disconcerting signals

10/31/2020 – Michigan 24, Michigan State 27, 1-1

At some point over the weekend I was hungry and not in the mood to do something that required time, so I smeared some cream cheese on a heel of bread. When I bit into it, it was vastly more stale than I expected. But it is what I had signed up for. So I ate it.

It was unpleasant, but eventually it was over. And then I did something else. Silver lining: column theme.

I appear to be over it. This is not a decision I've undertaken, it's just what happened after the game: not much. I have become the popular internet meme.

We're at the Final Season Of Battlestar Galactica stage of Michigan football. (Spoilers for the aughts reboot of Battlestar Galactica follow.) Things really started to go off the rails for Battlestar when the season four finale dramatically revealed five main characters as secret Cylons without any setup, explanation, or plan. They just heard "The Joker and The Thief"—a song that does not exist in their society—and were suddenly activated. Then Starbuck blew up in a plane and mysteriously returned, again without explanation.

I kept watching, but my previous enthusiasm for the show waned. Eventually I was just watching out of habit and hoping against hope that somehow the people writing this suddenly absurd show could pull a rabbit out of their butt. Instead there's like a mystical piano(?) Starbuck plays that leads them to a prehistoric Earth. Then she pops out of existence. Literally! One minute she's talking to Edward James Olmos and then she says some sort of koan and disappears.

There were some poignant moments in there but when it was over I experienced relief that I didn't have to pay attention to it any more. I groaned "oh, come on!" on a weekly basis. This analogy is airtight.

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So the Black Pit Of Negative Expectations was ephemeral. Mad during game; as soon as it was over* apathy set in. This is for the best.

We're in year six of Jim Harbaugh, who has done well enough that no one would ever fire him lest the Curse of Frank Solich descend upon them as it has Nebraska. Harbaugh has done progressively worse against Ohio State, getting nuked the last two years, and is now set to go up against Justin Fields and a zillion five star receivers with one decent cornerback and four guys who run like Wario. He just lost to MSU as a more than three-touchdown favorite. Damning stats follow him around. This was a new one I saw this week: 1-9 in the final two games of the season.

People can talk about firing coordinators or even the head coach. The former won't matter; the latter won't happen. I picked the GIF version of the meme above because it repeats infinitely, one reset after another, an endless weary parade of going again.

*[Actually it turns out before it was over: I turned the game off after MSU recovered the onside kick because I thought Michigan had two timeouts and there were 37 seconds left. It turns out Michigan got bailed out of their initial timeout by the officials? This was not explained, and the chyron said two timeouts.]

[After THE JUMP: press cover defense with nobody who can run]