CHICAGO – At first, the Michigan players didn't believe it would happen.
"At first, it started as a rumor: We've got four-hour practices? Yeah, right, whatever," linebacker James Ross III recalled of late February, when Michigan was approaching its first spring practices under new coach Jim Harbaugh. "I didn't believe it. That never happened (before). The first practice it came to be true. He blew the whistle and we thought it was over, and we had whole new sets of periods. I'm like, oh, this is serious. We got used to it and it made us a lot tougher.