Back in the day, when Lloyd Carr was the head coach at Michigan, I would visit Ross-Ade Stadium once a year to take in a Purdue football game. As I remember it, some guy in my Dad's company was a Purdue guy, and every year the company took a bus down to West Lafayette for a game. Even then, at the tender age of 7, living in the suburbs of Chicago amongst a conglomerate of Spartans, Buckeyes, Illini and Notre Dame fans, I knew what I was. I was a Michigan fan, and would be till the End of Time. I knew this, at the age of 7, without even knowing that attending the University of Michigan 11 years later was an inevitable fact.
Over the years, I saw the Boilermakers face off against the likes of Penn State, Notre Dame, and Illinois, and, of course, Michigan too. I remember vaguely rooting for Purdue in 1999 as they launched a last ditch Hail Mary against Penn State. I even remember actively rooting against Notre Dame one year after coming to the realization that the Notre Dame fan with the glabrous head and a propensity for jingling his key* (which I didn't even understand but intuitively despised even then) was, quite frankly, irritating. I wanted his team to lose, but they didn't. I remember, despite going to Purdue football games, that I wore my Michigan gear with the impudent pride that only a child has. When I wear any adorned with the Block M at away games these days, it is an affirmation of my resolve; Michigan is here. Tremble. But then, it was much different. I wore a probably oversized Michigan hat, as if to say hey this is Purdue but don't forget about Michigan because we're the best. Again, I was but a kid.
Finally, I made the trip down to West Lafayette to see Purdue play Michigan; rather, to see Michigan play Purdue. I remember talking smack to people thirty, forty years older than me (I was usually the one person under 40 on those trips). There's no way you can beat us! We have Drew Henson! To this, most replied with light-hearted jokes, most of them probably drenched in apathy, given that most of the people on those trips had no affiliation with Purdue whatsoever outside of the fact that they worked at a company that took annual trips to West Lafayette for nebulous reasons. That apathy, in the end, made it even worse; nobody even had the decency to say anything to me on the ride home. I slept all the way home, my Michigan hat over my face, as the bus sped on in the cold Midwestern darkness. We were up by 18 at the half, and everything seemed so good until Drew Brees happened and then it wasn't.
(HT: Mike Desimone)
The next trip, in 2002, was decidedly unsatisfying, even though we won. John Navarre and Co. stumbled to an unimpressive 23-21 victory over a vastly inferior Purdue squad, a result that didn't match up with the 12 year-old smack I had engaged in on the bus ride to WL. But, at least we won. On the ride home, all I heard was statements like "You won, but you guys didn't look too good" or "What till you play somebody better." The next week, Brad Banks came into Ann Arbor and turned these frustratingly impartial folks into soothsayers.
My last visit to WL took me to see the Wolverines play a much improved Purdue team in 2004, led by Kyle Orton and the speedy Dorien Bryant. Having moving to the Deep South, the trip was different this time; it was just my Dad, my sister, and I, in a car, driving all the way from north Alabama to West Lafayette one Saturday to watch that team of precocious virtuosos play. All I really remember--without belaboring the point--is that it was close throughout. I wasn't sure that we were going to win this time. This time, the lead-up to the game was decidedly more discomfiting. I was older now, and the some of the less tactful Purdue faithful didn't hold anything back when it came to letting me know what they felt about me having the gall to wear a Michigan sweatshirt. I was worried. A long touchdown reception by Dorien Bryant, speeding past the hardly fleet of foot Scott McClintock, put me well on the way to the exit to Hyperventilation Highway.
Even then, I felt like I knew what i was talking about when it came to the ins and outs of Michigan football. Most of my peers could name the starting quarterback, runningback, and various other prominent position players; I could name every player of varying import on the roster, including incoming recruits and players that existed well before my time. Nothing about that has really changed. But, as I watched the plays unfold, the only thing that gave me comfort was the Michigan couple sitting in front of us, who I would engage in the type of useless, petty banter that people engage in at football games between plays when they're in an unfamiliar place.
Big play here.
Defense has got to hold.
Man, he sure can make the easy catches look tough.
Everything in my memory is vague and tenuous; that is, until this happened:
In one fell swoop worthy of the stage, it was over. Fade to black. Exeunt. Nothing more needs to be said.
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As I prepare to head down to West Lafayette for this year's game, I wonder what game I'll get to see this time. The circumstances most closely resemble (although not perfectly) the 2002 game; a powerful Michigan team (yes, I know...the defense) facing an overmatched Purdue team with nothing to lose.
Either way, whatever happens, I'll run across some ghosts, some subtle tracks from my past visits from unfathomably different epochs, under different circumstances: different coach, different team, different people coming with me to see it all happen. I want to beat them more than I've ever wanted to beat Purdue before. Seven is better than six. Momentum into the Wisconsin-Ohio State part of the schedule. Danny Hope being Danny Hope. But, I have no control over anything; in fact, I have even less control than I might have if the game were in Ann Arbor. I'll be a visitor in a hostile land, subject to the whims of West Lafayette and its inhabitants.
Even so, it's the memories that count, the people you meet and the people you remember along the way, as I've said before and will continue to say. In my mind, college football is so vastly superior to the NFL. As chaotic and sometimes irrational as the world of amateur athletics can be, it is unmatched in its ability to bring us into its sphere of influence, whether we want it or not, like the tantalizing Siren's song. Will we win? I believe so. We are better. But it doesn't always work that way. I guess we'll just have to find out on Saturday.
If you're going to West Lafayette this weekend (or even if you're not), I encourage you to stop for a moment, at some point, to take it all in and listen. Before, during, or after the game (Joe Pa!), it doesn't really matter. Burden yourself with the task of remembering one thing, anything, that doesn't involve a box score, a thing that will fade away anyway as the years quietly go by, regardless of the outcome. You won't regret it.
(HT: Mike Desimone)
* I. HATE. KEY. JINGLING!
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