Every game, when teams come in for their initial walkthroughs and warmups, it’s easy to tell where University of Michigan football quarterback JJ McCarthy is: All you have to do is look for the base of one of the pylons.
And it turns out that opposing players had been trying to pick McCarthy’s mind for quite some time before the game — and they mostly succeeded.
When asked on the Minnesota Vikings podcast if he’d rather walk barefoot through a foot of Minnesota snow or have his pregame ritual interrupted, McCarthy chose snow. That’s how important meditation is to him. But before the Wolverines took on Purdue, a player tried to disrupt his pregame rhythm.
Via Athlon Sports:
“Has anyone ever tried to interrupt your pre-game meditation before?” Henderson asked. McCarthy replied: “Yes.”
“That was actually a Purdue player,” McCarthy said. “Yeah, they definitely got in the way of it … but at the end of the day, it’s just your own mind trying to get in the way of it.”
“Just come back to your breath and bring your awareness back to the present moment.”
In some ways it’s surprising it wasn’t a Michigan or Ohio State player, but Purdue was unusually vocal in its complaints amid the sign-stealing fiasco.
But McCarthy had the last laugh. Not only did Michigan win 41-13, but he also completed 24 of 37 passes for 335 yards.
