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.

there is no hero
more important than the goat
triumph and defeat

Adapted from the paragraph:

Yet the heart of the gig is straightforward. “It’s storytelling,” Esocoff says. “My job is to make the audio and the video match as closely as I can.” He clings to pillars of classic narrative: cause and effect, triumph and defeat. “If the QB hits the receiver for 75 yards up the seam, it’s probably because he had plenty of time to throw. So we’re going to find a shot that shows you the pass protection. You want to show both sides of an event. I always say, the hero on a play is no more important than the goat.

From the article, Behind the Scenes of the Most Spectacular Show On TV by Jody Rosen, in the New York Times on Dec. 2. 2023.

The most spectacular show is Sunday Night Football for those too young to remember Monday Night Football or the College game of the week when only ONE game was on.

But the rule stays the same.

For every winner, there is a loser.

Despite the little league participation trophy, some one goes home unhappy.

Sometimes I think this might be a better place if this was held to a little more often of late.

Sure sure Bobby Thompson hit the home run that led to the famous radio call, ‘the GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT – THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT.’

But it was Ralph Branca who through the pitch that led to the home run and took the Brooklyn Dodgers out of the World Series.

I am reminded of a story that I cannot find, that Bill Veeck always wanted to have an old timers game and arrange for Bobby Thompson to face Ralph Branca one more time.

Veeck said he wanted to do it just to see if Branca would bean Thompson.

Talk about must see TV.

the bummage is a
more dramatic picture than
the celebration

From the paragraph:

Yet the heart of the gig is straightforward. “It’s storytelling,” Esocoff says. “My job is to make the audio and the video match as closely as I can.” He clings to pillars of classic narrative: cause and effect, triumph and defeat. “If the QB hits the receiver for 75 yards up the seam, it’s probably because he had plenty of time to throw. So we’re going to find a shot that shows you the pass protection. You want to show both sides of an event. I always say, the hero on a play is no more important than the goat. So right away I’ll be in the ear of my cameramen: ‘56 blue is the goat.’ A word I use a lot is ‘bummage.’ I want to see the bummage. Because a lot of times the bummage is a more dramatic picture than the celebration.”

From the article, Behind the Scenes of the Most Spectacular Show On TV by Jody Rosen, in the New York Times on Dec. 2. 2023.

I loved this article and as anyone who remembers the glory days of Monday Night Football, it sounds very familiar, especially the line, I want to see the bummage. Because a lot of times the bummage is a more dramatic picture than the celebration.

This thought was made famous by the famous camera shot of Joe Namath showing exteme bummage.

According to legend, the shot was called by the man who invented Monday Night Football, Roone Arledge, who happened into the control truck at the moment and called for the camera …
Maybe it happened that way.

Maybe it didn’t.

But I’ll hold with it.

And as I life long Detroit Lions fan, I know bummage when I see it.

bury Michigan?
when they closed coffin, there was
someone else inside

Inspired by Bob Ufer as he said on the radio on November 20, 1976.

“Ohio Came To Bury Michigan, All Wrapped In Maize And Blue
The Words Were Said, The Prayers Were Read And Everybody Cried
But When They Closed The Coffin, There Was Someone Else Inside!

The Bucks Came To Bury The Wolverines – But Michigan Wasn’t Dead,
And When The Game Was Over, It Was Someone Else Instead.

Twenty-Two Michigan Wolverines Put On The Gloves Of Gray,
And As Cavender Played “The Victors”, They Laid Woody Hayes Away!”

I was raised on Woody Hayes.

Woody Hayes lived under my bed and if I got out of bed in the middle of the night, Woody might grab me and take me off to Columbus.

Now I live in Carolina.

And nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina and write silly things about a football game up North.

But who cares.

Michigan has now won one thousand and one college football games.

A Roman using roman numerals would add it up like this, MI.

As in Michigan.

As in Mike.

I’m good with that.