My name is Bruce Harrell and I was on the 1978 Rose Bowl
champions for the University of Washington against the University of Michigan.
We were significant
underdogs by all of the national critics.
We, of course, had the great running back Joe Steele,
and we had Warren Moon and other
great players
Spider Gaines, Nesby Glasgow, so I could go down the list.
Doug Martin.
Coach James is only on his second or third year at the University of Washington.
He was an unproven talent.
Michigan at that time had bowl experience.
They had Bo Schembechler, the nationally respected coach.
They thought they were bigger and tougher
and stronger than us, and they decided to go right at us
to sort of dominate the line of scrimmage to try to intimidate us.
But we were pretty agile and pretty determined to win that game.
I actually led that game in tackles.
And so I think we played at a better level than we usually did.
You know, offense win games, the defense wins championships.
Everyone did not predict us to win, but we did.
You know, people like the
underdog story and we were clearly the underdogs.
No one gave us a chance.
One of the highlights of the game was that my mother and father at the game
and they did get a chance to meet the president at the time,
who was President Ford, who was a Michigan graduate.
So that made the victory all that sweeter.
I think of Seattle sometimes people underestimate the greatness of our city.
We are a phenomenal city and we have a phenomenal
University Washington football team.
So I like the notion of being under estimated.
We're playing for each other.
And that's that's saying us versus us.
We're trying to pull out the best in one another and that's how we'll win.