Sunday, August 4

Those Who Leave Get Something, Too

This will be the last time I write about college football, so forgive me if it goes on too long. Maybe pour yourself a glass of something to accompany the story of Michigan winning it all from this one guy's perspective as I hang up my spurs...

Previously, so I don't have to mention what I already mentioned, The Last Battle and A Game for the Generations.

I caught a wonderful bug back in the mid 00s. 

The conflagration of an unhealthy obsession with Michigan football and inspiration from a few very talented people transformed my entire timeline into something different, and dare I say better. You're right. This is getting silly. Let me back up.

---

I wasn't born a Michigan fan. Growing up in Chicago, I rooted in general for Big Ten teams, some more than others, though never, ever Ohio State. Some things can be clear even to a little boy with limited skin in the game. But I must have liked Michigan just a bit more than the rest. Because in 5th grade when we had to invent CVs and simulate the job application process, I put that I had graduated from Michigan with a degree in "computers."

That CV proved prophetic, as I would go on to be one of the last people called up to the Michigan academic roster from the waitlist just days away from high school graduation, leading to my immediate decommitment from Illinois. Feeling fortunate, freshman orientation got me incredibly excited for the future. I had a brief moment of pause when they told us the final day's process: you file this paperwork, you go to this office, wait in line for that piece of paper, set up your uniqueid for Wolverine Access, and then you buy your football tickets and you're done. It was odd to me that the buying of tickets was a foregone conclusion. Did we have to do this? I did it, like everyone else, and of course in hindsight this was a privilege, not a burden. But I still wasn't a Michigan fan yet.

The team had finished the previous year undefeated, though bizarrely with three ties. Tyrone Wheatley was a superstar set for his junior season which began with a 31-0 trouncing of WSU. This led to a showdown with Notre Dame, a team I had grown up despising. The moment the Irish scored a touchdown to go up 24-10, it was a knife to my gut. I was suddenly all in. One month later, a trip to East Lansing for a dispiriting defeat poured salt in the wound which cauterized in the form of an undying need for Michigan to be victorious in all things.  My undergrad years passed like that. Teams with all the potential in the world, but with enough stumbles to end up with four losses every year. Individual four-loss seasons had only occurred four total times over the previous 25 years. It was patently clear to all of us that we were unfairly cursed and no undergrad class would ever again suffer like we did.

Off in the real world the next year, and working in Schaumburg, Illinois, I was happy to have several Michigan colleagues in my department. We all agreed that Brian Griese being named starter was an indication that we were in for another rough ride. This notion was proven false early in the 3rd quarter against Colorado, and further refuted every week thereafter. I was fortunate to be only one year out of school, with plenty of friendly sofas to crash on and made it back to nearly every game. The glorious season culminated in a stressful New Years Day morning in Pasadena, frantically trying to find the ticket I'd hunted every day since The Game. I did get one. It turned out to be a fake. But I deftly slid my way into the stadium with it anyway, landing in "my seat" with about 27 other Michigan fans trying to cram into a single specific spot in the Wazzu section. I bounced around for the entire first quarter until I finally found a vacant one, and witnessed what would end up being Michigan's last major triumph for what would prove to be a lot longer than anyone could have imagined.

---

I remember how I first arrived at MGoBlog. SI.com had been the sports website uniquely active in linking non-mainstream content, and they noted one of Brian Cook's early posts. I believe something to do with Lloyd Carr's jowls. This find came at the right time for me, as I was hungry for ever more content, and slowly becoming less and less enthused by my day job. It turned out there were even more sources of information and mirth beyond my favorite mainstream writers. My shifting priorities increased with the 2006 season. The blogosphere was growing, and Brian had hit his stride, which raised my connection to the team even further in a season that ratcheted up the intensity with each passing week. 

It all pointed to the ultimate showdown in Columbus, which left so many indelible moments. They still come like flashes... "Bo died," was the group text my friend Aaron sent us the night before. Then, the Game of the Century aka Football Armageddon. The wrong cleats. Mike Hart bringing us back. A late hit out of bounds to extend Ohio State's drive... Some tears. Many nights of lost sleep for many years afterwards. 

I harvested one golden egg from that time. Anyone could start a blog, and around this time Michigan had a ton of 'em. In fact, nearly all the other teams had them, too. And they all shared this rebel spirit. There were enough of them around the country that Brian could run a weekly blogpoll that mirrored the AP version. I soon decided I had to give it a shot.

