Don't Know What You've Got

Source: Dave Hogg

For Michigan fans, the Minnesota series has been one of spoiled comfort marked by occasional hardship, hardship in the sense that a loss stands out like a flamingo among a waddle of penguins. In the grand scheme of things, Michigan's three losses against the Gophers since 1967 are kind of like getting comfortable on the couch to watch something on Netflix, only to realize your computer is about to die; you'll have to get up and plug it in. Sometimes you don't make it, as Jason Giannini has kicked your power cord out the window.

In my 24 years, the Wolverines have lost the Little Brown Jug just once, in 2005. Despite coming off of a big victory in East Lansing against the then No. 11 Spartans, the Wolverines were just 3-2 heading into the Minnesota game. Even so, the Wolverines still had a shot at winning a Big Ten title, despite stubbing their toe in Madison two weeks prior.

The year before, Henne and Hart's freshman season, the Minnesota game once again went down to the wire. Chad Henne struggled, tossing two interceptions in the third quarter. If I remember correctly, backup QB Clayton Richard even came into the game for a series, although the box score says he didn't throw a pass, and my vague memories of that day nine years ago shakily confirms that fact.

The Gophers collapsed down the stretch that season, but headed into the Big House with a shiny 5-0 record (Michigan was 4-1, its lone loss coming in South Bend before Mike Hart was Mike Hart).

Eventually, Henne led one of many comeback drives to come in his Michigan career. With 3:04 to go, Henne marched the Wolverines 67 yards to a score, capped by a 31-yard strike to pre-pitch-the-ball Tyler Ecker. As a sophomore in high school making my first trip to the Big House as a person old enough to remember and acknowledge the significance such a thing (I hadn't been since I was a little kid), the victory was the greatest sporting event I had seen live at that point. Then again, I was a Chicago sports fan growing up in a post-MJ world.

I didn't really understand what the Michigan fans of 1986 and and 1977 felt when the Wolverines lost the Jug, but I would find out the next season.

So, back to 2005. Steve Breaston returned a kickoff 95 yards for a score early in the second half to put Michigan up 20-13. However, a 13-play, 61-yard Minnesota drive tied things up with six minutes to play in the third quarter.

In the 4th, Garrett Rivas missed a 34-yarder that would've given Michigan the lead with about eight minutes to go. The miss would prove costly, not that you need reminding.

With Minnesota seemingly content to just run the ball and kill the remaining couple of minutes of clock, Gary Russell busted a 61-yarder as the Michigan defense seemed to collapse like a slowly deflating bouncy castle. I often wonder what was going through Russell's mind when he saw all that space before him. Is this real? Is this happening? What is the meaning of life? If a Michigan safety falls down in the forest and no one is around, does he make a sound? 

Only five seconds remained. Unlike Rivas, Minnesota PK Jason Giannini booted his 30-yarder through the uprights. On the ensuing kickoff, Steve Breaston was not able to duplicate his third quarter magic. The Wolverines lost ownership of the Jug for the first time since Jim Harbaugh wore the winged helmet.

In an altogether disappointing season--one that still ended with a shot at the Big Ten title when Ohio State came to town, mind you--that loss still sticks in my mind more than a relatively inconsequential loss should. The Notre Dame game was simply bad football against what turned out to be a solid Fighting Irish squad. The Wisconsin game can easily be chalked up to playing at a venue like Camp Randall during Barry Alvarez' swan song in Madison. The Ohio State game was crushing for the simple fact that it was Ohio State, and Michigan had the game in its hands late.

With all of that said, there's something about losing the Jug in the way that they lost it, my sarcastic hardship analogy notwithstanding. It was nonsensical, avoidable, and truly unbelievable, and not in the colloquial sense of something happening that could be believed if you think about it for just a little bit.

As painful as it is to lose the Jug, every event has its equal and opposite reaction; in no place is this more tidily accurate than in sports.

Think of how the Gophers felt in 2005, or in 1986 when they upset the undefeated, No. 2 Wolverines in the Big House. If you cannot muster the energy to care for the Jug from Michigan's vantage, think of what it means for the other side.

