wasn’t just football …
felt bigger than that – We were …
in it together

And it wasn’t just about football. It felt bigger than that — as if joining a massive crowd is novel and embarrassingly spiritual. We were in it together.

From the New York Times Guest Opinion piece, I Was Transformed by the Best Cult Ever: Michigan Football, (Dec. 31, 2023). By Jaime Lowe.

Ms. Lowe is the author of, most recently, “Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California’s Wildfires” and a Knight-Wallace fellow at Michigan.

I can write that you either get it or you don’t.

You are a part of this or you aren’t.

And I will admit, that you could read this story from the perspective of any college football teams and their alumni/fan following in America today.

… Just not on the front page of the New York Times.

Maybe on some fan blog.

Maybe on the school’s alumni website.

Maybe in the local newspaper from the home town of that college.

… Just not on the front page … of the New York Times.

Ms. Lowe writes:

I entered the Big House again and again, for the rest of the season. For seven home games, I understood more about why I gravitated to the stadium. Something clicked. My mood, upon entering, changed immediately. I was swept up in frenetic joy. It was as if we, the fans, were a superorganism.

Through football, my mental health shifted; I was happy for the first time in a long time. I found strangers who became friends; long-lost friends (die-hard Michigan fans) who re-emerged in my life; relatives and colleagues who were alumni cheering on my cheering from afar.

In 2021, the Stanford literature professor Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht wrote a book about crowds and stadiums as a ritual of intensity. He covered the idea that crowds can open humans up to experiences beyond ourselves.

Since Covid, these gatherings are more pronounced. I realize escape is a privilege, but for me the season pass was cheaper than one session of therapy.

I am now a person who knows that in 1939, a live wolverine in a cage was paraded around the field at halftime. I stormed the field after the win over Ohio State — our last home game — and woke up with a sprained toe, four bruises, no ability to talk because I had been screaming, a sunburn (it was 19 degrees that morning, so who knows how that happened) and a spiritual awakening.

So we stole some signs.

So we ignored the NCAA.

So what!

We get it.

Because at some point in our lives, we have stormed the field after the win over Ohio State.

Woke up with a sprained toe, four bruises.

No ability to talk because we had been screaming.

A sunburn (it was 19 degrees that morning, so who knows how that happened).

And a spiritual awakening.

We are in it, TOGETHER.

You can read all about here.

In the New York Times.

little has gone right,
very little … what’s gone wrong?
multifaceted!

In his 1965 book, The Hustler’s Handbook, Bill Veeck (as in wreck) writes about the New York Mets:

The Mets established a certain stature from the first. They were, after all, the team that was on its way to losing more games than any other team in the long and meticulously recorded history of baseball. You weren’t just shuffling around rooting for a lousy team — which anyone could do — you were rooting for the most goshawful team ever.

According to the article in the Guardian today, The Pistons’ dismal journey to become the NBA’s worst-ever team” by Alex Kirshner, “The Detroit Pistons finally, formally made history on Tuesday night. Detroit lost their single-season record 27th consecutive game, the latest coming at home by a 118-112 score against the Brooklyn Nets. By falling to 2-28, the Pistons built more cushion in a perhaps inexorable quest to become the worst team in league history.“

The City of Detroit has experienced this sort of streak with all its professional sports teams.

The fans of the professional sports teams of the City of Detroit have lived through this before.

There is a word for it.

Infracaninophile.

Infracaninophiliac.

Infracaninophilism.

One who loves and roots for underdogs.

Veeck continues on the Mets, “The beautiful part of it is that once this kind of thing picks up momentum, every failure becomes an asset. Once you’ve got everybody in the frame of mind where they’re expecting something ridiculous to happen, then ridiculous things have a way of happening.”

I don’t understand how any team can manage to lose 27 games in a row.

Once you’ve got everybody in the frame of mind where they’re expecting something ridiculous to happen, then ridiculous things have a way of happening.

Even you tried to lose, it seems you couldn’t lose 27 in a row.

Once you’ve got everybody in the frame of mind where they’re expecting something ridiculous to happen, then ridiculous things have a way of happening.

Mr. Kirshner writes, “The The Pistons are 2-28 because they have been cartoonishly, cataclysmically bad on the margins.”

Cartoonishly, cataclysmically.

Typically, even the worst team in such games wins 25 or 30% of them, but the Pistons cannot buy a victory in crunch time. Arithmetic and spirituality suggest that the Pistons eventually get a break when it matters most, but faith is hard to come by.

Arithmetic and spirituality.

If you could string that all together because once you’ve got everybody in the frame of mind where they’re expecting something ridiculous to happen, then ridiculous things have a way of happening, what would you get?

Cartoonishly, cataclysmically, arithmetic and spirituality what would you get?

Infracaninophile.

But faith is hard to come by.