Mountaintop: The Inside Story of Michigan’s 1997 Title Climb with Mark Snyder and Nick Baumgardner

Attention Wolverine Football fans! Learn about the remarkable season the team turned things around and went from a losing to perfect 12-0 team when Mark Snyder and Nick Baumgardner join us to share Mountaintop.

This event is free to attend. However it helps us in planning to receive your RSVP. 

About the Book:

When the 1997 college football season began, the once-mighty Michigan Wolverines were dismissed nationally as a relic of a bygone era. Michigan had posted four straight four-loss seasons and started out No. 14 in the polls for the third straight year, its worst preseason rankings since 1985. Michigan was led by an accidental third-year coach, Lloyd Carr, who had suffered through back-to-back four-loss seasons after taking the job in the middle of a proverbial tornado. The starting quarterback was a fifth-year, former walk-on who nearly quit the sport. The offensive and defensive coordinators were brand new, the schedule was the toughest in the country, and Michigan’s status as a football powerhouse teetered on a razor’s edge. Right before the opener, Carr’s team heard a survivor from a Mount Everest tragedy describe what it took to do the impossible, when everything around you was falling apart. Climb the mountain became the team’s mantra.

Four months later, the Wolverines stood on college football’s summit as the 1997 national champion, a perfect 12-0. A team with several future Pro (and College) Football Hall of Famers, the first-ever defensive Heisman Trophy winner (Charles Woodson), the greatest QB in football history (Tom Brady) and the last QB to ever beat him for an open job (Brian Griese), the 1997 Wolverines reset the standard for greatness at the school with the most victories in the sport’s history. This is the story of climbing the mountain, individually and as a brotherhood, during Michigan’s most fabled season ― one ending with its first national championship in a half-century and lone title in the last 75 years. “Mountaintop” is the journey from the inside, from the players, coaches, and staff members who lived the experience.

About the Authors:

Nick Baumgardner has been a sportswriter for almost two decades, working for The Athletic as a national football analyst after years covering University of Michigan sports for The Athletic, the Detroit Free Press and the Mlive Media Group. Mark Snyder spent nearly 20 years as a professional sportswriter in Michigan, working for the Detroit Free Press and The Oakland Press, with much of that time focused on the University of Michigan sports, particularly football. He was named the state of Michigan Sportswriter of the Year in 2011.