Monday, January 8

A Game for the Generations

My dad had been a Chicago Bears Season ticket holder in the 1960s, before moving to the suburbs, having kids, and all of that. 

We watched the Bears together every week, creating a special bond. My other brothers didn’t get the football bug, though one became a star soccer player, my dad’s other favorite sport. So he had everything covered. This weekly routine probably started in earnest when I was 7. Walter Payton was still one of the league’s top stars, and the team was on the cusp of something special. Then things got amazing when I was 10 with the 1985 season. I was led to believe that rooting for a team means they climb the mountain and win it all. That they become the best of all time.

We got season tickets to Northwestern because we could walk to the games. That and they were probably dirt cheap given the level of play back then. Things are a bit hazy now. I only recall a few plays, most of them baffling gaffes. My dad almost couldn’t stand it at times, and his comments on some of those gaffes are what remains most clear to me. I realized that rooting for a team did not mean that they necessarily climb the mountain or even a foothill or two.

My dad was not a Michigan fan. But he loved great football. And he certainly was never in a million years going to root for Ohio State. So when I became a student, he started to lean our way. He was with me in the stands for Biakabutuka 313, the most fun I’ve ever had at Michigan Stadium. By halftime he had figured out The Victors and was chiming in with the whole stadium. He was with me and 15 of my friends for Northwestern 52, Michigan 49, trying to secretly pull for the home team. I say trying because he didn’t need to be demonstrative for me to know what he was thinking. But he didn’t gloat when it ended. He joined us as the oldest man in attendance at a Chicago bar I had “reserved” for the Game of the Century in 2006, when the bar accidentally double-booked their space for my group and an OSU group. 

When I left work to drive around the country going to football games, he was incredibly encouraging, proud even. And when I left home to move to Argentina and then Switzerland, that same support never wavered, even though we didn’t see each other as much. We still talked football as often as we could, and it was usually about Michigan.


On a visit home to Chicago, on New Years Day 2016, we watched Michigan quietly trounce Florida 41-7 together. He took a nap on the couch during halftime that lasted into a healthy chunk of the third quarter. To be fair the game wasn’t exactly a nailbiter.

He passed away suddenly and peacefully 12 days later, at age 91. This set me up for a challenging year. My second child arrived that June, and we had many unexpected life changes coming. But Michigan came through for me. After nine seasons in the wilderness, Harbaugh had restored much of what had been lacking. In a grief-filled, exhausting time, Michigan football had given me something to pull me forward.

Of course the showdown with Ohio State ended horribly. We were to finally reach the summit, such as it was, but a series of gaffes and, let’s say, interesting refereeing led to an unforgettably sad finish. I made my wife let me hold the baby during overtime because I knew it was the one thing in the house I was not allowed to break. This helped me tamp down the rage for the moment, but the disappointment that not all scripts could be flipped lingered for a long time. I was reminded that rooting for a team means a whole lot of suffering. 


My dad studied journalism at Missouri, and whenever there was some national scandal of any kind, he was always quick to look at coverage of the scandal as much as what was happening itself. He would have been apoplectic at the way the Connor Stalions era was covered with its Weapons of Mass Misconstruction. He would have immediately seen through all the hyperventilated nonsense, to the agendas at play, to the cowardice of Petitti. 

But more than that, he would have loved this team. He would have loved their lack of penalties. The way they played as a unit. Their bruising lines. He would have seen the brilliance of Blake Corum, how the kid has the killer instinct to destroy the opposition with the game on the line time and time again. He would have admired the hell out of Sherrone Moore and how he stepped up to lead when Harbaugh was forced out of action. How they have delivered on every single promise so far. How they didn’t let the bastards get them down. He would have tried to say “Bet” the right way. The team wouldn’t have taken the place of the ’85 Bears in his heart, but his admiration would have been massive.


2023 was not an easy year. I won’t get into the details here, but the trials have been many, varied, and steep. We got through them all as a family. And much like in 2016, Michigan has provided a boost week in and week out. My son is now 7. He was distraught after the loss to TCU, but it’s only a vague memory for him at this point. He has watched the first halves of the early games live with me (noon = 6pm here) for the first time this season. The first thing he wants to do every Sunday morning is ask if Michigan won. And then watch the highlights as many times as we will let him. The words “Blake” and “JJ” hold joyful purpose in his life. 

Now that I'm the dad, sharing the passion with my son, I hope for his sake as much as mine that Michigan wins tonight. I'm clearly setting the wrong expectations; he will think rooting for a team means they become champions. But it's better to see the mountaintop whenever you can than to wait for decades. 

