, for example.
“We want to bring high-volume parts into the plant, and we want to maximize the capacity of the equipment,” Daniels said.
lramseth@detroitnews.com
MENOMINEE, Mich. (WLUK) — 24-year-old Ethan Raymond Masters of Menominee was arrested on sexual assault charges June 30th, according to the Menominee County Sheriff’s Office.
According to a news release from the Sheriff’s Office, deputies learned of an incident involving a 24-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl which happened in Menominee June 22nd. Following a sexual assault investigation, police charged Masters.
Masters was arraigned July 2nd on 2 counts of Criminal Sexual Conduct First Degree. He remains in the Menominee County Jail on a $250,000 cash bond.
Menominee City Police and the Michigan State Police Crime Laboratory of Marquette assisted with the investigation.
Michigan
Michigan immigration advocates react after Supreme Court ruling on Temporary Protected Status
Twenty-four thousand immigrants in Michigan have Temporary Protected Status (TPS), but a recent Supreme Court decision could put their protection in jeopardy.
TPS is a humanitarian protection granted to U.S. immigrants fleeing dangerous situations in their home countries, often from natural disasters or political instability. The status allows immigrants from the designated countries to live and work in the U.S.
The Supreme Court overturned those for 356,000 Haitians and Syrians in a recent decision. While the court’s decision directly impacted Haitian and Syrian immigrants, it also established that the Secretary of Homeland Security has the authority to determine TPS status without judicial review or input from the courts.
That means that the Secretary of Homeland Security can eliminate TPS for any immigrant group that is currently in the U.S. under protection. That puts 1.3 million immigrants in the U.S. at risk of deportation. In Florida, 113,000 healthcare workers with TPS are at risk of deportation. The Haitian population in Philadelphia is also expressing concerns about what comes next for them.
“The Supreme Court turned its back on our moral and legal commitments to people seeking safety,” said Christine Sauvé, manager of Policy and Communication at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center. “The decision eliminates legal protections for people fleeing danger and allows the Trump Administration to really advance its mass deportation agenda.”
Left without the ability to live or work in the U.S., these Haitian and Syrian immigrants with TPS now face deportation. But going back home could still be incredibly dangerous.
“It’s not really an option to go back to their home country,” said Melanie Goldberg, immigration attorney with the Institute of Metro Detroit. “In the case of Haiti, they don’t even have an airport in Port-au-Prince that’s operational. Yet they say it’s safe for these citizens to go back.”
In Michigan, immigrants with TPS have contributed $349 million to the state’s economy, a sign that they are deeply embedded in the community, according to Sauvé.
“Many TPS holders have been in our communities for a very long time,” Sauvé said. “They’ve really spent decades building their lives here in Michigan. We welcomed them here, only to see that completely ripped away with the stroke of a pen.”
The Michigan Immigrant Rights Center encourages Haitian and Syrian immigrants with TPS, as well as any immigrants in the U.S. with a TPS designation, to seek out a qualified legal service provider and review the “Know Your Rights” Materials on the MIRC’s website
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