When a Michigan news station discovered it couldn’t show highlights of the national championship game until the broadcast was completely over, its sports crew found a creative loophole.
Mid-Michigan NOW sportscaster Sam Ali told viewers on Monday night that the station wasn’t allowed to show any actual clips from the Michigan Wolverines’ 34–13 win over the Washington Huskies “due to certain broadcast restrictions.” Most news stations would have left it at that, but Ali and the sports crew instead cooked up a delightful surprise.
Because the station couldn’t show highlights from the National Championship, it drew them instead.
So the Michigan game just went final when we went on-air tonight and we're not allowed to show highlights until the broadcast is completely over. But I promised the viewers "highlights" and I tried to deliver the best I could: pic.twitter.com/us2e1Y6YeD
— Sam Ali (@SamAliSports) January 9, 2024
Set against Ali’s riveting play-by-play commentary, the Michigan-Huskies game essentially got cartoon-ified.
At the start of the “highlight reel,” Ali notes that the grounds crew did great work while showing a drawing of a colored-in green field with sketched hash lines, seemingly made using Microsoft Paint or another low-budget software.
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Running back Donovan Edwards, one of Michigan's shining heroes in the game, turned into a smiling stick figure as Ali narrated how Edwards scored the first two touchdowns of the game. Note the sad faces on the Huskies defenders.
Other stars like Michael Penix Jr., J.J. McCarthy, and Blake Corum also got the stick figure treatment, with Ali adding an amusing depiction of McCarthy and Corum pointing at their hands to show where their rings are going to go.
The animation ends with Jim Harbaugh proudly hoisting the trophy, finally bringing home a championship to his alma mater in his ninth year as coach.
The Wolverines’ national title win was a bona fide hang-it-on-the-wall masterpiece. So, too, was this sportscaster’s hilarious artistic rendition of the game.