What I'm saying is that the players on this team have made me prouder than any Michigan team in history. Given how obsessed I have been for these 30 years, that's saying a lot. I just hope my son can appreciate it like his grandpa would have.




Let's Go Blue one last time!



Wednesday, August 30

The Last Battle

It just means more


I was sitting in Lloyd Carr’s office in August of 2008. He was officially a few weeks away from retirement. I was a few weeks away from the end of my mid-life crisis. That had come early for me, at 32 years of age. I quit my perfectly good job to drive 23,000 miles across 43 states, attend 17 college football games, and interview roughly 1,000 fans and a handful of coaches.


When I began by explaining what I was up to, he said “Wow, this sport really means a lot do you to you, doesn’t it?” I was taken aback by his obvious observation, and that I hadn’t realized quite how much I cared about it until he framed it for me. If I had ever gotten my book finished, it would have centered on the big question behind this. Why do we care so much about college football?


There are many reasons, but I would posit that the simplest of them is that it’s the sport that has consistently delivered the most drama every single week. I don’t have to explain this to anyone who follows the game beyond just their team. And if someone’s a die-hard of any team, part of college football has always been keeping an eye on everyone else.


Nearly every one of those 1,000 fans I spoke to talked about how much this sport matters to them. How it’s different than anything else. How they love it because it is so many things that the NFL is not. The original premise of that journey was about the inherent tension between tradition and progress. Back then there was debate if the BCS should be changed to have a playoff. Coach Carr even said he felt it had to happen. Relating to the playoff debate, a Wisconsin fan named Ken Simmons told me, “Look at why the passion for college football is so great. You don’t want to change a whole lot. You don’t want to harm that passion. I think that’s why they’re moving as slowly as they are.”


 

Play Them Off


We’ll see more change in the leap to 2024 than the sport has ever seen before. And it’s happening very quickly. Conference realignment previously thought to be crazy will take hold, with nearly all surviving conferences going national. The NIL era is approaching its initial level of stasis as people figure things out. Already this year, they are shortening the games to protect time for commercials (not to protect the players).


Yet the most important change has simply been accepted with a general shrug. The system is moving to a 12-team playoff, which will do more to upend what makes college football special than anything else.


We needed a playoff because we invented a BCS. Before the BCS it was frustrating, but ultimately OK that teams occasionally had to share national championships. We called them “mythical” for a reason. The BCS was meant to solve all of that. Get the top two teams together and it’s solved. Except there were various years when either the wrong teams were chosen, or a worthy third team got left out of having their chance. Moving to a four-team playoff from that point had to happen. Coach Carr and Ken Simmons, traditionalists though they were, both said so.


Why do we need to go to a 12 team playoff? Aside from the 2014 season, when Baylor and TCU had an obliquely plausible argument, there has been no deserving team left out of the playoff. So there is no problem to solve. Like nearly every change happening today, it’s driven by TV money. It is impossible for a 12-team playoff to pick a more worthy champion than the system today provides. This has been proven.


Many fans are excited because they know they’re going to get some great games. I can’t blame them. We haven’t had many great games recently. Look at the entire list of AP Top 25 non-conference matchups for this year:

o   Ole Miss (22) vs Tulane (24) Sept 4

o   LSU (5) vs FSU (8) Sept 4

o   Alabama (4) vs Texas (11) Sept 10

o   OSU (3) vs Notre Dame (13) Sept 24

o   USC (6) vs Notre Dame (13) Oct 14

Gah!

My team’s 2nd best home game this season is against Purdue. The 3rd best is against Rutgers. It gets worse from there… Gah-gah!

 


Nobody seems to recognize what we’re giving up. In college football death is on the line every single week. Think about Ohio State’s loss to Purdue in 2019. That one where they couldn’t tackle Rondale Moore? It kept them out of the playoff even though they won every other game. Remember the Kick Six? Remember when JT was short*? Remember when Stanford lost to Oregon by 2 in 2015? Or when Iowa lost the Big Ten Title game to Michigan State? When Clemson lost last year to the Gamecocks by one point? All of those results had seismic ramifications. With a 12-team playoff, they no longer matter at all.

*my opinion which is worth very little.

 

We got a taste of this last year when Ohio State suffered one of the worst defeats imaginable in The Game* yet nearly won the National Championship anyway? Everyone agrees that would have been weird to say the least. This is no big deal in any of the big four American professional sports. They’ve all shifted to a system whereby the regular season is a mere prelude to what really matters.

