Blake Corum’s interview with Colin Cowherd will make Michigan fans love him even more

He is arguably the best running back to ever wear the winged helmet, and his legacy will live on in Ann Arbor until the end of time.

Legendary Michigan tailback Blake Corum is already beloved by Maize and Blue fans, but after an interview with Fox Sports talk show host Colin Cowherd on Friday afternoon, that love can only grow. Cowherd asked how quickly Corum knew he wanted to play for then-head coach Jim Harbaugh at Michigan, and the tailback’s answer was unequivocal.

“I committed right away,” Corum said. “I took two official visits. I was going to commit before my senior year of high school, and I took one visit to Ohio State, the next to Michigan, and I committed right away. I walked into Coach Harbaugh’s office and said, ‘I’m coming.'”

Why were Michigan and Harbaugh the clear choice for Corum?

“It was his coaching style, his attitude to the game, his love for the game, his passion for his players,” he said. “I thought to myself, ‘You know what? I’m going to be a Wolverine.'”

Cowherd noted that while Corum is small, he doesn’t run like a small tailback. The 5-foot-8, 200-pound player was a physical ball carrier who almost always seemed to fall forward during his senior year at Michigan. His powerful running, low-profile, agility and quickness made Corum a deadly combination for opposing defenses.

“My whole life, everyone has called me a smaller back,” Corum said. “But when it comes to strength or pound-for-pound, there aren’t many guys that can out-perform me in the weight room. So I definitely try to use that to my advantage. Like, there are linebackers in the game that say, ‘Hey man, I can’t see you until you’ve already hit the hole.’ So that’s my advantage — I just stay patient and then use my speed and agility to hit at the last second and get on them as quickly as possible.”

Corum was a workhorse at Michigan. Although the Wolverines have used him in rotation with Donovan Edwards the past two seasons, there is no doubt that Corum was the premier running back. Given the sometimes short shelf life of an NFL running back, Cowherd asked Corum if he ever had concerns that he was being used too much at Michigan.

“No, I never thought about that,” he said. “I always said, ‘Hey coach, if I’m supposed to run 40 times, I’m going to run 40 times.’ I think it’s all a matter of mindset, but I also think it’s how you take care of your body. Obviously every running back wants to last a long time, but not everyone takes care of their body properly. Maybe you don’t get a couple of massages a week or get treatments. So I make sure that I take care of my body so that when a team asks me to carry the ball like Michigan did, you know, 20-plus times a game, I can do it and feel good about it. It’s not like my body hurts after every game on Saturday. So it never occurred to me that even though I had a lot of ball contact in college, I still feel like I did my freshman year of college. I feel good, I feel like myself.”

Corum’s highlights at Michigan are extensive. Whether it was goal-line situations or a long run into the open, no Wolverine tailback reached the end zone as often as Corum. Cowherd asked what he enjoyed more: outrunning a defender in open space or outrunning him.

“It depends,” Corum said. “At the beginning of the game, I want them to feel me out a little bit so they know, hey, it’s going to be a long day. But after I give them a little bit, there’s no better feeling than getting a safety or a DB or a linebacker in open space one-on-one and they’re just stuck like a deer in the headlights. There’s no better feeling than seeing that and just knowing before you even get to them, like, oh yeah, I got them. I can’t really pick one. I like them both.”

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