I started writing concert reviews, and then goofy takes on Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, and then whatever the hell I wanted. It was much more fun than my day job. And some people liked what I was writing. All the while my obsession with football intensified further. If MGoBlog could do all this, maybe I could, too. So I quit my job and drove around the country, met people, went to football games, and wrote about it. That blogging community was thriving, and they were waiting for me with open arms at every stop. It was going to cost me one season of Michigan games, but what was the worst that could happen?

---

Since that season was 2007, it turns out the answer was quite a lot. So it was that on the first Saturday of the season I found myself in South Bend, interviewing friendly and engaging fans who loved Notre Dame in almost the exact same way I loved my team. Many of them took a moment to inform me that Michigan was having trouble with Appalachian State. I wasn't worried. Michigan teams had played with their food in these early non-conference games before. We would be fine. 

We were not fine. I had to hear the unfathomable final score from the Notre Dame stadium announcer. This resulted in the loudest cheer of the day as the Irish would proceed to lose 33-3 to Georgia Tech. Small solace, that. I felt like it was all somehow my fault. I had abandoned my team in its time of need, and this was my penance. A week later in Baton Rouge, LSU fans' friendly taunting as we got depantsed by Oregon didn't help matters. 

It wasn't such a horrible season in the end, and I still had some Michigan moments from afar and up close, most notably watching Mario Manningham break Sparty's heart from a Columbus hotel bar. A close second was seeing all of my friends back in Ann Arbor for The Game, despite the morose outcome on the field, what with our injured backfield. What we didn't yet realize at the time, was that we were not Michigan anymore. And we wouldn't be for a very long time.

That trip changed me in ways I did not expect. I shook off my shy introversion and had more belief in myself. If I could do all that, meet all those people, get halfway decent at writing that quickly, what could be next? 

---

I moved to Buenos Aires at the start of the next season, on a two-year work plan. Seeing games there was not easy. There was one bar, El Alamo,  that showed college football. They had one slingbox connected to a cable box in the US. But you had to cajole the bartender into putting your game on, at the expense of everyone else who wanted to watch a different game. For non-marquee opponents, there was no point in even going. Having to follow games via the online play-by-play tracker is no way to live. This is how I "saw" Michigan football lose at home to Toledo, when instead of displaying a made game-tying field goal, that tiny football icon indicating possession flipped from the good guys to the other guys, with no change to the score. We were definitely not fine. After that loss, I posed the question: "Has any college football fan base been through more torture over the past four seasons?" 

People often asked me what I missed from home, and aside from friends and family, Michigan football was top of the list. Nobody around me cared, or even really understood the game. And when I was unable to watch, gaining the fan understanding through the Michigan blogosphere, MGoBlog in particular, made it all very bearable.

I stayed in Argentina longer to get married, having met my beautiful wife thanks in no small part to the crazy roadtrip that never would have happened without this blogging endeavor, and then moved to Switzerland where I still am today. 

Michigan continued to flounder. The memories of the RichRod and Hoke eras that remain, aside from Denard Robinson's considerable sparkle, are dreary at best. Enduring a Michigan and PSU 3OT blunt instrument duel that ended at way-too-damn-late European time should have been enough to finally beat the fandom out of me. But I hung in there.

From 1993 to 1996 we thought we were cursed, even though we beat Ohio State three out of four years. And after losing to Toledo in 2008, we didn't think it could possibly get any worse. Wrong; wrong! At long last we trudged onward into the Harbaugh era but the suffering continued, even as things improved. Each year ended in devastation. 

Still living abroad, I rarely had anyone to talk about this stuff with. Technology improved and watching some games became easier. Watching The Game became tougher as Fox strangled most forms of international leakage. It became an annual tradition to watch over skype thanks to my friend Mike pointing his laptop at his TV. These sessions always ended in sadness and hatred at the throngs of jolly Buckeye fans plastered across the screen, regardless of whether the game was in their stadium or ours.

---

The Game in 2021 seemed to be just another setup for disaster. There was no sensible reason to believe we could win. Long-term negativity had taken hold of me and almost everyone I knew. We felt like we were in a "bad relationship" with Michigan football, even as that season went along. Mike told me he thought we were going to win. Mike who was standing right next me as we planned our Rose Bowl trip during the Colorado game in '94, mere minutes before, yes, that. For some reason I didn't trust him. On an early Hassan Haskins run up the gut for 12 yards, I said to Mike "this is some Biakabatuka stuff right here..." Hope surged. So did the O-Line. Buckeye souls were broken. Goliath was slain. So much joy in Mudville.

