I can smell the burgers cooking in the kitchen. My grandma makes them every Saturday during football season, so we can all eat during halftime. They’re lean ground beef, started in a little water so they steam to keep them moist. They are the driest, most flavorless burgers you’ve ever had. I’m cross-legged on the dark brown carpet, next to my cousin. There’s only a few chairs in my grandparents' living room, along with a couch my grandma calls a “davenport,” and all the seats are taken. Who is sitting where changes game to game. Desmond Howard runs back a punt on an old tube tv and my uncle Tom cheers from the faded white chair in the corner. Denard Robinson is into open field on a brand new flat screen and my mom jumps off the davenport. The only spot that never changes is the recliner in the corner where my grandpa sits, in a gray Michigan sweatshirt. 

This is where I learn about football. Not the mechanics of it, nothing so trivial as what cover 3 was, but the essence of it. What football feels like. The exhilaration when Tyrone Wheatley is a yard past the line of scrimmage and starts accelerating. The pit that grows in your stomach when the ball is in the air and Ted Ginn Jr. has one, now two steps. My formal football education comes later, most of it from places like MgoBlog and SmartFootball. For now, my only teacher is grandpa, and football is a simple game. 2 teams line up with a ball between them and try to kick the ever-loving shit out of each other. Finesse passing attacks like the one Drew Brees led at Purdue are underhanded trickery, cheap gimmicks employed by soft teams. Real teams line up with a fullback, graciously inform the defense what the play would be, then knock them 5 yards backward on the snap. 

The Wolverines allow a big play and it’s lesson time. It doesn’t come among all the shouting though, he waits until we quiet down, and the broadcast cuts to commercial, before saying “they can’t give him that much time.” His voice isn’t one of anger, but of exasperation, like he is explaining something to a child for the 10th time. More and more Saturdays happen, and the crowd thins out as people find other things to do. I’m promoted off the floor into an open seat on the davenport, and that’s where I’m sitting when I learn “that’s how you do it!” after a particularly bruising Chris Perry touchdown. More time passes, I’m old enough that I join my mother in cursing that TV as Javon Ringer jogs into the endzone when I learn “they just aren’t very good.” That one gets a little too useful.

I’m no longer in a living room, I’m driving home from work. It’s a beautiful day out, sometime in August, the windows are down and it’s not cooling me off but I don’t care, I’m thinking about Michigan football. Or rather I’m thinking about my relationship to Michigan football, what it means to me, what it should mean to me. I know other Michigan fans are doing the same thing, trying to figure out just how much of their emotional well-being to push into the pot this year. I think back to that living room that I haven’t seen in years, and I remember how much I loved watching Michigan back then. I remember when I got a job where I needed to work Saturdays, and my grandma telling me it feels too quiet watching Michigan without me there shouting. I think about what I wouldn’t give to watch one more game in that living room, and eat those terrible hamburgers. 

I’m back in a living room, but this one is different. The carpet is gray and the only seating is a sectional, which I’m sharing one section of with a dog that refuses to acknowledge how big she is. Instead of hamburgers, it smells like leftover turkey and stuffing. The Game is on the TV, and Michigan is kicking the ever-loving shit out of Ohio State. They aren’t using a fullback, but they are lining up, telling the Buckeye defenders “We are about to handoff to Hassan Haskins,” then blowing them 5 yards back. I understand the complexities of football much better now, but I’m not thinking about any of those right now. I’m thinking about how Aiden Hutchinson is imposing his will onto the Ohio State offense, how the Michigan offensive line is physically dominating the OSU defensive front. I think of how much my grandpa would have loved this team, not just because they won but because they played “real football.” I start to think about what I’m going to do for the Big Ten Championship. Maybe I’ll make hamburgers.