*my opinion which also matters not.

 

One of the last non-goofy posts on this blog is when I urged all fans to protect the sanctity of The Game when Dave Brandon seemingly wanted to move it to October. I titled that post FREEDOM IS SLAVERY for cryin’ out loud. Now? Who cares? Kick Six? Nice play, see you in the semis. Lose The Game? Doesn’t matter, we have bonus lives. There is no more living and dying with each play, at least not until we get to… what is it? December? January?


In that meeting with Coach Carr, it was 20 months after The Game of the Century in Columbus. You could tell that the loss was still stinging him. And it stung me. For many years. Still kinda stings. Always gonna sting. Next year? Just another game. On to the next one. See you in the semis…

 


It’s All Over Now Baby Blue


So we come to the 2023 season. It’s the last season of College Football. I’m not alone in this opinion. Every week I have lived and died with my team since I first entered the stadium as a freshman in 1993. And every week someone I met on the road 16 years ago is rejoicing or crying in their beer. But next year the joy will be restrained. The tears will not flow. Because the games don’t matter.


Michigan is poised for an incredible year. All the stars seem to be aligning. If this is the last year of College Football, as a fan I’m hoping I get to have an amazing ride into the sunset. They are an adorable team, top to bottom, and they’ll matter for me as long as I live, regardless of the result.


Will I still watch in 2024? Of course. Maybe on DVR to avoid the commercials. But will I invest my hopes, dreams, fears, and angst? Will I still care? That will inherently have to wait until the postseason. And if my team is 13th, well, I don’t know if I’ll bother tuning in for the top 12. Because officially, none of the rest of this matters.


The powers that be don’t care about me or people like me. They want to increase the reach and get more eyeballs on screens for the big matchups. It's the incremental eyeballs that drive the incremental revenue. The cost of those choices is grave damage to what made this sport special.


That crazy trip I took was a huge success for me. I made new friends. It led to me meeting my wife, and one of my best friends meeting her husband. Now our kids play together in the rare moments we can meet up on vacation. I got to meet famous writers, ADs, Roy Kramer (who used his phone to show me the score of the Michigan game – early technology adopter, that Roy), and many of you wonderful people. Damn right this really means a lot to me.


So let’s enjoy this last ride before the shine is gone for good.



Photo from 2008. Geez! I've aged a lot more than Lloyd in the interim.

Go Blue!


Friday, August 17

Road Games College Pick 'Em (aka Big Ten Den)

We're just a few weeks away from kickoff, and that means a reprise of the annual tradition of Pick 'Em. Pick the winning teams across 20 games or so each week and garner glory and admiration.

How to play? Simple!

1. Go here. Sign up.

2. Click the "Join a Group" button

3. Enter:
Group ID#: 1441
Password: goblue

4. Liberally talk trash on the message board.

5. Pick your winners each week, ranking by confidence. 1=least confident, N=most confident. Straight up, no spreads.

6. Celebrate when you win it all. Like these folks:




Friday, September 9

Several New Posts up at the Sports Trough

Hey Gang,

I've been getting back on the horse lately. Just not on this site, Join me at the all-new Sports Trough, covering a lot more than college football, though I rarely participate in coverage of other sports, the guys do a great job on NFL, baseball, and whatever else is in the news.

My stuff this week:
Why Texas A&M's SECession is your fault
Week #2 Predictions with Michael
Why you should root for Michigan tomorrow and GO BLUE

And finally, they dragged me into some NFL stuff and made me join their Eliminator Pool. But I took advantage of the assignment to poke some fun at them.

Speaking of eliminations, I still find this goofy show hysterical. Posted because it's Friday night and there's only one game on...

Thursday, September 1

Tuesday, August 16

Road Games College Pick 'Em (The Big Ten Den)

We're just a few weeks away from kickoff, and that means a reprise of the annual tradition of Pick 'Em. Pick the winning teams across 20 games or so each week and garner glory and admiration.

How to play? Simple!

1. Go here. Sign up.

2. Click the "Join a Group" button

3. Enter:
Group ID#: 4318
Password: goblue

4. Liberally talk trash on the message board.

5. Pick your winners each week, ranking by confidence. 1=least confident, N=most confident. Straight up, no spreads.

6. Celebrate when you win it all. Like these folks:







Sunday, August 14

Dissent on a Descent

AKA: A Tale of Two Disasters.

New column about Argentine soccer posted at the Sports Trough. Included in the post, for your viewing pleasure, the most complete fan meltdown of all time. Enjoy!

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