“I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”?
-Andy Bernard, The Office series finale
I don’t often turn to insufferable characters from network sitcoms to make sense of the world around me, but I have been thinking a lot about this quote in the last few months. About how we interpret information. About how, and when, we decide that things in our life are important, or worth remembering. How does one hold something dear? Is it a conscious decision? Does a moment only seem special in hindsight, without the crushing weight of daily life getting in the way of appreciating it? The human brain is a beautiful and clumsy cosmic mistake. In the gaping void of the known universe, a mathematically impossible confluence of events aligned to form a clump of cells that could understand what they were, without the ability to grasp — or even care — how uniquely miraculous their sentience was in the infinite inky blackness around them. It is humanity’s great superpower to remember yesterday and envision tomorrow. But where does that leave today?
I am not good at being in the moment. My thoughts splinter off into so many tangential tendrils, I often find myself incapable of tracing an idea back to its origin. I am set on some task, and without being conscious of how much time has lapsed or how little progress I’ve made, I catch myself remembering the Michigan Stadium student section Hot Dog Man or trying to figure out what Darryl Stonum is up to these days, or daydreaming about the future, and suddenly I have wasted an hour, or an afternoon, or a whole day. When something good happens, I usually think about how it might compare to the past. When something bad happens, I often worry about what it might mean for the future. I have learned, in the year of our Lord, 2023, how much more fulfilling it is to savor the present, good and bad.
As great as the Wolverines are, as fun as it has been to watch this run of utter dominance, it is not the team alone that has me dewy-eyed about things Ed Helms has said. The 2023 football season will always be my first as a father. I am already excited to look back on it, someday, fondly. Her “Little Wolverine” shirt. The anticipation, waiting for my wife to join us, with her in tow, at her first tailgate, before the UNLV game. Watching her start to inch further and further off her mommy’s hip, eventually being brave enough to meet friends I have tailgated with for over a decade, trying new and interesting foods, playing games and enjoying the spirit, bonding with her cousin over cupcakes and asking for hugs from Meemaw and Peepaw. Teaching herself the joys and warmth of familial tailgating. Sitting in my mother-in-law’s living room, watching her, watch me. Seeing the magic in her eyes when she throws her hands up in the air and says “Touchdown!,” in her squeaky toddler voice, for the first time, while we celebrate Roman Wilson’s Houdinian touchdown grab, over the back of a helpless Cornhusker. Trying, and failing, to keep my cool during naptime while Michigan bullied its way to victory at Penn State. Calling her and mommy from the car on the way home from the Ohio State win, so they could hear how much I had lost my voice and about how much fun I had rushing the field. Seeing her catch a glimpse of a picture of Harbaugh on my Twitter feed and shouting “Football!”
I cannot think about Michigan football without thinking of my family first. I have always known — deep down — the real reason this silly thing matters so much to me is because of its mattering to us. It is a defining characteristic of who we are, and we are blessed to share so much quality time together under the Block M flag, waving high above our tailgate. I am so comfortable in our family’s shared Michigan fandom, it is entirely too easy to lose sight of what makes it special. But the novelty of our daughter’s excitement has reminded me of a simple and beautiful truth: I love this thing so much, because I get to share that love with my family, and my heart is bursting to watch her begin to share it with us, too.
I have enjoyed this season so much more presently. It is more alive, by bringing her into my lifelong passion for Michigan football. To see it ignite in her heart, to take root. To see her care, because I care, and she cares about me, and she knows, in her bones, how much I care about her. Michigan football means the world to me, because it means the world to my father, and meant the world to his father before him. Passing it on, continuing the tradition, helping instill it in another generation of lifelong, diehard Michigan fans, has reinforced how much of a gift this all is. I can see the story, already written in the future, but it will only be worth telling if we make it special today. To slow down and understand how lucky we are to share these moments together. To stop and breathe, to cheer and cry, to love and be loved, to celebrate life for the big, dumb, messy cacophony of bliss and ache that it is. It seems too obvious to be a revelation, but, by seeing the world, and football, through her eyes, I am finally beginning to understand how gratifying the immediate moment is. It is here, right in front of me. It always has been, but my eyes can finally focus on it.