Back in 2004, when I didn't quite understand the meaning of the Jug, and how this could be considered a "rivalry" game at all, what I did understand was that Ecker's touchdown score was a great thing, something I'd seen and experienced live. I remember him catching the Henne bullet, shrugging two tacklers and rumbling down the left sideline--right from my perspective in the end zone--and into the end zone. The crowd roared for perhaps the first time all game. For a 14-year-old, waking up at 6 a.m. is never part of the plan; at certain points in the first half, I felt as if I might fall asleep.

I also wondered why no one was standing, but that is a gripe for another day.

As with all things, once you have it, you must keep it, lest you find out what it is to go without. Despite having won 16 in a row coming into the 2005 game, one less sent the Jug back to the Twin Cities.

The Jug is truly a supernatural thing, for with it comes the power to roll up 16 seasons into one, to negate a long steady march in one fell swoop.

Although Michigan's contests against the Gophers since 2003-05 haven't been particularly competitive, that doesn't mean that the game hasn't accrued value over time. Michigan enters this game a 19-point favorite, and Wolverine fans hope that is a reasonable assessment.

But, the Jug knows nothing of point spreads or favorites and underdogs or AP polls or relative numbers of All-Americans.

All the Jug knows, in the darkness within its painted exterior, is that it must be awarded, to one or the other. It isn't the Lombardi Trophy or the Stanley Cup, nor does it pretend to be. On Saturday, both of those crowning achievements of their respective sports will mean very little to me, because I want the Jug to stay in Ann Arbor, almost as much as I don't want it go.

In case you need one more external reason to care, remember Glen Mason in 2003:

"I'd just like to see the thing before I die." 

Shameless Self-Promotion Time (2007 and Now)

(HT: Mike DeSimone)

Due to a somewhat nebulous snafu, I scheduled a post for this morning over at Maize n Brew that only emerged from the concealed and winding tubes of the Internet in the last hour or so. Anyway:

• I talked about the 2012 season to date and the so called Big Picture vis-a-vis the 2007 season. It's by no means a perfect comparison, I admit, but there are some similarities worth pondering in these final coming days before the return of football, in all its glory and terror. I made sure to cater to your sensibilities by not directly referring to 2007's particular brand of catastrophe, but it is mentioned in an oblique way, so be prepared (I hope you read that with Scar's voice from The Lion King in your head). There's also some quality nostalgia-ing in there, which I'm known to do from time to time. Anyway, read it, because it's Tuesday and you just have to have exhausted all potential forms of Al Borges critique by now...right? 

On Losing, Coping, and the Meaning of This

On two consecutive weekends, Michigan saw an otherwise successful season come to an end with an almost existential abruptness. Seniors--Zack Novak, Stu Douglass, Shawn Hunwick--saw their time as Michigan athletes end on a sour note, an otherwise cheerful classical symphony ending in an out-of-place minor key.

The basketball team spent the time between November and March actualizing the entirety of its potential, doing everything that it could with what relatively little it had to spare. The ride was a nearly ceaseless crescendo, a buildup to something great. It fell apart in the end; the idealism of deserved Fate--of positive outcomes reserved for those who have traversed the darkest corners of the realm of athletic pursuit--was dealt a heavy blow. Is this how it was supposed to end? The curtain falls and you sit in your seat in the dark amphitheater waiting for more, and more never comes. That is all there is. You get up and leave.

The hockey team rolled into the sequestered vacuum that is the NCAA hockey tournament with a shiny #1 seed and a roster that had seemingly experienced the athletic equivalent of a renaissance. Whether by virtue of Jon Merrill's return or survivalist instinct, the latter mirroring the same sort of late-season push we saw last year and the year before, it was breathtakingly automatic, the quintessential example of the sports cliche "flipping the switch." The streak was not only intact, it was as if it had never been in danger. As others more qualified than I can probably corroborate, this wasn't a vintage Michigan team featuring electron virtuosos like T.J. Hensick or top-notch two-way stalwarts like Kevin Porter. And yet, the results speak for themselves.

After Lynch's late equalizer and the remaining time expiring without another goal, it was not difficult to harken back to last year's championship game, in which regulation time ended 2-2 after a late Michigan goal. UMD's first goal bounced just over Hunwick's outstretched pads, the second on a UMD power play, in which a shot in close rebounded almost miraculously onto the UMD attacker's tape for a second point blank opportunity. A Rohrkemper goal tied it late, like Lynch's late goal on Friday; overtime hockey once again. The land of dread. The land of affirmation. Overtime hockey is elaborate, fevered theater. It is a Shakespearean sword fight, each combatant slowing bleeding out his life slash by slash, until one or the other has no more blood to give and thus clutches, spins, and falls.

UMD's final goal came after Michigan had spent most of the early minutes of overtime in its own zone, frantically attempting to catch its breath, to stave off the final blow. A crashing UMD forward, essentially untouched, came through and potted the winning goal. It was over.

Again, Michigan entered the perilous domain of overtime hockey, looking to make its second wind count. Survival was the only instinct playing out at this juncture. At that point, everything else fades away, ancillary to the order of the moment. Overtime hockey is so Darwinian thought set upon the framework of sport.

A rebound and a weak backcheck later and the puck was in the back of the net only a few minutes into the overtime period. Again, it was over, as if someone was repeating a bad joke after it failed to elicit laughter after the first telling. There was nothing Hunwick could do, and the fact that he was mostly helpless makes a bitter end even more difficult to take. After a career filled with save after incomprehensible save, saves that defied the laws of physics and conventional wisdom, it would all naturally end with a sequence beyond his control, one of those moments in which agency is nowhere to be found. The puck didn't care what came before; it went in the wide open net, invited by its stark dimensional reality. The puck was oblivious to history. It always is.

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After these things, there must come some sort of response. Experience gives one the ability to skip certain steps in post-loss processing, insofar as watching sports can inspire feelings of personal "loss." You've got your denial, and it saves you and everybody around you a lot of time and broken household items if you just skip to acceptance.

Single-elimination hockey is Fate neutered, in which the thing that actually happens seems off, askew even, like a picture on the wall that has fallen to either side. A degree off-center. Bizarro. More so than anything else, the NCAA single-elimination format takes Fate, capitalized, and sends it through a grinder and a furnace, in the process revealing that Fate is not really a crystallized absolute but a collection of individual possibilities, flecks of charred, hardened reality. All it is is survival; the fleck that makes it through is the one that is. That's it. It's a little unappealing, isn't it?

But, I think, that's how it is. Whether we're talking about the Big Dance or NCAA hockey, Destiny and Fate--capitalized--are not self-aware. They don't know what the basketball team has been through throughout the span of Zack and Stu's careers, or the fact that the Michigan hockey team was fighting to continue one streak while also trying to vanquish another (i.e., no national titles since 1998). This sort of literal, rationalist thought sort of guts the entire enterprise of collegiate athletics of some of its most idealistic aspects--that things are or aren't meant to be, that people deserve certain things, that outcomes affirm or erase the journey--but I think that's mostly okay. Is that a loser's attitude? I honestly don't know. It may just be white noise in the end.

When I think back on the career of a player like, say, Mike Hart, what comes to me immediately is not the fact that he never beat the Buckeyes or won a national championship. If that's what comes to you then I think our respective worldviews are doomed to never meet at any point.

The way that these two seasons ended was bitter, unfortunate, and for a brief period of time after these games ended, seemingly unfair. The basketball team had its chances; hit even a couple of the many missed layups/bunnies and trade one of those late Burke threes for a possession of actual offense and Michigan probably wins despite being outplayed. The hockey team had its chances. The Wolverines outshot Cornell and had over double the PP opportunities, including 5 in the excruciating second period. Any grievances about the ostensible "randomness" of the whole thing seem to be directed at the game of hockey itself rather than the format of the tournament. The simple fact that Michigan has come away with only two titles throughout this over two decade long stretch of tournament appearances is irrelevant.  These things happen for a reason, and as much as we like to write these losses off as either instances of grand cosmic misfortune or the absurdity that is the single-elimination format, it's all about cold, hard probabilities and inglorious toil. Even with probability and work ethic on one's side, it may not work out, and not for lack of luck. Hockey is often beyond explanation in this way, and by explanation I mean an explanation that is all-inclusive/comprehensive or one that we want to hear, that assuages the pangs of frustration that follow such a loss. Sometimes it bounces this way or that way. Why? It just does, and it does often, so that patterns seem to appear to us even though they do not exist.

Hockey is "close but no cigar" taken to its logical extreme. It is a sport that, in a way, mirrors life: work really hard and you might get you want. Tight defense, shots, PP opportunities...these don't guarantee success. Despite the attempts to distill the essence of sports into verifiable statistics and formulas, it is often just a game of hamfisted probability. Ascribing vague notions of luck or fate to the outcomes of sport or life seems a bit pointless, but the process of coping is, in a way, inherently pointless.

Then again, maybe this is my own way of coping. Maybe looking at the outcome of the Cornell and Ohio games in the way that I am is just my way of distancing myself from the proceedings. I know that I didn't always look at things this way, as if these losses suggest anything more than the fact that, on these days, my team lost because of X, Y, and Z. In light of the Sugar Bowl and all the breathless talk of redemption that accompanied it--from many, including myself--this all might seem a little hypocritical. Maybe. Then again, as sports fans, we often say what benefits us at the time, even when we may claim otherwise in other situations.

What is clear to me is that Shawn Hunwick and all of the other seniors wanted this more than you or I. The same of course applies to Zack and Stu. The level to which they wanted this eclipses yours, rendering your frustration inconsequential by comparison. After the layers of personal frustration and other somewhat selfish (but understandable) reactions are cast away to the ether, all that remains is memory. I've said this many times before and I'll say it again: championships may come or they may not, but the memories that these players give us while representing Michigan are what matter most because they are what endure. While I would have hoped for a better end for Hunwick, Novak, and Douglass, or a victory in The Game for Henne, Hart, and Long, it becomes increasingly immaterial as the years go on.

One day, a young child will be taken to Yost for the first time. A mother or father will be able to tell this child, their child, this tabula rasa of a being, the story of Shawn Hunwick. This story could quite possibly plant the very first inkling of the beauty of sport in this child's head. True to hockey form, it also might not, but there will be another day when another child is told the same story. This will happen again and again until one day, the child finally understands. I truly do not know if being able to tell the tale of a championship once won is worth more or less than that. Let the details come later.

Who Are You and Why Do We Care?: Iowa Hawkeyes

First of all, apologies for no post last week. Who knew that being a high school math teacher in the inner-city would include twelve hour days followed by three hour meetings?

Is there a rivalry here?
Michigan has been playing Iowa since 1900, but in 56 meetings, Michigan has a 40-12-4 record. Although the match up has been back and forth over the past decade, historically there is not a rivalry.

So who is their biggest rival?
Iowa is one of the few Big 10 teams whose biggest rival is not in the Big 10. Their rivalry with Iowa State is so fierce that they had to bring in a Corn Mascot to keep the peace. They also created the worst trophy in the history of trophies for the winner.

When did we see them last?
Michigan was very slow to start and Iowa took a 28-7 lead. In the third quarter, Denard Robinson got injured and did not return to the game. After going down 35-14 after three touchdown passes from Ricky Stanzi, Tate Forcier entered the game and lead Michigan's comeback. Tate made the game interesting with a touchdown pass to Junior Hemingway followed by a three yard rushing TD. It was all for nothing as Michigan out-gained Iowa 522-383, but Tate and Denard combined for three interceptions and Vincent Smith fumbled, and Iowa came away with a 38-28 win.

When did we last win?
In the midst of the 2006 undefeated streak, the Hawkeyes entered the Big House with a 5-2 record. Lloyd Carr decided to give the ball to Mike Hart early and often. Hart ended the game with 31 carries for 126 yards and two touchdowns. (Can you even imagine a Michigan running back getting 30 carries now?!) Those two touchdowns plus two field goals from Garrett Rivas gave Michigan more than enough points to come away with the 20-6 victory.

What do they look like?
The Pittsburgh Steelers. Compare. In 1979, Hayden Fry (Iowa's Head Coach) wanted to have his team dress like champions so they would play like champions. He gained permission from the Pittsburgh Steelers to use their uniform design, and Iowa has worn them since. Supposedly they wore this monstrosity in 1995.

Do they have good coaches?
When Hayden Fry retired in 1998, Iowa needed their first new Head Coach in ten years. Then University of Iowa President, Mary Sue Coleman, hired Kirk Ferentz for the job. Ferentz played linebacker at the University of Connecticut, and went straight into coaching. He was an Offensive Line Coach in the NFL for both the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens from 1993 to 1998. As Head Coach of the Hawkeyes he has a 94-63 record, lead the team to Conference Championships in 2002 and 2004, and is currently in the midst of a three year bowl win streak.

Have they won a National or Big Ten Championship?
The Hawkeyes were National Champions in 1958 with a 8-1-1 record and a Rose Bowl victory. They have won 11 Big Ten Championships including five since Hayden Fry took over as Head Coach in 1978.

Where do they play?
In 1929, the University of Iowa opened Iowa Stadium, which has since been renamed Kinnick Stadium. Kinnick Stadium is named after Nile Kinnick, the only Heisman Trophy winner in Iowa history. The most interesting thing about their stadium is the away team locker room, which is pink. Very pink.

Do they have a goofy mascot?
Herky the Hawk was created in 1948, and started appearing at football games in 1959. Although Iowa has had the same uniform since 1979, Herky has never worn it. He wears a shirt with an I on it, yet has the team's football pants and a helmet.

This is not your average Iowa Hawkeyes team. Usually, a team based on defense, the Hawkeyes are now the worst in the Big Ten against the pass. Last week they made Marquis Gray look like he is actually a Quarterback. If Gray can throw, that means Denard will be able to. Mattison will break out ridiculous blitz packages to mess with the immobile Vandenberg. Prediction based on everything but football: Michigan 35 - Iowa 21.

Kerosene

The final seconds ticked off and Michigan had lost again. It wasn't even close and by the time it was over I was already numb to it all. Chris Relf plowing through the line become a philosophical reality, and Bulldog linebackers streaming through our line on all-out blitzes like so many Haley's Comets turned life-destroying asteroids, wiping out Michigan's chances like the dinosaurs. An era was over, and despite the brief hope I held that somehow the vast layer of dust left by the impact would catch fire from some random wayward spark--reigniting the hope that once existed about the spread and Rich Rodriguez and the new and certainly better Michigan that would arise of it--it did not, and everything went dark for a while. We were left, leaderless, to madly wander the heath like King Lear, in the cold and in the dark and without direction or any sense of purpose or meaning. We were kings reduced to common men, crazy men.


Rich Rodriguez waited for his fate after the catastrophic failure that was the Gator Bowl (and much of the rest of his tenure) like Meursault, waiting for the gears of justice to finish grinding in order to provide a favorable verdict. After a while, it is easy to trick yourself into believing that something will turn out better than it will. Meursault's lawyer told him he expected a "favorable outcome," which, for me, would have been the retention of Rich Rodriguez and his offense, with, of course, some serious changes being instituted in an attempt to fix what had obviously been broken. Maybe those fixes were impossible because they were fixes to problems caused by things so deeply rooted in Rich's personality that it would've been like telling a consistently pessimistic person to look at the bright side of life. I convinced myself that maybe that would happen, but, like Meursault's case, it did not.

When the bell rang again, when the door to the dock opened, what rose to meet me was the silence in the courtroom, silence and the strange feeling I had when I noticed that the young reporter had turned his eyes away. I didn't look in Marie's direction. I didn't have time to, because the presiding judge told me in bizarre language that I was to have my head cut off in a public square in the name of the French people. Then it seemed to me that I suddenly knew what was on everybody's face. 

And, like that, it was over.





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Five days later, Michigan had a coach. Each day seemed like a lifetime in and of itself as the program wandered like Lear, with the rain falling down turning the ash and the dust on the ground into a soft, extinguishing mud. Each day was stretched out and miserable, leaderless and void of anything, not even anything bad, by which to define ourselves. Each day we were left to twist in the wind, hoping for Harbaugh, for Miles (not me), for someone to come and say that they were the leader of this program and they would get on it then and there. Finally, we had that man, and, for a while, I was unhappy. But, as they say, it's in the past.


We're 72 hours and a tailgate away, and yet I get the feeling that it's happening too fast. I wonder if I've done everything I needed to do this offseason? I wonder if the team is ready? I wonder if Coach Hoke believes the things he is saying or if it's all a show? I wonder how media savvy Coach Hoke really is? Is Greg Mattison really that good? Does Borges really understand what he has in Denard? Does Denard really understand how fast he is, and how when there's nothing there on the pass he needs to go?


These aren't questions so much as expressions of anxiety. After a long hiatus, the 2010 season seems like the distant past, as does most of the Rich Rodriguez era. What came out of the Llody Carr era was rebirth, and from that hope, and from that resistance, and failure, and partial rebirth into failure and failure and failure and part of the partial rebirth into dread, the dread of the end and the dread of the beginning, like stabbing at the surface of a pool once, twice, three times before eventually taking the plunge for better or worse.


We're embarking on a slow shift the other way, the way we desperately strove to distance ourselves from after Crable blocked the outside guy on the final field goal against Appalachian State. The old way of doing things, whatever that may mean. There's nothing sarcastic or critical in that designation (particularly since this old way was more successful than the new way), as trying something new necessitates the existence of a prior way, an SOP of Michigan football. Everybody needs definition or else they risk extinguishing the fire of themselves, the thing that makes them do the things they do. For those five days, the fire fell to a low, dull glow, sickly and meek and embarrassing. It's a wonder what eight months can do. I went to bed on January 1st, thinking about what had just happened, what would happen, wondering what another restart would do to that flame. Those five days bore out our biggest inefficiencies, our at times hamfistedness, our determination to revert, to tear down, to criticize. Some threatened to leave if changes weren't made. Some said that all of this was a mistake. I had poured my entire heart into the revolution, and in the end, too many people had put down their guns and gone home.

I, myself, am furthering myself from certainty. This weekend marks the first home game for which I won't be in attendance since 2006. I don't know what I'll do, or how I'll handle it. This coming Saturday last year, I was in the stadium when Brock Mealer walked across the field. It got dusty.

I was starting my senior year, which I thought would never end, as people always do at the beginnings of things. I've had to adapt, to realize that things are now irrevocably different, that they won't be the way they've been the last four years, where I could walk to my window any evening of the week and hear a faint and distant rendition of The Victors, chopped up in pieces, played and replayed and perfected. I always wondered how they could practice it so many times, because when they played it during the games it sounded the same every single time.


I'm in New York now, a place that represents the antithesis of college football culture. I've seen my share of Michigan gear here and exchanged Go Blue's with people I would never see again. On my way back home to New York after a trip to Alabama in June, I met a Nebraska fan in the airport in Huntsville, AL. I told him I wished him well and that I hoped he would enjoy the Big Ten conference. He said that he was looking forward to it. I had over an hour until boarding; I ended up talking to this stranger, who was kind enough to approach me upon seeing my #16 jersey. He asked me if I was a Michigan fan, and I laughed and said yes while thinking how no answer would ever convey what I was thinking.


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I got to watch Mike Hart and those guys for a year, my freshman year, after watching them play for three years while I was in high school in north Alabama, surrounded by Alabama and Auburn fans. Michigan won the Big Ten when Mike Hart and Chad Henne were freshmen, and even they they lost their last two games that season you had the feeling that an endless future extending to infinity existed, that three years of Henne and Hart might as well have been an eternity. Everybody said to wait till 2007, when they would be seniors. If you think this is good, wait till they're older, better, more experienced. Everything gets better, everything is linear and un-tampered with, watch this success unfold methodically. It was the height of certainty, as far as knew it, as certain as I could be as a 15-year old. I got to Ann Arbor in 2007, and things did not happen the way people expected them to, and uncertainty ruled the day.


Even then, the fire burned. It never wavered because I saw Mike Hart carry the ball 44 times against Penn State with strep throat. I saw a gimpy Chad Henne lead the Wolverines to a victory in Evanston after the young upstart Mallett proved to be unworthy of the throne. I watched Mike Hart pick up a fumble that miraculously bounced into his hands--on the first snap that Mallett took after Henne hobbled to the sidelines midway through the fourth--as if he was picking up his laundry and it was all perfectly logical and true to life.

It was absurd and irrational but it was memorable and it kept things alive. Hart did that his entire career; just when you thought things were over, when you thought that Michigan would lose to Michigan State for the first time in six long, dominant years, Hart pulled out a big bucket of kerosene and poured its contents all over his own body and set it on fire to prove a point. Even at the bottom, the smallest, most ridiculous events spawn things beyond their original scope. A seed becomes an apple tree, a fumble picked up like the stray singular sock on your bedroom floor becomes victory; unadulterated, undiluted victory. When I look back, I remember the defeats, but they litter the landscape light stray leaves, secondary aspects of a grander scene. Disappointment is relative, but memories are not. I remember Mike Hart doing that thing, and it was. It still is.


This team has has its heroes. I could go through them, but to draw attention to them is superfluous and most probably not what they would want themselves. The thing that's most worth knowing is that heroes will be born this season, but you might not know it until next year, or the year after, or 20 years down the road when you're wondering what happened to that guy or that guy.

via Maize & Blue Nation

We can't control what happens on the field, but we can control the fire that burns, that must burn, if you're a fan of any sort. I choose to relish the moments, the players, and the experiences I have with Michigan football. There's always a time for moping, a period of days or weeks when it's justifiable to be a cantankerous, horrible version of yourself. We are all allotted this time by ourselves, a special time we've set aside at the beginning that we've condemned yourselves to lose, like walking into a casino and saying you'll lose this much and that it's okay. 

I've learned, in four short years of horrible, frustrating, and exhilarating Michigan football, that you've got to take what comes, assimilate the failures into the overall sum of memories so that in the end they're indistinguishable. Selective memory is just another name for optimism. As long as you keep the fire burning, as long as you feed it and nurture it and remember why you even do it when it shoots up smoke and burns everything around it to the ground, leaving unseemly trails of blackened earth and ashy detritus, then you'll understand, and everything along the way becomes a part of the process, a part of the burning. After all, sometimes the only thing that lets you start over in earnest, is fire. 

Synesthesia

Sometimes there's nothing to write, nothing to say. In the end it's all vanity, anyway, but if we're going to be vain than Michigan might as well be at the heart of the matter. That may be bargaining, it may be something else that doesn't have a name, kind of like a Denard Robinson run or a Mike Hart pass block aren't football plays but vague unknowable entities, like scientific constants that don't really mean anything to me or you in a general sense but you know are important; they hit us in certain times and certain places, when everything aligns to produce a certain situation that is greater than the situation itself. They are not players but reminders that maybe we don't know everything. They're each a universe unto themselves, their intricacies beyond our reach. The world was a scary, discomfiting place before the sciences began to take hold of the minds of human beings; monsters chomped voraciously at the edges of the world, threatening to consume those who fell of its edge, as if it were a piece of paper. They knew very little and we know more but we don't know a whole lot more. We've cured diseases and gone to the Moon and found ways to live longer than anyone ever has and developed the forward pass but I still can't figure out how a 5'8'' running back can stonewall linebackers Saturday after Saturday as if they were Ottoman Turks colliding against the very edges of Europe, encountering a far greater resistance than they had ever expected to.


He plays as well without the ball as he does with it. He’s an outstanding pass protector.  And in pass protection, you watch him, game in, game out take some of these big linebackers and block them, and look at how many times he carries the ball, you get an appreciation.



Not that you needed any reasons to appreciate him besides what you saw with your eyes, and sometimes what you heard. The sound that I heard when Mike Hart met Dan Connor in 2007--a sound that I heard from my pitiful Row 93 seat as a freshman--is perhaps one of the most satisfactory sensory points of reference that I have ever experienced. It was something you could know instantly, without analyzing or even knowing a thing about anything, let alone football. The loud thwack that I heard as a wide-eyed freshman watching a guy   shorter than me carry the ball 44 times with strep throat was all I needed to know that day. Forget about everything that happened throughout that bizarre, other-worldly season; that moment stuck out, ringing through the air, alerting everyone of its presence amid the expansive melange of pseudo-memory, of the type of football memory that becomes memory itself, a degraded version chipped away by time and old age and simple forgetfulness.

Memory is an ancient obelisk, a slab of rock that is perfect and will never decay in the moment of inception, littered with seemingly unintelligible symbols that once meant something but no longer do now that you've woken up and just like that it's 2011 and not 3000 BCE; degraded, dusty, and callous, rough and what is left is even more meaningful because it's what has survived the withering forces of time. It keeps coming back all the time, showing itself among all this like that one small part of your dream that you remember when everything else has receded into your the dark recesses of your brain to be lost forever or simply repressed, and everything is gone except for that one concentrated moment--good or bad--that becomes the dream itself in its entirety, a loud thump, a thwack. That was Mike in 2007 (or at least how I remember him): embattled, sometimes sick, sometimes injured, indomitable. I remember all the rest, too: the beginning (I remember a screaming caller on the radio as my Dad parked the car near where Williams hits State and I tried to ignore it), the middle (my heart rattled as I called my Dad asking if he believed that catch against State to put them ahead for good), and yes, the end (I watched it in Destin, FL with a friend and his family, all Auburn fans, wondering why Mike decided to start fumbling then but realizing that maybe he wanted to keep things interesting). But that one distinguishable noise, that moment, sticks out amongst the rest, a relic of a past that now seems long gone. Look on my works,  ye mighty, and despair. 





























Sometimes there's nothing to write because there's nothing you want to write. Sometimes you can't do a thing justice or maybe you don't have the right or the wherewithal to tell the story you want to tell just yet. We've seen Denard Robinson for two years now, and he has two more left to play. Denard has dazzled us with speed that we've never seen before. The first play was a peek into his brilliance, a taunting example of raw ability. We already know this story, even if it is half untold. This past year was but a chapter, a small sliver of the legacy; but legacy is something that means different things to different people. I've reached the point where I am no longer younger than those who I root for every Saturday, those dudes playing a game. I don't even know what a legacy is, so I'll just stick with memory. It's easier to deal with, even if less of it lasts and even less still matters to anyone other than you, the one with the memory. I don't know what Denard's legacy is or what it will or could be.

I remember watching Denard streak past everyone in South Bend as if he didn't have time to talk to anyone but God.



I remember saying "502" out loud to anyone that would listen, as if it were some strange incantation or I had gone crazy from what I, what all of us, had seen. He didn't even care.

The offensive line blocked, the receivers catching, everything was clicking. ... I'm a team player and I don't look at stats.

I remember Denard forcing the air out of Memorial Stadium, and the wretched glee it brought many to see him fall, which he did from time to time.

I remember Denard, broken and slowed, playing only the first half against the Buckeyes. He wasn't himself. He was back for a quarter in Jacksonville, but something was still wrong. We looked unprepared, yes, and the defense was the defense we had come to despairingly expect, but something about Denard--the same person who was canonized after only his second start, the guy who produced over 500 yards once like a magic trick--was wrong.

The thing with Denard is, unlike Mike, sometimes I think he's too fast; by the time my brain locks on to what is happening, he's gone, so that everything he's done is just a blur of interconnected dashes and glorified wind sprints on an early Ann Arbor morning in April, only it's Saturday in some autumnal month and people are trying to catch him or take off his shoes or hinder him in any way possible in the hope that help will come.

The block that Mike made on that September day in 2007 and the blunt accompanying sound that resonates as if it were fresh. I wonder if Dan Connor wakes up in hotel rooms now and then, awaking from some meandering dream that slides along like a rattlesnake along the desert dunes until it comes to meet him, and then he jolts up from his slumber so suddenly that he is not yet fully awake, clutching his chest in pain. I wonder if he still remembers that moment.

Mike always gave you time to admire the things that he did; even when he carried the ball, he got caught from behind time after time, and it was okay because we understood his limitations and that was that. Denard's limitations are different, mostly because I don't know what they are yet. He's still young, and I think his moment is yet to come. The moment that Denard does something so great that it forces itself into my mind--pushing everything else out as if to say forget about all that stuff, this is what matters--not knocking down the ramparts like Mike would've down in a series of quick, laboring efforts but swiftly, roundabout even, is the moment that memory is assured. In fact, it's really the only way any of us can be remembered.

I think that false start before was just the universe's way of giving us five more yards to watch him run. This is only the beginning, and memory has to be built up before it can be whittled away to what really matters. It might take time, too. It might be years until after Denard has graduated, even. You might be old, even. One day it will click and set in, appropriating a part of your brain for the purpose of its survival, perhaps in the form of a loud, synecdochical noise, a noise a part of and representative of a long and meaningful narrative; or, maybe, it will be something else. You'll know it when it happens.