At practice, when a play was brought in from the sideline, the players joked in the huddle if Testaverde approved it.
Because the call came from the sideline, the players did not realize there was a timeout until the ball had been snapped.
While Schembechler and Hayes provided so much passion and personality from the sideline, the players on the field through the years such as Jim Harbaugh, Desmond Howard, Carlos Snow and Troy Smith have more than held up their part of the bargain.
Tight end Tyler Higbee (knee) and offensive guard Rodger Saffold (knee) did not practice, but McVay said before the workout that the injuries were not expected to sideline the players Sunday.
Yet what looked like a shoo-in for player of the season was derailed by Mo Salah's insanely compelling contribution to Liverpool's run to the Champions League final; Belgium lived to regret the win over England in the World Cup that set them on a course to meet France in the semis; and now injury has sidelined the player for at least a couple of months at the start of a new campaign.
In hockey a minor infraction sidelines the player for two minutes for an instant short-term advantage that doesn't come with a yellow card.
No wonder their coach, Gus Bradley, was jubilant, saying: "We have been in this situation before but on the sidelines the players were saying: 'We're not going to give this one up.' Our players will take this and grow from it".
"We on the sideline wanted the players to feel our sense of urgency," Klinsmann said afterward.
When it was over, Klinsmann raised his arms on the sideline and the players came together, clapping their hands toward the fans.
"We had a difficult start to the season with lots of injuries - we still have lots of players sidelined but the players now have confidence in each other and that makes it easier to play". "We got exactly what we deserved which was nothing.
But what sidelined the U.N.C. player, the first time around, was an accidental and seemingly innocuous elbow, and none of the blows he suffered that day would have been flagged by a referee as illegal.