And it certainly helps that, right now, in this exact moment, the team happens to be better than it has ever been in my lifetime. Or anyone’s lifetime, for that matter.
•
Let’s bask in the football of it all.
As a Michigan fan, I can’t say that I have ever comfortably lived in the present. The program is steeped in so much history and tradition, it is entirely too easy for the Here & Now to be overshadowed by the overwhelming legacy of what came before it. Devin Gardner’s reward for being a team leader was to put Tom Harmon’s name and number on his chest. Rich Rodriguez, with tears in his eyes, begged the 2010 Michigan Football Awards Banquet audience to believe he was a “Michigan Man.” Bo Schembechler, upon seeing the ramshackle conditions of the program’s facilities when he took the job in 1969, tried to convince his staff they were lucky to have these particular folding chairs in the locker room and old nails in the wall, because Fielding Yost had once sat in that junky chair and hung his hat on those rusty nails. Even Yost spent much of the last decade or so of his career contending with the notion that the game had passed him by. The problem with being the first national dynasty in college football history is that history keeps going. The way things are, become the way things were — and something as slippery as greatness can ease into past tense so casually you don’t even realize you’ve lost grasp of it.
Up through the 2020 season, deep at the heart of my fandom was the understanding that the magic of Michigan football was rooted in What Had Been — what I could never directly live through or experience. I have always loved learning about the history of the program, but I carried a subconscious acceptance that I missed the highwater mark by 100 years, coupled with a somewhat irrational optimism that it would ever get there again. My childhood was bifurcated by the majesty of 1997, a blip of capital B brilliance, surrounded by a dash of capital E excellence, but mostly capital V-G Very Good, from the program. As I got older, seasons blended together, losses to Ohio State started to pile up, and the memories of good moments turned yellow at the edges and started to rust, for the cold dampness of unmet expectations. When it seemed clear, at the nadir of the COVID year, that the Jim Harbaugh era was doomed to the same fate that befell the previous two regimes, a thought that I had to process and cope with: the program was great, and is no longer, and may never be again.
That is what has made this streak so rewarding, so special. Growing up, it felt like it was to be taken for granted that Michigan was great. For the last 15 years, you could always take solace in the fact that Michigan was, at one point, great. And could, theoretically, be once more someday. It is so incredibly fun to know Michigan IS great, right now, to simply enjoy this for what it is — not what it was, or what it could be. As fans, we don’t have to remember. We don’t have to dream. We are experiencing the memory. We know, intimately, the dream. It is here. It is now. It is this particular group of young men leaping up to smack the M Club banner. It is Mikey Sainristil climbing from the bottom of the wide receiver depth chart to the the top of the world, as one of the best leaders in the history of the Leaders and Best. It is Bobby Williamsing the Spartans, in East Lansing. It is Sherrone Moore cursing his way into America’s heart. It is 112,000 Michigan fans chanting the name of an offensive lineman in unison, feeling as if the entire corner of Stadium & Main were being physically lifted from the ground by sheer collective want and determination, right before Blame Corum cuts a storybook juke through the gut of the Ohio State defense, racing to the corner of the endzone in order to make a seemingly preordained hand gesture of Zak Zinter’s jersey number — six fingers, then five — directly into a camera lens capturing the moment for 20 million people around the world. It is three Big Ten titles in a row. It is a team of love and positivity, of support and encouragement. A team committed to spreading joy, and having fun while they kick the ass of everyone who lines up across from them.
