IMAGINE IF A MICHIGAN QB WINS TITLE, WHILE FINDING HELP FOR DEPRESSION

A thrilling national semifinal ended with J.J. McCarthy as the star, impressing the NFL with three giant touchdown passes and doing more for the courage of young people who utilize meditation

     The words were pure, not terribly far from the truth. “I think,” he said, “that this could be the game of the century.” Doesn’t matter that Jim Harbaugh said it, and if his trust quotient is low, his football team outmaneuvered and power-throttled Nick Saban into another loss in the championship season. The thunder blur of overtime won’t be forgotten soon, even if the coach is immersed in the NFL and his daring kids clinch a national title next Monday.

     Michigan carries on, against Everybody on the planet, including those of us who wonder about Harbaugh’s integrity mode. But the way we’ll recall a 27-20 victory will be the rose in J.J. McCarthy’s mouth, as Alabama fired helmets and wondered how it blew a seven-point lead. The quarterback was so depressed a few years ago that he turned to meditation, missing his home outside Chicago as he played at IMG Academy in Florida. Before the semifinal game, as the Rose Bowl gleamed in a Pasadena glory bath, he sat down in the end zone and pointed one white sneaker one way and the other sneaker the other way. He wore headphones and started his Pranayama techniques, known to yoga folk and those familiar with the exploitation of one’s mind.

     “It’s kind of like white noise,” McCarthy said. “It does some things I can’t even really describe, breathing exercises and calming frequency in my headphones that just kind of dials in my physiology.”

     He was a young man in a clumsy world and needed help. “I was going through some depression pretty bad and I was researching like crazy, anything to help develop better well-being and meditation was the first thing I put into practice,” he said. “When the depression kept going, I knew it wasn't just being homesick. So finding meditation was the best thing that's ever happened to me to get through.”

     Then he found the 2023 season, which spilled into New Year’s Day. That’s when he made one error in the opening minutes, throwing his first pass to the opponents but lucking out when Caleb Downs was ruled out of bounds. From that moment on, McCarthy was the star of one of the bigger postseason games we’ll see. He threw three touchdown passes, including one to Roman Wilson to tie the game with 1:34 left in regulation. It was clear throughout that Alabama, despite the running churn of Jalen Milroe and his running backs, couldn’t match McCarthy’s passing prowess. Again, Harbaugh was beyond over-exuberant when he said, “I think, going forward, J.J. will be the quarterback that all future quarterbacks are compared to.” But with every throw, rolling out to make repeated dazzling plays, you began wondering if his hometown team — the Chicago Bears — could draft him with their second pick of the first round and trade Justin Fields after selecting Marvin Harrison Jr. with the top pick. He’s a Bears fan, to be sure, with a leaning toward Joe Burrow.

     First, McCarthy had a flower to find. He refused to even touch a rose in recent days and finally found one on the field, as his teammates and coaches celebrated and fans rejoiced about a potential championship party. Tom Brady is on all Ann Arbor coinage as the hallmark of a university, but he was a rarely-used backup in 1997 when the Wolverines split the national title with Nebraska. J.J. McCarthy could win it all by himself. True love, he sought in the rose.

     “This means so much to me, and I’m so superstitious,” he said. “I didn’t touch one all week. I’ve been waiting for this moment.”

     He stuck the rose in his mouth, overjoyed by the moment. If this is an instant of a mental health triumph, McCarthy deserves far more than a rose, such as the fireworks in the California sky. He is a sign of hope at all times, rallying his mates when they fell behind early and returned to take a 13-7 lead, then rallying again when Milroe and Jase McClellan were bullish and led the Crimson Tide to a 20-13 lead. Only once in his career has McCarthy lost, to TCU in a semifinal upset last year. You can see what’s coming.

     “Togetherness. We’re so tough, so connected,” Harbaugh said. “We were going to overcome everything.”

     And when the TV announcer used Harbaugh’s motto in asking, “Who could have it better than you?” He said, “I know the answer to that one. Nooooo … body.”

     It’s hard to believe anyone can hold up against Michigan’s defensive pressure and the tandem of McCarthy and Blake Corum, who ran for the go-ahead score from 17 yards. As he spoke to fans at the trophy ceremony, J.J. — Jonathan James — kept promising one more victory. How do you not root for him, even when his coach is hard to support?

     Only Harbaugh doesn’t quite grasp the meditation. “I brought it up to him once and I was like, yeah, he's not going to buy into it at all," McCarthy said. “He said, ‘It's pretty much just listening to your thoughts the whole time?’ I said yes, but you want to quiet thoughts as much as possible and the observation and awareness of them quiets them. He was just like, ‘Yeah, I think I do enough of that already.’ "

     He is the coach’s biggest fan, repeatedly wearing t-shirts and defending him during two separate three-game suspensions. Even Saban took a shot during a weekend press conference, when asked if he’s “concerned with the sign-stealing stuff at Michigan.” Harbaugh sat beside him and wasn’t happy, moving around while Saban pranced, “No, we're really not concerned about that. Integrity in the game, I think, is really, really important. Our team has had every opportunity to prepare for this game like they have for every other game. I think especially when you're a no-huddle team, you've got to adapt and adjust how you communicate with the quarterback. Hopefully, one day we'll get to the NFL system where you can just talk to the guy in his helmet. I think that would be a lot better. For now, we just have to adapt to how we communicate with the quarterback and change it up and try not to put our players at a disadvantage.”

     Before the game, the head coaches didn’t shake hands. Afterward, when Saban’s family was asked if he’d continue coaching next season in the expanded SEC, a young woman told USA Today, “We’re not answering questions like that right now,” as Saban’s wife said they would enjoy a Turkish movie on Netflix later Monday night. Not that sign-stealing took place in the masterpiece. This was about a quarterback who was calm when it mattered.

     “All the adversity — a team that goes through that adversity can’t get to the heights we want,” McCarthy said. “This is just indescribable. The last two years, watching the opposing team win, now it’s different when you see this maize-and-blue confetti. I am nothing without this team, this coach, this defense.”

     Better, they are nothing without him.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.