Kalamazoo Keeps Western Michigan's Disputed Win Alive Against Michigan

KALAMAZOO, Michigan -- From the front door of Waldo's Campus Tavern you can see into Western Michigan's football stadium. It isn't technically on campus, despite the name, but it might as well be.

At its backdoor painted on the walls is "No shoes, no shirt, no sense of humor, no service." Inside is the type of crusty wood-paneled dive bar that can only exist in a college town. Great college watering holes serve as anchors for a campus community. It's a common place students take their graduation pictures in full cap and gown. It is thankfully frozen in time and has survived since 1981.

People in this community have thought a lot about time in the last few weeks. For 15 blissful seconds, Western Michigan had a historic victory over Michigan before the whistles started and head coach Lance Taylor was forced to call his enraptured team off the field. The replay review took about 90 seconds to determine there was still one remaining, that Michigan deserved another chance to win the game – which it then did. Some think it was a phantom second or the byproduct of a hidden clock. The broadcast graphic's clock, supposedly synced with the Big Ten's embedded system, may have only been off by a few tenths of a second, but that was all it took to change history.

Western Michigan's team, its university and its fans are still dealing with the fallout and processing the disappointment from what is officially another loss to Michigan. A home game Saturday against Boise State is the Broncos' biggest in a decade, and could be the main bullet point for a potential College Football Playoff resume down the line. But the committee, just like those in the community, will have to reckon with what exactly to do about the ending at the Big House.

12-7

Eric Bowler went to Western and graduated in 2009. He used to work at the school before working at Waldo's. Now he's the bar's general manager. It was here he watched one of the last great Western Michigan football moments, the Cotton Bowl after the undefeated 2016 regular season, with coach P.J. Fleck at the helm, star receiver Corey Davis showing out. Bowler lives close enough that he heard the audio from College GameDay's 2016 visit from his house and walked over not to the set, but to Waldo's to watch it on TV in the bar.

On Sept. 5, he was here with about 50 others watching his alma mater take on Michigan. It was a relatively slow holiday weekend. As the game went on, and it became apparent Western Michigan had a serious chance to win, he didn't want to jinx it – here he raps his knuckles on the wooden table – but more and more people in the bar started paying attention as the game reached its final minutes.

There are always signs above the front door of the bar. Maybe they're from a beer distributor, or a wacky slogan. One time Bowler had a giant arrow pointing next door with the words "I'm with stupid" on it. The day after while he was sitting in his disappointment, he had an idea to go to Walgreens and have another sign made up, but this one wasn't advertising Budweiser.

"I went on the internet and I found a picture that just had the two circles where the ball was, where the clock was and I was like, cool, that'll be on the outside of the banner," Bowler told CBS Sports. "And I was like, what should it say on the inside? It'll just say what the score is: 12-7."

Fifty-five dollars later, Bowler had his banner. Waldo's is closed on Sundays, and he didn't want to work on Labor Day, so on Tuesday after the game Bowler got a ladder out and strung it up.

"I was downstairs for a second [after hanging it up]. We weren't open yet, and within 10 minutes, I saw people going by," Bowler said. "One guy took a picture, and then another guy came by and took a picture. Then another guy came by with a camera, and then I was like, 'Oh, okay.' I posted it on social media too. We don't post all the time -- usually once or twice a week -- and then it kind of just took off from there."

He's had offers from people to borrow or even buy the sign for "a couple hundred bucks." But he says he won't sell it and doesn't have the heart to tell people they could go down the road about five minutes and have their own made. For Bowler it isn't about money. It's about making a statement.

"I just thought it was important to say like, hey, we watched the game, we know what happened. We know what the score is."

It wasn't just any opponent, this was Michigan . And that matters

If you follow that "I'm with stupid sign" next door to the University Roadhouse restaurant, you'll happen to see Michigan head coach Kyle Whittingham on a TV next to a wood carving of a bronco head. He's delivering his weekly press conference 100 miles away in Ann Arbor. As Whittingham speaks, Michigan's schedule comes up in a graphic. It says "W, 13-12" next to the Western Michigan line at the top. That is of course the official record, and the way the NCAA will recognize the game's result for all time although the sign next door begs to differ.

Michigan and Michigan State's spectres loom over the so-called directional schools: Western, Central and Eastern Michigan. Western hasn't officially beaten Michigan ever in nine meetings, and hasn't beaten Michigan State since the early 1900s. Broncos helmets sit next to Wolverine and Spartan lids at Burdick's downtown where Taylor does his weekly radio show. At Waldo's, a WMU flag is flanked by the two bigger state schools.

The Spartans and the Wolverines both play during the Boise State game, a fact that some on online forums worry will impact attendance.

"This is a unique opportunity. This should be an automatic sellout," a commenter writes . "Same old story. Looking at ticket sales, we are nowhere near a sellout."

A push for the school's second-ever appearance on College GameDay fell short. Western Michigan officials admit that sellouts are rare, but the attendance for the home opener Week 2 against FCS Monmouth was 24,605, the largest for a home opener since 2017 which was the year after the Broncos' run to the Cotton Bowl. One school official says the Wolverines and Spartans drawing attendance away is overstated.