Even the misery is FANTASTIC. I was, for a time, devastated that such a ridiculous bumblefuck fracas as the Connor Stalions saga could potentially derail the pleasure of the 2023 Michigan football season. But I would be lying if I said the whole ordeal — as one of the singularly INSANE things to happen in the history of one of America’s favorite bizarre subcultures, college football — hasn’t been a blast to live through, and to watch happen. It is, of course, bad. I am, of course, worried about what may happen with the NCAA investigation. But it is (was?) enthralling to witness. A boy, by quitting football in eighth grade to instead shadow the team’s coaches, embarked on a series of increasingly crazy choices aimed at becoming the Michigan football coach. Like Pete Buttigeig shaped his entire life around the goal of becoming President, the boy earned a prestigious spot at the United States Naval Academy, with the incomprehensible goal of coaching football at Michigan in mind. He immorally obtained the GPAs and standardized test scores of his fellow cadets, in the hopes of impressing Ken Niumatalolo with his analysis of the raw data, compared to on-the-field performance and recruiting rankings. He volunteered to fly to Ann Arbor, while studying at the academy, to be an unpaid graduate assistant with the Michigan program. He sold a house and lived in a car to fund his endeavor. He started paying people to collect information for him. He got sued by his Home Owners’ Association for running a disheveled vacuum-repair cartel off the porch of his house as a side-hustle to invest back into his — ahem — vast network of cronies who attended games across the country to snap shaky iPhone footage of future opponents for him to painstakingly parse through and steal enough hand signals off of, to hopefully convince the coaches above him he was a football genius. He defended himself in court and accused a mysterious Michigan State fan named Jeff of distracting him from his tireless work for the Michigan football team. He wrote a manifesto. He disguised himself as a Central Michigan assistant coach and snuck into a rival stadium. He got Harbaugh suspended for the three most important games of the best season of his coaching career. Of course, you know all this. But it is worthwhile to cram it all in one paragraph, to appreciate how BUGFUCK CRAZY of a thing that was to plop in the middle of what is increasingly feeling like a season of destiny.
It is monumental, unforgettable. It is inexplicable. It is college football. It is Minnesota poisoning the jug; or Louis Elbel penning the fight song on the bus on the way home from an upset win of Chicago; or The Ten Year War. It is history! We are part of the folklore our ancestors will share in a hundred years. We’re watching the Tall Tale be told. JJ and Blake and Mikey and Barrett and every other guy in that locker room refused to let their story be decided by anyone but them. Any other Michigan team I’ve ever known and loved would have buckled under the weight of that much debilitating noise. But this team, these guys, simply refused to let it be true that there was an ill-gotten secret to their success. So they hammered Penn State with 32 straight runs. And they let Ohio State exhaust every possible excuse — the weather was bad, CJ was sick, they had our signs, etc. etc. — and — as a team hobbled by injury and demoralized by a never-ending torrent of rot and decay from the information machine churning out the national narrative arc of the season — flattened the Buckeyes with an interim coach and a teamwide enthusiasm unknown to mankind. They have told the world, repeatedly, they are the best team in the country, and the world seems hellbent on disbelieving the message. So they say it louder, with more force. The 2021 Ohio State win was for the 15 years of pain. In 2022, it was to prove the Wolverines intended to stay around for a while. This year, it was about right fuckin’ now, about cementing this moment, this team’s legacy as one of the best to ever wear the winged helmets. I have never seen anyone, at Michigan or otherwise, navigate such a minefield of distraction to pop out the other side, unscathed and doused in team-colored confetti. It wasn’t for yesterday, or tomorrow. It was for today, so that today will retain its rightful place near the top of the best damn times to ever cheer for the Maize and Blue. The story is being told, but it will matter in 100 years because of the miracle of the moment. The past is the past, and the work for the future is complete. The story isn’t what has been or what could be. The story is about what is being done, now, by these Michigan Wolverines.
The Good Old Days are here.
•
This has not been a conventional year, by any stretch of the imagination. No matter the pettiness of the charges, or the weak-willed wrongness of those levying the punishments, it is still wild that the head coach of the odds-on favorite to win the national title was suspended for fully half the regular season. Harbaugh was in flight with the team to their long-awaited top 10 matchup with Penn State, when word came down from the Big Ten offices in Indianapolis that Petitti was bowing to the pressure of 13 sore losers, so tired of getting decimated by the sheer force of the Michigan football juggernaut that they drummed up enough faux outrage after someone hired a private investigation to dig up the Stalions dirt to ignite the single most sensational and protracted midseason soap opera I have ever witnessed. The whole thing just fired up so many damn people. Stewart Mandel used every ounce of strength he had to lift his head off his fainting couch long enough to call for an immediate postseason ban. Coaches excused obliterating losses due to the diminutive bald menace, lurking in the Schembechler Hall shadows.
