A Murder of One

The turning point when lunch money receipts were collected and reimbursement demanded (Kirthmon F. Dozier/Freep)

"Well, I dreamt I saw you walking
Up a hillside in the snow
Casting shadows on the winter sky
As you stood there counting crows

One for sorrow, two for joy
Three for girls and four for boys
Five for silver, six for gold
Seven for a secret never to be told."

"A Murder of One", Counting Crows, from the 1993 album August and Everything After

For many years, I thought that the next line in "A Murder of One" (one of my favorite Counting Crows songs) was "There's a perfectness inside you" which not only made sense, it seemed like a nearly magical turn of phrase from Adam Duritz.  It turned out that it was "There's a bird that nests inside you." which is still pretty good, but not as good as I initially believed my false impression to be.  It makes more sense with the bird metaphor that continues afterward, but again, the notion of a perfectness inside you, sleeping underneath your skin always seemed like this wonderful notion of what can be achieved if we just pushed ourselves a little more.

What Michigan did to Penn State today was nigh on perfect.  It obviously did not finish as perfect as Penn State scored a garbage time touchdown, preventing the Don Brown shutout dreams from coming true, but still, it just felt amazing.  It was just brilliant.  Even though the script felt familiar, not enough points in the first half, potential missed opportunities, blood in the water being ignored, we also knew how that script flipped in the second halves of the last two games.

If I'm going to be honest, writing about these kinds of games are difficult because they're works of art.  They stand on their own.  Each of us stands before the artwork, taking it in, processing our own experiences, our own feelings, our own personal aesthetic and comes up with something.  If we're skilled in communication or in the history of the medium, we can usually articulate why this particular thing makes us feel this particular way, but sometimes the sheer joy or exhilaration of the piece robs us of our words.  We look at it and words fail us.  This was a pure, unadulterated cackle with glee moment.

Chase Winovich has said a lot of things.  He has said many many things that would be worrisome if he was not out there every play, backing it up, leading the posse like Kurt Russell's Wyatt Earp in the last hour of Tombstone, and riding herd like he knows the exact amount in his bank account so he can start writing checks all over the Big Ten.  I am sure that he annoys the hell out of the rest of the Big Ten and probably the country, but I don't care.  The guy who can destroy opposing quarterbacks but still take time to let the Drama Department know that he really enjoyed their performance of Sweet Charity, he's the Winovich, and we love him.

A trip to New Jersey next week awaits.  Onward.