As many of us begin the process of cooking seemingly endless Thanksgiving staples, traveling to see people do that so we can annoy them as we watch, or in some cases, simply sitting down and watching some football and not talk to our families as they attempt to talk to us, we probably should take a little time to consider all for which we, as an online virtual community of University Of Michigan fanatics, should be thankful.

Recently, of course, there have been some challenges. The seemingly endless saga of SignGate and the trickle of news and smattering of changes which have come from that hang around in the room with an otherwise successful season, one which will again be tested on Saturday when we play The Game. Come what may in The Game, we have at least had a more successful season than many teams could usually hope to have. We have lofty expectations, however, so I am sure that this is where we wanted to be, where we thought we would be, and we would have expected no less of us to be playing for a spot in the Big Ten Championship, not to mention in the College Football Playoff.

Why bring that up at all? Well, it is in times like these, where even with success, we face adversity, that I am particularly thankful to have a place where we can, as fans, discuss the issues and commiserate, and be self-aware enough to know that we in fact just people talking about things. Well, at least most of us. We have had a few people through the years who came to believe that they could, by themselves, make a difference, usually to their own psychological detriment. For the most part, we have navigated the current crisis, if you can call it that, well on the board, and I would like to thank at least most of you for keeping a level head even in moments where a few people seemed to be freaking out, usually over unfounded drivel.

I think we also need to thank our football team for negotiating all of this with a singular concentration on the larger goals getting to 11-0 despite the useless speculation and baseless accusations which surround almost every action now. These are the things which many outside observers and supposed pundits in the sport have generated in great quantity, and the discipline we have seen from the team has been nothing short of remarkable. When I look at the apparent culture of the Michigan Wolverines, it’s both top-down and bottom-up, everyone bolstering the strength of everyone else, everyone making sure they are all on the same page – truly, a team effort. Although he has been told he cannot be there on Saturday, I would like to thank Jim Harbaugh as well for creating the conditions which have taken this team to places that we haven’t been consistently in a while, and I would like to appeal to the Regents to ensure that the extension is signed and that he is here for the long haul.

On a personal note, I was remiss in something, and if it is alright with everyone, I would like to correct the omission now. I am thankful for your support in what was a time of some difficulty in early August when my father passed. Strangely enough, I debated telling anyone here, not because I thought ill of the potential reaction, but more because I wasn’t sure if it was TOO personal. Then, I remembered that at least some of you have shared these items as well, and of course, I did open up when one of my siblings overdosed and died back in 2012, so I wrote what I thought would be a fitting eulogy for purposes of a sports blog, relating it to how a man whose journey began during the Second World War as a wee lad somehow turned into a journey that spawned an actual Michigan alumnus. My family’s story is a weird one, but it ended up quite literally in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as many weird stories do. If you are curious, I’ve finally stopped staring into space on occasion, wondering what he would say or do in certain situations, or about situations in which I might find myself – I have finally come around to accepting that I am too much like him and, in some cases, I am doing what he might have or saying what he might have.

  Returning to the main thrust of the diary, I would also like to thank everyone here for, at least much of the time, making the job of moderator at least somewhat easy and forgiving. Although the current format of the site does not lend itself to the self-policing that previous iterations of the board did, the reporting mechanism works, such as it is, works well enough that I believe we are able to address many things before they become major issues. For unpaid volunteers, I think we do well enough, but as always, if there is something you believe could be done better, let us know. It’s not a forgiving format, and there are things that people mention which are administrative in nature and above our pay grade (which is zero). The larger point is, of course, that I would like to thank everyone for being mostly calm and orderly, or at least more than I’ve seen in other places in sports Internet. In a weird way, all of you help ensure that I don’t need to be paid for the aggravation, which probably works in everyone’s favor in the long term as I am well-compensated for what I actually do in real life anyway.

We have come together this season, I think, as a community, in ways that I did not expect, and it’s comforting to see that as a veteran user (lurker since 2009 with a different account, regular since early 2011 with the current account). This place has evolved, has survived, and it has even thrived and we’ve grown to at least superficially – in some cases, more than that – get to know each other, at least well enough to be in fact a community of individuals with a common interest. I am certainly thankful that I have such a well-informed place that can talk about Michigan in a way I can’t in my daily life generally.