Charles Woodson was the reason I started paying attention to college football. I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania. Obviously, it made me semi-follow Penn State not because I liked them, but because it was on TV. I moved to Illinois in 1989 and was needing to find a new team. Living in northern Illinois made it impossible to really give a crap about the fighting Illini so I looked elsewhere. In comes Todd Schultz. Todd was a good quarterback from the town I grew up. This made it easy to root for him when he got put in the starting role at Michigan State.
Todd Schultz ended his career being fourth in passing at 4,273 yards.
Getting into Football
I think the first time I remember him playing was in 1996 when he beat the Illini 42-14. He had a ridiculous game tossing the ball for almost 300 yards. At the time, I obviously had some aspirations of playing football in college, but I was still only a kid and didn't know I would never be big enough. Todd Schultz being from the same town always made it seem like I had a chance. I followed them for most of the year but Michigan State really wasn't that great of a team. It was hard for me to really sit down to watch football at that point. Riding my bicycle and playing baseball was all I paid attention too.
What got me to Michigan
Todd Schultz brought me to the most jaw-dropping play in my life. It was such a play that it made me switch who I followed altogether. Now I can't even think if anything could make me completely switch my fandom like this. The setting was on October 25, 1997. Michigan was ranked number 5 in the country and State was coming off a loss to Northwestern 17-19.
They were looking for a big bounce back to right the ship. They were ranked as high as 11th. Michigan had a 13-7 lead against them late in the third quarter. Todd Schultz was feeling some pressure, and rolled out to his right maybe to just throw the ball away. Charles Woodson proceeded to steal the soul of Todd with the most incredible one-handed interception ever in college. At that very point is when my whole heart went into being a Michigan fan.
