Finding our lost Wolverine pride. Does it start after The Game?

I was thinking about the upcoming end of the Michigan football season the other day when I saw this quote my nephew retweeted. While it should have made me think of things in my personal life, like my new job after a period of unemployment, what it really made me think of is how this phrase applies to Michigan football and those who love it. It brought to mind everything we've lost since 2008 (or even a little earlier than that if you count the Appalachian State Horror, as I do.)  It's not just the games or this year's vanishing recruits or the coaching merry-go-round. We lost precious time and those are years we can't get back. They're dates that will never appear on championship trophies and seasons our rivals will point to and mock ruthlessly for years to come. There's no fixing the time we've lost. Perhaps the most important thing we've lost as fans is our pride in the program. The love of it remains, but the pride we had? Well, there's that eerily apropos proverb to consider. And what a fall! Luckily, the pride is something that we can find again. 

Unless the gods of football orchestrate a miracle, however, it will not happen this Saturday in Columbus. I don't want to be a downer. There's nothing I would love more than to watch Michigan drive a stake (tent or otherwise) into the heart of the Buckeyes' playoff dreams and to see our team and its seniors win one of the biggest games in their Michigan careers. But I'd be lying if I said I believed it would happen. The Meyer-driven OSU football machine is running strong and little in what I've seen of Team 135 gives me confidence, especially playing in the Horseshoe. I just hope they can play a game they can be proud of when that miracle doesn't come their way. Win or lose, I expect these players will do what they have all year: face both success and adversity with sportsmanship and grace that is a point of pride to claim.

This weekend is going to be a lot bigger than just "The Game." I don't have to brace myself for a loss on the field. My cloak of indifference is fitting quite nicely and I've been wearing it all season. (It makes Saturdays easier.) Whatever the result, this weekend will be the peak of anticipation for the changes on the horizon. By now we know what end it signifies. We also imagine with hope the beginning it might become. 

It will very likely be the last game in which we'll see Brady Hoke clapping on the sidelines, dressed as though he coached in Florida, working without a headset. Although I know this is the right thing, it still makes me feel a bit sad for him. He so clearly loves Michigan and the players in his charge. When he says he coaches because he wants to make them better men, better fathers, and better citizens, I completely believe him. I respect that. I just wish he knew how to make them better football players. Unrealized potential is another loss we can't get back and Hoke carries the responsibility for that. He's everything Michigan wanted in a coach, except the get-us-back-to-elite part. It was over his head and this is not a program where learning on-the-job is an option. It'll be hard to watch the painful end of a good man's dream job. It would be harder still to watch him continue in it.

As this weekend passes, AD Jim Hackett will also be free to do whatever it is that he's planning to do. Rumors already abound. Flights are tracked and their itineraries mused upon. Lists of candidates and the odds of their ending up at Schembechler Hall will be fodder for TV, radio, blogs, and dinner tables until the truth is revealed. Will it mean tremendous joy or disappointment? Will it give us hope to find all that was lost while time ticked away in the most unsatisfying and soul-sucking manner imaginable for the past 8 years? 

Time will tell and sadly a lot more of that will pass as we wait impatiently for the next coach's results. It's not going to be an easy wait. I hope whoever he is, he can come in swinging and make things happen at a pace the mob can accept. If a Jim Harbaugh, a Les Miles, or a Dan Mullen can't satisfy us, it'll be hard to find the man who can. We're a smart fan base, but we aren't an easy one. 

It's too soon to start worrying about Team 136's coach and his first year body of work. It's enough for me to know that, unless we're all blind, change is coming and hope will soon return to the Big House. It's a start and the only way forward to realizing that anything lost can be found again but time. Like our Wolverine pride.
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Go Blue! Beat OSU! Be proud -- and don't let Uncle Urban have the satisfaction of torturing, eviscerating, and hacking you in four quarters as the world expects.

