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Meet Author Mark Snyder & Special Guest Marcus Ray

Inside Story of Michigan's 1997 Title Climb

Join author Mark Snyder and member of the 1997 team Marcus Ray as they discuss the book, Mountaintop: The Inside Story of Michigan's 1997 National Title Climb.

About the authors:

Mark Snyder lived through the 1997 national championship season as a University of Michigan student, riding the wave like all Wolverines who expected nothing and received everything. Starting from the inside at The Michigan Daily student newspaper during his college years, he turned the experience into a career, covering high school, college and professional sports for nearly 20 years at the Oakland (Mich.) Press and the Detroit Free Press, primarily focused on the Wolverines. He was voted Michigan’s sportswriter of the year by his peers in 2011. He lives in suburban Detroit with his wife and two children.

Nick Baumgardner spent a decade covering Michigan’s football program as a beat writer/columnist for MLive Media Group, the Detroit Free Press and The Athletic. From Brady Hoke’s first game through Jim Harbaugh’s first Big Ten title. Born in Flint, Mich., he lived the 1997 college football season as a Millington High School freshman, the final jobless fall of his life. As of 2023, Nick worked as a senior writer at The Athletic, focused on the NFL, the NFL draft and college football. He lives in Ann Arbor with his wife and two children.

Marcus Ray, a member of the 1997 championship team, will be joining the conversation to share his memories of the team.

Mountaintop is the story of climbing the mountain, individually and as a brotherhood, during Michigan’s most fabled season ― one ending with its first national championship in a half-century and lone title in the last 75 years. When the 1997 college football season began, the once-mighty Michigan Wolverines were dismissed nationally as a relic of a bygone era. Michigan had posted four straight four-loss seasons and started out No. 14 in the polls for the third straight year, its worst preseason rankings since 1985. Michigan was led by an accidental third-year coach, Lloyd Carr, who had suffered through back-to-back four-loss seasons after taking the job in the middle of a proverbial tornado. The starting quarterback was a fifth-year, former walk-on who nearly quit the sport. The offensive and defensive coordinators were brand new, the schedule was the toughest in the country, and Michigan’s status as a football powerhouse teetered on a razor’s edge. Right before the opener, Carr’s team heard a survivor from a Mount Everest tragedy describe what it took to do the impossible, when everything around you was falling apart. Climb the mountain became the team’s mantra. Four months later, the Wolverines stood on college football’s summit as the 1997 national champion, a perfect 12-0. A team with several future Pro (and College) Football Hall of Famers, the first-ever defensive Heisman Trophy winner (Charles Woodson), the greatest QB in football history (Tom Brady) and the last QB to ever beat him for an open job (Brian Griese), the 1997 Wolverines reset the standard for greatness at the school with the most victories in the sport’s history. 

Books will be available for purchase.