The only people who didn’t lose their minds were the 100 or so young men caught in the middle of it. I was so inspired and awestruck by the Wolverines’ patience, focus, togetherness and drive through the maelstrom. They clawed through the mud as it quickened around them, never doubting they could keep churning their legs until they found solid footing on sturdy ground. The noise didn’t matter. The loss of their coach didn’t, either. The entire country couldn’t wait to embarrass and humiliate them, to strip away every glorious thing they built these last three years, to tell them that phone-shot .mov files on a Google Drive meant more to the program’s renaissance than their suffocating and relentless blocking and tackling. The world loves to make noise, and if you let yourself get caught up in it, you lose the autonomy of the moment. The noise begins to tell the story for you. But they won.
The Victors get to write this history, because they understood in order to seize the moment, they needed to embrace it fully. You can hold onto the past and reach for the future, but not literally. The only thing you truly possess is the present, and the Wolverines have made the most of theirs.
I want to have their mettle and determination. I want my daughter to have their poise and grace.
She is going to need it. She, like the Wolverines, has hurdles in front of her, and noise that will surround her, totally out of her control. But it will be in her power to summon the courage and strength to thrive in the face of it. She is a foster child, and we are her caretakers who have simply fallen in love with the little girl that is blossoming under our roof. She has every reason to be afraid. It would be so easy for her to cave in on herself, to turn her back on love, because of the things she has been through before most kids even understand what it means to worry. Blessed with the ability to envision the future, she was led to believe, from the first day her eyes opened to the world, that she couldn’t trust that tomorrow would look anything like today. In the face of all that, I am astounded and bewildered by the wonder and beauty she sees all around her, the excitement and joy she can so effortlessly spread, the trust in her heart, the depth of love she possesses, and the ease with which she can so freely share it with anyone and everyone.
I love her so much, it is almost impossible to recall anything before her. She has so profoundly altered the foundation of my life, I couldn’t possibly dwell on anything but the immediate moment if I wanted. And why would I want to? The greatest joy is watching her piece together chunky Legos. Or fumble over clumsy syllables until her tongue can massage the noises into a new word in her vocabulary: animal, onion, apple, buckle, pickle, football, touchdown, mommy, daddy, mommy, daddy, mommy and daddy. Or slowly build a relationship with our skeptical cats. Or carve pumpkins or feed the goats at the cider mill or lazily slalom through the aisles of the library or listen to progressive house music under the galaxy light in our cozy bungalow room or hang ornaments on the Christmas tree or just sit around in our pajamas without a thing to do except soak up the company of the people we love most in the world. It is easy to forget why we love the things we love, to let routine take over, to do without feeling, to experience without appreciating. And it is equally easy to rediscover the joy of love through the amazement of a child who is eager to share the things you love with you. She wants to understand why I love football or family or Christmas or progressive house music, and to love it too, so she can continue to share it with me. She wants these moments — her hands caressing my cheek as she drifts off to sleep; her giggles cascading through the hallway when she hides behind the curtain and waits for me to find her; the look of complete and total focus spreading across her face when she is doing arts and crafts; her dance moves in the kitchen while we’re listening to music and making dinner together — because they are the most important thing the world could possibly have to offer. I am so happy, I could melt into the floor. I don’t want anything but what I have right now.
I don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow, and for the first time in my life, I don’t care. I don’t know what is going to happen to college football. WIth the expansion of the Big Ten and the playoff, and the other tectonic shifts in the national landscape, it certainly feels like we are witnessing the end of the modern era and welcoming in something new. Or what happens to Michigan, when this senior class leaves, or Harbaugh takes an NFL job, or the NCAA makes a ruling in the Stalions saga. But the Wolverines aren’t worried about what comes next. Because what is within their grasp is so exhilarating, it is a waste to do anything but enjoy the ride we’re on right now. And my wife and I don’t know what will happen, either. I could buckle under the pressure of the unknown. I could fret about what I can’t control. Let the noise drive the narrative. We hope that we are given the opportunity to raise her forever. But it is not worth my time or energy worrying about that, when I wake up every day, excited for another chance to spread our love for the life the three of us have together right now. I’m too busy today to be scared of what comes next.
We’re in the Good Old Days, and it is a miracle to know it, and be so capable and conscious of reveling in it. I am a father now. The chance to win a national championship is now.
It’s now.
Enjoy the ride, and finish the job, so these fairy tale moments have their proper fairy tale endings.
Go Blue!
One Comment
Anonymous
Beautiful!!