Add one more alumna's voice the swell of discontent with Michigan Football

The Alumni Association posted an article about alumni reactions to the Athletic Department announcement that they will lower 2015 student season ticket prices to $175. It seems that we alumni weren't shy in voicing our opinions about that and other issues plaguing the football program of late. The association was able to break down the comments into four main themes. The alumni thought that: 

• Students were being overcharged
• Regular season ticket prices and the mandatory seat donation are too high for the product received
• The corporatization of football has gone too far
• Weak schedules and seating priorities are a problem

As someone who gave up a pair of season tickets long ago, I can relate to many of their concerns. I relinquished my tickets before the time of seat "donations" and prices that exceeded $60/ticket. I had to work and it was hard to make it to all the games. And not all the games were with quality opponents. Perhaps that pathetic C+ I earned in Econ 201 belies my true understanding of basic economic principles. I got enough out of that class to understand that plenty of people would pay to see a top opponent at any price, but no one would give face value to see a disemboweling of the then weaker teams like Minnesota, Northwestern, and Purdue. Every game like that which I couldn't attend meant I lost money. I finally made the tough decision and didn't renew them. I knew I'd probably never get them back. At the time, thousands stood behind me waiting for my empty seats.

Decades later, I have no regrets. I almost feel like they should change my old Econ grade to at least a B. I can see any game I want with the money I've saved by not buying season tickets myself. I have generous friends who often share their seats or sell them reasonably. It's also easy to find tickets on the secondary market. While the big games can be more expensive, they're still not as much as buying them directly from the university packaged with the other low-interest games. This year, with no real marquee teams at home (including our own), a fan could go to StubHub or to the corner of Stadium and Main before the game and get tickets for a relative pittance. I had free tickets offered to me on more than one occasion and I couldn't summon the interest to even take them. That's the persistent problem Dave Brandon has dealt with all season with thousands just like me.

As for the concerns raised in the Alumni Association article, I agree with most people.

• Students have been overcharged, and worse, treated like unruly children rather than well-educated adults. They've sucked the fun out of going to games. When I was a student, we never missed one, even if it meant sitting knee deep in snow at an OSU game in November. It was a blast. It's not just the availability of HDTV and cold, cheap beer that keeps kids home. It's the POW atmosphere. 
• Prices for regular ticket-holders are too high for the current return on investment. Seat licensing is employed by most major Division 1 schools. It wasn't Dave Brandon's brainchild. He has, however, regularly raised prices for tickets, donation levels, and every item sold in the Big House even though people were getting less for their dollar each year. Michigan fans aren't stupid, unless you consider how long they've put up with it. Everyone has their breaking point and Brandon finally pushed the edge of that envelope this year.
• Corporatization, I agree, is a problem but it isn't just happening in Ann Arbor. It's all about money and less about tradition everywhere. I'm not opposed to some changes in how a Saturday afternoon looks. The demographics of the crowd change and so will some of the "traditions". Flyovers, fireworks, and Beyonce just feel like tricks without a winning team. Hey, look at the shiny stuff up above (not the steaming mess on the field.) I do like that the stadium is loud. I like the echos of screaming fans and pump-up music mixed in with the band. Michigan Stadium has always been too dead. Too polite. Loud is not a bad thing when the opponent is trying focus on a drive. The corporate money grab is, however, driving away the cheering "little people" in favor of donors and corporate sponsors with big cash. Donors don't make much noise. What will they soon realize? The serfdom contributes a lot in smaller amounts every football Saturday, both in money and as the 12th man on the field. Brandon is now experiencing the peasant revolt. Instead of storming the Bastille, they're evacuating it.
• The weak home scheduling is the last straw for most. You can't raise prices across the board while delivering an anemic home slate, then LOSE to some theoretically anemic opponents and not expect the masses to get unruly. These are the tickets people can't unload for any price. Especially when potential buyers have no faith they'll even witness a resounding victory. Michigan has signed some future opponents of interest - UCLA, Oklahoma, Texas. Some of those games are more than 10 years in the future. That's far too distant to entice a fan now considering a pair of season tickets for next year that will likely total more than $100/seat/game plus the donation extortion fee.