At Roadhouse, a bartender named Claire says she knows Western won the game. She isn't even really a football fan, but she says she couldn't ignore what she saw. Her colleague Amy admits things are busier when the Broncos are good. She commends how the school handled the fallout and admits to Western's typical place in the food chain.

"You don't want to piss those big schools off, because you have to play them," she says.

Western Michigan vs. Michigan, by the numbers

Western Michigan Michigan Alumni base Approximately 260,000 More than 668,000* Fall 2025 enrollment 17,331 53,488 Endowment Approximately $850 million $21.2 billion Year founded 1903 1817 Football stadium capacity 30,200 107,601 Athletic department revenue, FY2025 $41.9 million $269.6 million

*Michigan's alumni figure includes its Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint campuses. Its enrollment figure is for Ann Arbor.

Amy's manager, Max Stobart, is a Western grad and was working the night of the Michigan game. Predictably, he also believes Western won.

"Everybody was super happy because the game was over," Stobart said. "And then the refs come out. We didn't have the sound playing. Everyone was kind of yelling, then quieted down, trying to figure out what was happening. All of a sudden, the team comes back on the field. We see him put one second on the clock. We're still like we're good. It's fine. They complete the Hail Mary. Everyone's in here like hands on their head. Can't even believe it. Started yelling. One of my coworkers was here in a Michigan jersey. Everyone started yelling at him like, 'Hey man, that was not fair. That was unjust.'"

Price Pullins was at Roadhouse the night of the game too. He's a double Western Michigan graduate and former chief behavioral psychologist for the Michigan department of health and human services. Michigan is the oldest school in the state and predates even the school that eventually became Western Michigan by 86 years. If this same thing would have happened against Ohio State or Georgia or Alabama, it would have stung, sure, but there's a twisting of the knife because it's the maize and blue.

"Michigan has always been a pretty big power in football, and they are one of the predominant teams in the United States," Pullins said. "To be in a game with Michigan is huge."

After it was over, Lance Taylor needed time to grieve

Taylor really has only just started talking about the full gamut of emotions he felt. It took him a bit to process all he went through. He initially didn't even open up to those closest to him.

"Because everyone in the world wanted to talk about it, I didn't really want to talk about it [with my family]," Taylor said. "I have a great relationship with my dad. He played football for coach [Bear] Bryant in the 70s. We talk daily, he's kind of a sounding board. I didn't talk to him really for about 10 days after the Michigan game because I just didn't want to talk about it. I was tired of talking about it."

Taylor describes it as emotionally draining to the point that he was more exhausted than he'd ever been after a win following the 49-14 victory over Monmouth in Week 2.

"When I finally opened up to my wife after the Monmouth game, I told her it was probably one of the hardest things that I've gone through," Taylor said. "Because you go through the emotional roller coaster of you win the game -- which is probably the biggest win in my personal career and probably one of the biggest wins in Western Michigan football history -- to you lose the game all in a matter of minutes and you emotionally go through that. We took the field like we won the game. I think that the weight of that was really hard for me. Now, I kind of talk about it just depending on the mood. It depends where I'm at on the roller coaster. I've kind of gone through all phases of trying to deal with it from joy to anguish to anger, and it's kind of become part of you know who we are so you're able to compartmentalize it a little bit."

There were understandably players in tears in the postgame locker room. Some, like cornerback Jarvarius Sims, were caught by TV cameras breaking down in the aftermath.

"It was an indescribable feeling, man," Sims said. "I'm very passionate. I've been crying ever since I was a kid when I lose a football game, so it's nothing new, just a lot more people can see it this time. It was definitely a feeling that I'll never forget, and it just made me more and more hungrier to keep pushing myself and pushing this thing to achieve what we want to achieve."

> The tears from Western Michigan’s Jarvarius Sims. They feel like they got robbed by the officials to allow Bryce Underwood & Michigan one more chance for a miracle, a miracle they GOT! 🎥 @TWDTV1 https://t.co/MD4li2n83E pic.twitter.com/YChF1bBoJE — Andrew Jerell Jones, Luke 1:37 (BlueSky too now) (@sluggahjells) September 6, 2026

Part of Taylor concealing how he felt had to do with the emotions he knew his players were feeling. If they weren't able to minimize the emotions, could they ever move on? He had a player like Michigan transfer Micah Davis, who touched the ball on the first Hail Mary, questioning whether he did the right thing and Joey Pope, who was guarding JJ Buchanon as he caught the second Hail Mary, feeling like he let everyone down. They needed Taylor to pick them up.

As difficult as it was, according to Pullins, perhaps without knowing it, Taylor was exhibiting key attributes of sports psychology: the play-the-next-play mentality and not dwelling on the past. He cites a term in tennis called the golden mean, which is a mental approach to balancing emotional extremes. Football fans may be familiar with the approach thanks to "the process" popularized by Nick Saban, whom Taylor worked for as a graduate assistant from 2007-2009.

Taylor

_Originally reported by [CBS Sports](https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/western-michigan-tries-to-move-on-from-controversial-michigan-loss-as-kalamazoo-holds-on/)._