In 2022, at the exact same time as The Game, Argentina was playing a do-or-die group game against Mexico in Qatar. My passionate wife watched that on the TV in the other room. My kids bounced back and forth between broadcasts, and my daughter jotted down a lot of new vocabulary in multiple languages as our usual parental filters were on the fritz. Michigan of course was not favored, but dominated anyway. To win that game, even without Blake Corum available, indicated that we truly had the better program. Onwards and upwards. Argentina would go on to win the World Cup in glorious fashion, and I started to believe it would all come together for both my teams. Which made the TCU game all the more heartbreaking. Even after our most joyous season in 25 years, it ended with a very bitter taste in our mouths.

---

But the hope didn't fade. I told my supportive wife at the outset of the 2023 season, "We are going to be really good this year. Really good." This was in part marking my territory for the coming Saturdays, but also indicative of a new mentality for Michigan fans. She came on board only in 2008, when we met. Her understanding of our program was that we were destined for misery and always ever choking away winnable games. I was trying to convey that this year could be different. 

There were the silly suspensions at the outset that had nobody the least bit worried. No big deal. The first significant play of the season featured Mikey Sainristil intercepting a pass from a purple team, and we were off and running. They stomped everyone they faced. Nearly every game was over by halftime, and hardly any opponent scored more than once. The most hilarious play of the season happened against Rutgers when Mikey Sainristil picked off a 4th down pass, tackled teammate Junior Colson, and took it to the house, 30 seconds before my son's bedtime. Sweet dreams for all.

The season already had a now-or-never vibe. If we could not get over the hump with this group, with this schedule, with The Game at home, with Harbaugh's regime now firing on all cylinders, maybe it was never gonna happen. The narrative went crazy when the Sign Stealing Scandal* took root. It became clear relatively early on that this was a crazy rogue actor who was not giving Michigan much of any added advantage whatsoever. Still, I became frequently distracted and even found myself arguing with goobers on random internet message boards. Yes, I am 49 years old...

*the fact that it was called Michigan's "sign stealing scandal" is already a self-indictment of said scandal since sign stealing was not only legal but encouraged by the NCAA! But anyway it doesn't matter now, ya goober!

So it was that Michigan was living in Jake Taylor's locker room speech the rest of the season. With their head coach absurdly suspended en route to their biggest road game of the season, the pressure on the players and coaches was not something we can comprehend. They responded with "Bet." Us olds learned some new slang. 

Michigan had a lot of things nobody else had, but above all they had Blake Corum, human cheat code. Time and time again, he had cut the heart out of opponents with devastating daggers at the most impactful of times. In 2021, he scored a late 29 yard TD in Lincoln that he followed up miming corn on the cob. Still gimpy against Ohio State, he busted a 55-yarder that set up Michigan's 3rd TD. In 2022, two long TD runs against Maryland, one of which was on 4th down. 20 yards for a TD against Iowa in the 4th quarter, dusting their all-american linebacker. 2 TDs vs Sparty including a short one in the 4th quarter to slam the door. But in 2023, heroics had thus far not been needed. Now, without their head coach, and against tougher competition, they would be. With MIchigan up only one score well into the 4th quarter at Penn State in a battle of attrition, he delivered el último clavo del ataúd and expertly trolled Manny Diaz in the endzone. And of course, there is the biggest play in Michigan football history, complete with the immediate salute to Zak Zinter.

Damn right this was an emotional time. Tell me you didn't well up at Sherrone Moore's on-field interview in Happy Valley, and I'll question if you have a heart. Tell me you never had the tears flow upon seeing the players' in-the-moment reaction to Zak Zinter's injury, followed immediately by Corum's heroics, and I will call you a liar. After all the ridiculous drama inflicted upon them, these young men took the weight of the world on their shoulders and delivered. Bet, indeed.