The answer seems to be "Fire Brandon. Fire Hoke!". It's the correct answer, but it's a dicey one, too. It means another four years, at least, of painful rebuilding. What if fan patience doesn't survive that? Do we become the school that eats coaches and spits them out in four year cycles until the second coming of Bo? (Who is dead, by the way, and not coming back.) I don't know. I fear it'll be a long time before we're back to the way we remember being. There may be a generation of fans that won't remember how it was. The natives are restless and desperate and out for blood. Even the anointed Jim Harbaugh himself would become a persona non grata if he came here and wasn't embarrassing Dantonio and Meyer within four years. I have no doubt.

And to sum up what this alum truly feels right now? I'm really kind of scared for us.

Ugly Michigan fans don't help anyone with their hate

There are a lot of cowardly and narrow-minded people in this world and, unfortunately, many of them have social media accounts.They make statements on their own pages and post comments on those of others that are so cruel and inhuman it makes me shudder with anger. They stir things up and divide people, often by playing on the deep-seated emotions, beliefs, and values of those they've targeted and the people who follow them. As an intelligent, open-minded person raised by intelligent, mostly open-minded parents, I often find it hard not to get drawn in to some of these verbal battles to argue the other side or call out people as the fools they are. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don't. A fight is what many are looking for and just gives them more fuel and electronic real estate to spew their negativity. I think many of them only show their stupidity so freely on Facebook and Twitter because they have a sense of anonymity and distance from the person or group they're attacking. It's bad enough they think it at all, but would they say these things to a person's face, staring him right in the eye? Many wouldn't, but for some, it wouldn't be troubling in the least.

I bring this up because of a tweet I read earlier today that linked to an October 20, 2014 Detroit News interview by Angelique Chengelis in which Michigan QB Devin Gardner admitted receiving hate mail and tweets regularly, from the time he started for the Wolverines into this current season. He says in the article that he's been called the N-word "so many times this year" and estimates about 1000 instances of negative Facebook and Twitter posts. 

It would be easy to say that these weren't Michigan fans and were just trolls from rival Spartans or Buckeyes. I don't believe that's always the case, though. Gardner's admission reminded me immediately of the 2011 ESPN 30 for 30 episode The Fab Five. A segment of that documentary absolutely shocked me. It was about the hundreds of vitriolic and racist letters sent to the athletic department complaining about the Fab Five, their cockiness, their playing style, even their baggy shorts. The letters were not from rivals. They were from U-M alumni, many signed with full names and graduation dates. They were from "intelligent" people with a Michigan diploma hanging on their wall somewhere. Yeah, the leaders and best. They showed actual portions of these letters and I was so struck with shame that these should come from Michigan graduates that I could have cried. I must have had a different experience during my tenure in Ann Arbor in the early 1980s. I thought I had an open mind when I got there, but after meeting so many people from all walks of life and from places all over the globe, it actually gave me an even larger appreciation of the differences and similarities between us.

I know there are racists and "haters" of all kinds in places where we would least expect them. The University of Michigan is no different. One would think it might be a changed world by 2014, but it's clearly not. People are a product of their upbringing and some will never make the change of heart or mind regardless of the level of their education or exposure to new experiences. Freedom of speech is something I believe in strongly and while these people have an absolute right to say or write what they believe, I think they would do better to keep their ignorance to themselves. There is no good purpose or excuse for these kinds of unproductive, incendiary comments. They don't educate the reader or eliminate perceived problems. They don't increase a quarterback's completion percentage or a guard's accuracy from the 3-point range. Fans who write hatefully about or directly to Michigan student-athletes aren't helping anything at all. No real fan would do that. No real human being would do that. 

To combat this in my own way, instead of arguing with the angry mob, I now direct something positive to their target. I did it for both Shane Morris and Russell Bellomy when they had rough times replacing Gardner in the past few games. I didn't lie and say they did great. I just kept my sentiments kind and encouraging. I've done it for some slumping Tigers this past season, too. It makes me feel better. And if it catches the eye of someone who needs more encouragement than empty criticism and hate, I hope it gives them a needed lift.