Nico Andreghetto knew the old routine by heart. For four seasons, the graduate safety made the same quiet walk through the plain Lloyd Carr tunnel before Michigan home games. This year, though, everything changed around him.
Michigan has turned that pregame passage into a full production, installing 390 feet of LED lights that wash the tunnel in alternating maize and blue as the Wolverines head toward the field. The school also wanted a song to match the new look, and Andreghetto and fellow graduate safety Rod Moore took that assignment personally.
They worked through Spotify playlists, bounced ideas off each other and kept narrowing the field until one track stood out: Joker and the Thief by Wolfmother. Andreghetto likes the song’s message of an underdog “laughing in the midst of power,” and he sees it as a fit for Michigan because “everyone hates us.” He also thought head coach Kyle Whittingham would be on board.
“Whitt’s a Harley-driving guy, so I think he likes it,” Andreghetto told The Michigan Daily.
Moore passed the pick along to director of game presentation and experience Jake Stocker, who had been searching for something the whole fan base could get behind. That settled the music side of the makeover.
The bigger project was changing the way Michigan Stadium’s entrance feels without losing the ritual everyone knows. For more than a decade, the pregame scene has followed the same script: about 10 minutes before kickoff, the bell sounds on the video board, the late James Earl Jones welcomes more than 100,000 fans to “The Best University in the World,” and the players sprint from the edge of the Lloyd Carr tunnel to touch the “Go Blue” banner as the fight song plays.
When Whittingham and his staff arrived in January, they made the tunnel one of their first priorities. They wanted something that would lift the players before they hit the banner and give the crowd a better sense of what happens before the team appears.
“It was one of the first things they talked about as they saw the tunnel and pretty much said, ‘Hey, how can we create some kind of elevated tunnel walk that’s going to get our players really excited before they get down to the bottom of the field and hit the banner?’ ” Stocker said.
The idea was to build some momentum before the familiar banner moment, not replace it. Stocker said the old setup left a lot of the tunnel hidden from view and wondered how to get players and fans more involved before the traditional burst onto the field.
“We have this huge tunnel, and right now it’s just all white, and nobody’s really seeing what happens before the team comes out,” Stocker said. “How do they get hyped up, how do they get excited? How do we get the crowd into it before we hit that moment where it goes back to the tradition of the band playing, the team running under the banner?”
4Wall Entertainment won the job after multiple companies bid for it. The company’s South Lyon-based Michigan branch has worked with the Pistons, Lions, Tigers, Red Wings and Wolverines, and it had just been in Crisler Center in April for the men’s basketball team’s national championship banner-raising.
Over three days in late August, vice president of live events Joe Leahy, project manager Kareem Harris and programmer and designer Mike Conley led a small crew in installing the lighting. The 390 feet of linear LED battens can produce any color in the rainbow, but Leahy made clear where Michigan was headed.
“But in the Big House, we’re only going to do maize and blue, right?” Leahy told The Daily.
The crew also added a pair of EclProfile FS Leko spotlights that now shine on “The Team, The Team, The Team” just before the players burst through the tunnel doors. Once the system was tied into the lightboard in the press box, the project was ready for a test run.
Leahy said the first walkthrough gave the crew the reaction they wanted.
“We were there when (the players) started walking through the tunnel and saw it for the first time,” Leahy said. “The parts we heard were reactionary, just them going ‘Ooh’ and ‘Yeah!’ Not anything verbal, but just their sounds.”
The new setup did not include Andreghetto’s song at first. Wolfmother’s track made its Big House debut in the season opener against Western Michigan, and Andreghetto was caught off guard when he heard it.
“We were like, ‘Oh shoot, like they’re playing the one that I picked,’ ” Andreghetto said. “It was pretty cool.”
Since then, the revamped tunnel has kept drawing positive reviews while carrying the energy from Jones’ pregame introduction straight into the players’ entrance. Stocker and Leahy both said the response from fans has meant a lot to them.
By every sign they’ve seen so far, the Lloyd Carr tunnel’s new look has fit right into one of Michigan’s most recognizable traditions without stepping on it. It just gives the moment a little more smoke, light and noise before the banner goes up.
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