But you know we weren't done. There was so much more to come. I watched the Rose Bowl with Mike over skype again. My unbridled roar as Jalen Milroe was taken down (roughly 3am local time) woke up my understanding wife at the other end of the house; she didn't dare come and ask if it was a good shout or a bad one. Of course it was the best one. I found a local German-language broadcast so I could actually watch the final in true HD. The first game I'd been able to see like that in forever. I was alone in my living room. The last significant play of the season occurred when Mikey Sainristil intercepted a purple team on 4th down and took it back 81 yards, nearly to the house. Everyone went crazy. I was no exception, leaping up and uncontrollably whirling my arm around like a 3rd base coach, wild grin plastered across my face. Just like every Michigan fan in the world.

What a ride. What a rush. What an incomparable season. My God did we deserve this. All the hits along the way, all the suffering year after year. The good times always ending in bad times. I can't claim any kind of badge of honor. I haven't been flying across the ocean to attend games, suffering the red-hat commercial breaks, the bad weather, Neil Diamond, the drudgery of it all. The constant complaining, the obnoxious rival fans, the overblown coverage. One of the perks of living abroad is you never have to hear someone bring up something they saw on Sportscenter last night. But even from afar, I can say we've done hard time in the decades leading up to this moment. 

After the confetti settled a little before sunrise here, and I had connected with as many friends as I could, I couldn't help but reflect on my own journey and those that helped make it happen. I dropped everything to make following this sport my life, and that was meant to continue in perpetuity. Other plans came up and changed those plans, but most of the good things that happened to me have their origin with that crazy decision. I've stated that 2023 was to be the last year of college football, and every bit of news since then only makes it feel truer. I'll still follow Michigan. But the shine will be off. I'll step it down a notch now. Life is too complicated to let this be an obsession any longer.

Michigan fans get to relive this season for the rest of our lives. It will always feel like a great dam breaking to wash away all of the frustration. For instance, "trouble with the snap" carries zero significance now, right? Who cares! That poor guy in the yellow hoodie is just ecstatic now. So am I. So are all of us! 

I'll end this Michigan reflection with one last thought about the Blake Corum's checkmate touchdown in the championship game. Check out Harbaugh's reaction to that play. He lets a great exhale out through puffed cheeks and quickly switches to a double-fist-pump. If we permit ourselves to overanalyze a split-second caught on camera, it feels like a quick letting-go of all the pressure and an explosion of pure elation. This is how I'll always remember the season ending. All of the glory and joy for a team that had gone through hell to get there and truly deserved it. Nobody's going to take that away, ever. 
---

I had always thought that my unfinished book, notes now gathering dust for 17 years, would be possible to complete in the future. I had such an amazing experience researching it. I could always go back and do it again. Why not hit the road, reconnect with those same fans and see how people have changed? See what they think about the sport today?

After that trip I left the country and have been living the ex-pat life ever since. I can tell you that there is nothing like college football anywhere else in the world. It is perhaps the most American thing there is. I started that trip longing to know my country better. To see what can unite us across differing factions. That there are some deeper truths to our culture that can ultimately bring us together more.

It took me many years to figure out what it all meant. Why the hell I even did it in the first place, which was inherently tied up in why the hell I and so many others care so much about this sport. Why do people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on custom-detailed RVs? Why do we distract ourselves throughout the week and devote entire Saturdays to it for four straight months? Especially when most seasons end in heartbreak and anguish? 

There are many answers to these questions, but I think a huge part of it comes back to the fact that, for most people, college is the best time of your life. You leave home, find out who you are and who you want to be. You meet friends that are going to be among your closest until the day you die. So on those Saturdays in the fall, we get to feel like we're there again. Sharing a special camaraderie not only with our friends and fellow fans, but with the memories that grew us up. 

The sport has changed dramatically since January. A massive 12-team playoff ruins the intensity of the regular season that made it most special on the field. Massive, incoherent conferences file down what made it most special off the field. The country has changed even more dramatically over the years since I left town. I did see that divides between regions and political views were deeper than I had hoped or imagined in 2007. Just look at us now.

So that's it for me and this avocation. I can't care about my favorite sport like I used to. And my perhaps quixotic ambitions that it was somehow a window into a better way forward for America look laughable now. This is the end of the journey. But I'm grateful to Michigan for giving me the gift of going out on top.

I will forever remember those of you I met along the way. I got the rare chance to "go to college" a second time, and you gave me a whole new round of memories to hold onto. It's meant more to me than you will ever realize.







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

Week #1 College Picks

Over at the Sports Trough, Mike and I go through our picks for week #1 of the college football season. Check it out!

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:







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