You don't own Michigan football. It owns you. You don't steer that magic carpet. The carpet lets you ride. When you step off that perch, when your adventure ends, someone else gets on, and you are back on earth, feet to the ground. The best you can hope for is a fond wave and a fond wave back.

At the end of his retirement news conference Monday — a dignified, eloquent affair — Lloyd Carr stepped away from the podium, stepped away from the job, stepped away from 13 seasons as head coach and 28 years on a maize-and-blue sideline, and many in the room rose up and applauded, even hard-bitten journalists. Carr, still trim at 62, grinned slightly, his jutting jaw tightly in place. Then, slightly embarrassed as the applause continued, he gave a salute. One fond wave as the carpet sailed away.

Michi-gone.

"The greatest of games," he said of football.

"The greatest of jobs," he said of his position.

"The greatest of places," he said of his university.

"I've loved them all," he said of his players.

And — when asked about telling his team and staff Sunday — he added this: "I cried more tears than I knew I had. I never laughed so hard in my life. ... It was a wonderful day."

How many of us say that the day we quit?

If there's a way to leave a job, we saw it Monday morning. No, it didn't end with a national championship. It didn't end with a Big Ten title. It didn't come in the bubbly aftermath of a victory over rival Ohio State.

It came, instead, when the man at the helm felt his best work was done, that he'd guided an honest journey, that someone new could better chart the course. Not many healthy coaches walk away from money on the table, with bosses who still want them. But Carr, who said he "knew it was time," walked away Monday, with seriousness, with laughs, with a few barbs, and, of all things, with a poem.

By your own soul learn to live

If some men thwart you, take no heed

If some men hate you, have no care

Sing your song, dream your dream

Hope your hope and pray your prayer

Carr, a football coach, was quoting Pakenham Beatty. And no, Beatty did not play middle linebacker.

Michi-gone.

Last season, before the Ohio State game was played, before Schembechler died, Carr told his old boss, "I'm gonna fight one more round."

That round was this season, which started as a disaster, became a resurrection, and ended, as some Michigan football dreams do, a few feet from the rainbow's end.

But only on the scoreboard. For his career, Carr leaves as one of the most successful coaches in Big Ten and Michigan history. He leaves with a national championship in his bag. A perfect season. Five Big Ten titles. And a small army of young men who point to him as the best part of playing football at Michigan, even as he points at them and says the same thing.

Give Carr credit for knowing priorities can be reversed, the big can be downsized, the small can be enlarged. Many football coaches want to die with their whistle in their mouths.

Carr does not.

"I still have a great passion for the game ... I also know there are some things I don't have anymore."

That wisdom to know the difference is the measure of an honest man.