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.
No Haiku For You 