True loyalty is that quality of service that grows under adversity and expands in defeat. Any street urchin can shout applause in victory, but it takes character to stand fast in defeat. One is noise - the other, loyalty. - Fielding Yost

 

Within the Michigan fandom the past 15 years there have been a lot of defeats, a huge heaping of humble pie, and the creation of this idea of ‘BPONE’, which although understandable, was self-defeating at best and a desertion of being a loyal fan at worst. But I get it, sometimes the universe feels like it wants Michigan Football to suffer. 

 

BPONE is an oversimplification of the college fandom ethos. A bad thing happens; it must be because the cosmos want me to suffer. You see, being a fan of a team doesn’t give you any privileges– rent is due at the end of each month, and no you can’t wear your shoes in the house. In its most cynical form, it’s mostly disappointment followed by a few fleeting moments of enjoyment, and then it’s back to self-wallowing. So why do we do it? We do it because we are tribal and crave attachment to one tribe. We love our team and what it stands for; we hate our rivals who stand in direct antithesis to what we stand for. Good vs. Evil. Drago vs. Rocky. Biggy vs. Tupac.

 

Intermixed with this, if we are lucky, is the moment when your team gets to stand atop a makeshift stage in an NFL monolith stadium built to squeeze out every last penny out of their customers and watch your team be drenched in confetti and stuffed into comically oversized T-shirts that say Big 10 Champs on it. And from there you get the privilege to play one of the 2 SEC professional teams with real, live NFL players masquerading as college athletes. If you make it through that gauntlet you get to stand atop another makeshift stage in another NFL monolith stadium built to squeeze out every last penny out of their customers and accept a trophy from a corpse in a suit whose sole job is to slap backs with other old corpses wearing suits who profit maximize, whatever the hell that means.

 

All of this seems fine, but to me, the real moments of Michigan fandom are the ones like Saturday afternoon. It makes the past 15 years of built-up pain and frustration (almost) worth it. It’s not a battle of Good vs. Evil, but it sure as hell feels like it. So enjoy the hell out of this run Michigan fans; I don’t know when this ride ends, but what you’re seeing right now from this team is absolutely the funnest football I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. It may not end in a National Title like ‘97, but Harbaugh and his team deserve to take the biggest of bows for their 23-1 record in the past two regular seasons. College football needs a relevant Michigan. It needs Texas to be back. It needs USC to be in the playoff. It needs to get away from the same 3 teams winning every year. We need parity as we had in the ’80s (7 different National Champs). The dinner reservation has been set, it’s time for Michigan to finally take its rightful seat at the Big Boys table again. 

 

“The last thing you want to do is poke the bear,’’ “The bear got poked, and this is what happened.’’ Broncos general manager John Elway on Tom Brady and Deflategate

 

Sure, ok Ohio State fans, take this one personally. Just like the last one. Be galled by the sheer blasphemy of planting a flag in YOUR Stadium. A stadium where grown men wear face paint and dangle nuts around their necks. The holiest of places where I’ve seen grown men throw drinks at women and children and scream profanities at them because it makes their lives feel just a teeny bit better for a few hours in the fall. A University and a fanbase that wants you to know how serious they take their rival that they won’t call them by their name and refer to them with a stupid acronym from 40 years ago. A University whose identity is to once a year cross out 1/26 of the alphabet (to varying degrees of effectiveness) in what I assume is to prove to the world that they in fact do know the alphabet and can read and write as well. It’s childish and silly, but whatever, if that’s what they want to wrap their self-worth and identity into, who am I to judge? But sure, let’s take this defeat as a sign of disrespect. 

 

Sure, but now this means war... And this time we mean it! Be careful what you wish for Ryan Day and OSU. You poked the bear with your "Hang a 100 on em". And you spent 365 days claiming you were going to take this next one seriously. No for real. Going to be really fun coaching for your life in Ann Arbor next year for fans that will run you out of town with a 95% win percentage if you can’t beat Michigan... Toodaloo and best of luck Mr. Day!

 

Sure, Harbaugh just broke OSU’s spirit. Do you want to know why OSU players, coaches, and fans get so upset when you call their team soft? It’s because they’ve built up an identity as the big, bad bullies on the block. Let’s go for 2 because we can’t go for 3. Let’s employ a coach whose morals are so decrepit it makes your skin crawl because he knows how to win against Michigan. Let’s hang a 100 on em... Er, wait, forget about that last one.

 

Do you know what happens to bullies? Sure, they may reign supreme picking on those “weaker” than them for a while. Tormenting and teasing them, all the while hiding their true insecurities. But one day that bully will get punched in the face. It doesn’t happen right away, but when it does happen, the bullies are the first ones to claim they are the victim. It doesn’t feel good to be punched in the face, does it OSU? 

 

You aren’t the bullies anymore. You are the wolf in scarlet clothing and the secret is out. Michigan doesn’t need to talk about how tough they are, they just do it. They don’t need to yell to every reporter about the work they’ve been doing to beat OSU, they just do it. It’s a breath of fresh air in the toxic polluted air of social media, and self-promotion. