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 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.
I was fourteen years old in 2003. I was a freshman in high school in Huntsville, AL, in the heart of SEC territory after recently been moved from the suburbs of Chicago. It was a foreign land, a strange land, where my raiment stuck out like a southern drawl in the heart of New York City; absurdly, a forced Latin phrase in an otherwise ordinary sentence. I remember talking to a friend about college football on my first day of school, and he was adamant that this was Auburn’s year. Auburn had gone 9-4 the season before with a bowl victory against Penn State. I had no idea what Auburn was, though, truly. I remember thinking, like Michael Bluth: Auburn? Her? Auburn stumbled to an 8-5 record that year before going undefeated in 2004. Michigan won back-to-back conference titles in those two first years in that new land, and I didn’t realize that that was to be the end of everything that was good. I couldn’t have known.
Michigan had always been good, and at the very least they had always been decidedly Michigan. When they lost, they lost in September, then once but usually twice to generally overmatched Big Ten foes. The offenses were plodding even when Michigan was at the top of the college football world, and the defenses were stout so long as the opposing quarterback didn’t have blocks of granite for legs. If anything, Michigan was consistent. It was always frustrating but it was always the same and so you could never be truly surprised when Michigan lost on the road out west or lost in South Bend or lost to some Big Ten foe that had no business being on the same field. Jim Tressel showed up and everything changed; consistency no longer meant what it once did.
In 2001, Michigan fielded an okay squad that included a wholly unready John Navarre and lost at home to a decidedly mediocre Buckeye squad. In 2002, Michigan gave the eventual national champions a tight game before eventually bowing out in the final minutes. In 2003 we got redemption, and in 2004 we had a chance to continue that on the backs of an incredible freshman seasons from Chad Henne and Mike Hart. It didn’t happen but the future was bright. Then 2005 slipped away. Then Bo died, and Michigan was on the losing end of the Game of the Century. Then I was a freshman at Michigan, and I watched those aforementioned freshmen—now seniors---end their final years with a whimper, as Ohio State and Beanie Wells ground the Wolverines into dust en route to a victory that was never really close despite its appearances. I traveled to Columbus for the first time the next year to watch Michigan intercept Terrelle Pryor on their first drive, then proceed to implode, go ceaselessly backward, and miss a field goal. Despite the close first half, I knew it was over right then and there. Tate Forcier came onto the scene and Michigan hoped to secure a bowl bid after missing out after the disastrous 2008 campaign. It was the height of masochism; 60 minutes and five turnovers later and Michigan had lost again. It was 2007 all over again. Then last year happened. Rich Rodriguez was a lame duck, Denard got hurt and Michigan floundered like a ship without a rudder, not that a rudder would have assured safe passage through the house of horror that was Ohio Stadium.
Now we are here. I’ve reached the point where I can type the last paragraph and look at it and say that’s what happened. I am at peace as much as any man can be at peace. And yet, it has been like life as a dog with an abusive owner, cowering in fear upon his arrival, a conditioned response to a physical actuality. Michigan has been beaten and beaten and beaten, and it is not so much okay as it is a statement of reality. I see Scarlet and Gray clad people in New York, in Alabama, in the airport in Detroit, and I can do nothing but extricate myself from the circumstances, to physically move myself as if a computerized thumb and forefinger picked me up from the sky and dropped me somewhere else, anywhere else. It’s conditioned and pathetic and wanting of something.
Michigan is 9-2 and Ohio State has been gutted of everything it once held so dearly. Its beloved coach, its star quarterback, its patina of Midwestern invincibility have all been extirpated, and yet their premises still exist, as much as seven wins in a row can be categorized as mere premises and not unadulterated salting of the earth. Ohio State now has their own lame duck, and in a week full of unequivocal hate, spleen, and obdurate dismissal of the other’s raison d’etre, I find myself sort of feeling some sort of distant cousin of empathy for Luke Fickell, who just wants to coach a game, and not just a game but The Game. Then I remember why I shouldn’t feel so kind; the body of history is enough. It sits there like a reminder, an old man whistling, rocking away on his front porch laughing at you as you drag back into town, saying "I knew you’d fall back into these small town parts again." I knew you’d fail because that’s who you are and what you do. He laughs and laughs.
I’ve been told many times, back when I still played sports competitively, that you have to imagine what winning is like before you actually go out and make it happen. It seems quixotic, detached from reality, and maybe that itself is a cynical thing to say. Then again, if you are no longer cynical then you are a better person than I.
I imagined what it would be like in 2004, and 2005, and then in 2006 when it seemed like the world was precariously balanced on the shoulder of Chad Henne and the brunt force of each hit from LaMarr Woodley, Alan Branch, and David Harris would be enough to shake the world into a dimension where Michigan won and every Ohio State week thereafter wouldn’t exclusively remind me of the fact that Bo had died and I remembered where I was when I heard it and how I felt and the deep-seated uneasiness that no matter what happened things would be off in that way that you wake up on certain days and know that it won’t be your day. No faculties of imagination could have done a thing that day. Of course, it is absurd to say that my imagination of victory has any bearing on the outcome, but if my imagination hold a certain weight of verisimilitude than one can only imagine what things would be floating around the player’s head. Each imagined outcome, it’s path to an end—an interception, a fumble pounced upon as if it was not a tangible thing but an embodiment of Fate, the looks on the faces of the enemy when they sensed the exact moment that the battle had been lost and retreat was an inevitability—bouncing gloriously and unseen, an opportunity caged and waited to be executed with passion and aggression and faith in the rightness of their doing. I imagined in 2007 too, and 2008 and 2009 and even 2010; wouldn’t it be great if we were the spoiler, the one to ruin another’s machinations? It wasn’t to be.
If 2011 has taught me anything, it’s that no dream is too far away, no imagined happening too far-fetched as long as you can dream it and mold it into an actionable concept. Who could have thought that the defense would turn into what it has seemingly overnight, as if Greg Mattison came on and fashioned an organized, quality unit out of thin air, a Mack truck of a defense from the dilapidated spare parts of a Prius. Who could’ve thought that Brady Hoke could have convinced so many to come to Michigan in spite of the pall of malaise seeping into every crevice and previously unoccupied corner of Ann Arbor like a malignant fog. Who would’ve thought that freshmen, walk-ons, and receivers that haven’t grown since before they were allowed to drive could come together and say to the world: this is what we are and that is more than enough.
Who would’ve thought? It came from somewhere.
Denard Robinson steps up and throws. He does not throw off of his back foot and the throw leaps powerfully from his arm, spiraling through the air as if it wishes to tunnel into the very heart of the last seven years and vanquish it.
Junior Hemingway remembers being hurt, remembers that this is the last time. He straps his gloves on and looks at his legs and understands that he will soar higher than anyone else on the field, that this, even if this isn’t true he will make it true on this day.
Martavious Odoms will remember that he is small, forget it, and play like he is the biggest player on the field out of spite. He will block without concern, without lamentations of time lost and an uncertain future and he will proceed like a British fellow building a bridge in a strange place, illogically and so in line with convention that it is extraordinary in its execution.
Mike Martin will remember what it was like to be a freshman. He will remember how he thought he was strong once; that, then, was nothing.
Darryl Stonum will watch, pining for redemption, needing it, helplessly but undeniably with a purpose. His time will come again.
David Molk will grimace with disdain and secretly, somewhere within him where things like joy resides in some underdeveloped shanty town, smile at the concept of a job well done, of a purpose and an action and an end and the trickle down effect of all these things. He will move like a chess piece; deliberately and calmly, with a quickness and precision that gives the opponent but a split second before realizing: oh.
Ryan Van Bergen will wonder where they all were until he realizes that they were always there, all around him. The people that mattered.
Brady Hoke will nod, stoic in his understanding. He doesn’t know more than you, he just knows the right things. Worry is obviated by the historical body of necessity. This is how things were meant to be, and so shall they be.
Defeat upon defeat accrues and congeals into a ghastly knowledge of a stark reality, a bitter medicine resting upon the tongue and in the throat waiting to be swallowed--a simple truth. It is the kind that sits within like a cancerous lump that can either be left or excised...your choice.
It’s time to start anew. I’ll watch. It will be like breathing for the first time. I’ll wake up from it all and know that I was sleeping. I’ll look around and everything will be brand new.
Hello, Internet. I am Fouad Egbaria, a Michigan grad ('11) and recent graduate of the MSJ program at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. This is a blog that attempts to analyze the highs and lows of Michigan football and basketball; I'm just trying to capture the spirit of the thing. I will also write about general Big Ten news, as well as Chicago professional sports (from time to time).
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