Hope

I'm moving forward because there's only two choices: wallow in bitterness or accept the whims of cruel fate and hope the universe sees fit to balance them out in the long run.

But it is better to take action than just to say you're moving forward.  Thankfully, our friends at the Big Ten office have decided that, in addition to a "public reprimand" for Coach Harbaugh for his postgame comments, they have fined Michigan $10,000 for violations of the Big Ten's sportsmanship policy.

Now, we're not worried about Michigan's ability to pay the fine.  In fact, I'm pretty sure Warde Manuel has a small piggy bank in Weidenbach Hall labeled "Harbaugh Says Something Fund" filled with the petty cash overflow from Michigan Stadium popcorn sales that will cover it no sweat.  But, it gave our blog friend Justin at MaizeandGoBlue an idea, one supported by Kerri from SupportUofM and Brad from Maize & Blue Nation as well as us here at the HSR, to launch a fundraiser benefiting The ChadTough Foundation.

This is a chance for all of us to turn a negative into a positive, to turn disappointment into hope, and to prove that the power of the Ann Arbor money cannon is a force for good.
The plan is as such:
Step 1: Raise $10k for The ChadTough Foundation by kickoff of this Saturday’s Big Ten Championship Game
Step 2: Once we raise $10k, let’s challenge the Big Ten to match the donation
Step 3: Let's make this a conversation piece during the Big Ten Championship Game
We’re all part of a big Michigan family, so let's show that when a family faces disappointment it can come together and make big things happen.  Spread the word on your social media channels, get the snowball rolling.

Visit the fundraiser to donate now.

No amount is too large or too small.  (We personally like $27.00 for what the winning score would have been had the spot been adjudicated in Michigan's favor or $17.00 if you're old school and think the tie would have been perhaps more fitting an outcome for a battle of this magnitude.)

Then, once you donate, please share via social media to help generate awareness. Full details on the fundraiser page.


We thank you in advance on this "Giving Tuesday" and as always, forever Go Blue!

Looking good, Billy Ray

It started simply, from Jane's Michigan preview for EDSBS, which most of you have probably already read.  But, the important quote is:

"If Notre Dame fans are noted for their eternal (and quixotic) optimism, Michigan fans are noted for boundless, unceasing pessimism."

I agreed with this, but one of my friends argued that it is classic Michigan arrogance to feel like we lead the world in pessimism.  I agreed that this is fair, but went on to make this argument:

Michigan fans, at least in the last decade, have lived waiting for the other shoe to drop and knowing it's not if but when. The history, as it recedes further and further into the past, becomes harder to hold on to. Impossible to please, absolutely. But it's a brand of pessimism born of having tasted success and wanting it again, Pat Riley's "Disease of More" if you will. 

Michigan went from 1969-2007 without a losing season and just one .500 season caused by a freak injury to Jim Harbaugh in 1984. So the last six years have been about a massive re-calibration of expectations in a new world and not knowing what this world is like. It's like Michigan has become the college football version of Louis Winthorpe III and we have not yet figured out how to exact our revenge on the Dukes. (Hell, even Duke is good now.) 

Billy Ray Valentine: [watches Louis clean his shotgun] "You know, you can't just go around and shoot people in the kneecaps with a double-barreled shotgun 'cause you pissed at 'em."

Louis Winthorpe III: "Why not?"

Billy Ray Valentine: "'Cause it's called assault with a deadly weapon, you get 20 years for that..."

There was a time, and I can tell you, it was 2007, I was standing in Pancheros in Livonia, waiting in line, and I was plotting out the schedule and figuring out how a team that featured seniors Chad Henne and Mike Hart and Jake Long and junior Mario Manningham and was looking and figuring out where the ten wins were in the schedule.  I remember particularly fretting over the Illinois game, since ABC had announced it was going to be a night game and going to Illinois always screws Michigan up somehow.  Bad things.  But the key is, I never, for a moment, considered that Michigan could lose to a MAC team, like Eastern Michigan, let alone Appalachian State, I mean, sure, they were the defending I-AA champs, but well, this is Michigan and such.

If you want to say that the aura of invincibility was shattered forever that day, I wouldn't blame you.  Michigan had lost games before.  Michigan was actually on a two game losing streak and if you're here, I probably don't need to recap this because you're reading a Michigan football and you remember all too well what happened that day.

And yet, we could, and would, sink lower.  We did sink lower.  Toledo.  Northwestern and the Class III Fandom Endurance Badge, four tries from the one at Illinois, at Purdue 2009, Wisconsin 2010, that Gator Bowl.  We came to expect that losses were as likely as wins.  For a Michigan fan from the late 1960s on, this was a brave new world, and we had no idea how to function in it.

