Inside The Huskies

Michigan Sets Night-time Kickoff for Husky Visit

The two teams meet on September 11 at the Big House in Ann Arbor.

Dan Raley

Potentially the biggest game of the coming season for the University of Washington football team — a September 11 visit to Michigan — will be shown on ABC-TV and kick off at 7:30 p.m. ET in Ann Arbor, 4:30 in Seattle.

Low-end tickets are advertised for $106 each to attend a game that likely will be a sellout.

This outing will mark the Huskies' fifth appearance at "the Big House," 107,601-seat Michigan Stadium that represents the largest football facility in the U.S. and one of the biggest in the world.

In its four previous trips, the UW has won just once — a nationally televised 20-11 victory over the then No. 8 Wolverines in 1984. It came early in an 11-1 season that left the Don James-coached Huskies ranked second in the final polls and triumphant over Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. An Ann Arbor crowd of 103,072 went home disappointed that day.

Three decades earlier, Washington's very first appearance at Michigan didn't go well at all. A rebuilding Huskies team coached by John Cherberg lost 50-0 in 1953. A crowd of 51,223 watched that intersectional mismatch.

In 1969, as the UW struggled through a 1-9 season, some foolhardy schedule-maker had the Huskies open the season at Michigan State, play at Michigan and then return home for a game against Ohio State. In Ann Arbor that year, Jim Owens' beleaguered team fell 45-7 to the 20th-ranked Wolverines before a crowd of 49,684.

The Huskies last played at Michigan in 2002, during Rick Neuheisel's final season as UW football coach. Coming off a Rose Bowl victory over Purdue and Drew Brees, they opened the season in Ann Arbor as the nation's 17th-ranked team and lost 31-29 to the No. 2 Wolverines before a crowd of 111,491.

Michigan holds a 7-5 series advantage in games played at all sites, including the Rose Bowl. Last year's UW-Wolverines game at Husky Stadium, of course, was canceled because of the pandemic. 

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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