As fans, we found new ways though.  We savored the wins a little more, but I also think we came to appreciate the players a little more.  One could argue that Denard Robinson is the most beloved Michigan athlete in half a generation because he visibly loved Michigan as much as we did.  He was a fan like we were, except he just happened to be able to do amazing things on the football field.  An 11-2 season and a Sugar Bowl win didn't hurt that either.  But you can only sate yourself for so long on individual performances.  If you love Michigan, you love the team, and if you love the team, you want the team to win.  So when he doesn't win, and it looks not so great in some of the ones it does win, doubt creeps in.  And doubt is one of the hardest things to fight, because the only thing that conquers doubt is results to the contrary.

One of the hardest things about being a college football fans is that the season only lasts for a few short months.  For those glorious months of September (well, late August, but you know) through early January, there are results, measurements, data, to process and calculate and understand.  But from the end of the season until the beginning of fall camp, all you have is the inverse sentiments of doubt and hope.  Doubt and hope exist as the opposite sides of the same coin.  Hope is "Well, sure." Doubt is "Well, no."  Prior to 2007, Michigan fans lived in a world of hope with a small vein of doubt.  You wouldn't look at the schedule and say oh, sure, undefeated.  You knew there was a loss in there somewhere, you just didn't know where.  Post 2007, every view of the schedule is looking where the losses are and worrying that the wins won't materialize.  This is our eighth year of this and we still don't know how to function in this new world.

Here's to hope.  Here's to looking good.

The Best Laid Plans...

As both Geoff and I are traveling today, admittedly in different time zones, we don't have time to do a full post-mortem on last night. I do want to mention one thing that has been gnawing at me for the past twelve hours, even as I tried to sleep.

Last night was another visceral reminder that sports are, in many ways, the purest reminders of the whims of fortune and the ledger sheet's thin line that separates victory from defeat. A full range of emotions were encompassed in last night's game, from dismay, to shock, to anger, to faith, to hope, to redemption, to despair, to earnest steadfastness, and finally to agony. There's the old story about you never see the shot that kills you, but as that rebound flew back into the slot in front of Bryan Hogan, I knew Michigan was finished, and I was, as always, powerless in the moment. We live vicariously through what might be, and we take the pain with the joy because no pain can hurt as much as sheer joy that one experiences in triumph. But, both sides of the coin are there, so we can recognize each for what they are, diametrically opposed, yet forever intertwined.

So we thank you maize-clad men for the ride you have given us this year. We salute your effort and know that you'll live on in memory, though perhaps not in the way you had hoped. As fans, we'll brood over the summer, we'll think of what might have been, and we'll come back next October. Because next year might be the year.

Coach Rodriguez "LiveBlog"

The plan had been to liveblog this morning's presser, but there was not a whole lot of cooperation in, you know, watching the whole thing, and by the time I had figured out, well, they were well into the questions. That's my bad. So what you're getting instead is my sense of things...

I get a sense that the Detroit media are already excited about the new era, solely because Coach Rod speaks at a much quicker clip than Coach Carr did. Everyone wants to make it sound like Coach Carr was a humorless curmudgeon, but I've heard too many laughs at his press conferences to know that is a lie. But Coach Rod has a different feel. But the southern drawl and a world unseen await us. (By the way, I have believed for weeks that the Killers' "Read My Mind" was actually about the Michigan coaching search, and now, given the hire, I'm still convinced. Look up the lyrics, and you can see there's too many coincidences. I know it sounds crazy, but when you get an idea stuck in your head, strange things happen. It's also why I worry about close reading and linguistic interpretation.)

I'd like to think Coach Rod "gets it" about what coming to Michigan means to Michigan fans. He knows its a different place than West Virginia and he knows that he's got some things to learn about being at Michigan. That's not the worst thing. Similarly, he won't do everything the way it's always been done, and that may take some getting used to by us as a fan base. That's not the worst thing either.

Right now, we have the situation where the greatest thing that we as fans have as fans is hope. We see what Coach Rod has done with less highly thought of recruits at West Virginia and we salivate at the possibility of having top-notch athletes here in Ann Arbor. We think that it will be a cure all, that all of the pain and the frustration and the anguish. It's not going to be. No coach is perfect, no coach is a panacea for all that ails the football soul. We're also suckers for the new and shiny, especially when the new and shiny promises to be exciting as all get out. There will be times in the near future when Michigan loses a game because the offense could hold a lead late and we'll long for the old boring days. It will happen because it's who we are as a fan base. But let us keep things in perspective. Let us always remember that, no matter how important football may be to us, in the end, it is still just a game. From what I understand, it is that failure to understand things that helped push Coach Rod over our way.

There's an amazing difference right now between the not knowing of the coaching search and the knowing of whom we have hired and the not knowing of what the on-field future holds and seeing the results. I thought that this past summer was the most excited I had ever been waiting for a college football season to start. It shall pale next to the excitement over the anticipation of what is to come. It will be a rough transition, I know this, Coach Rod was already being very clear that there are "bumps" during the transitional period. But a new day begins today, and if we're smart, Michigan fans will do well to realize that history is what we make of it today.

Good luck Coach Rod and Go Blue. R2A2.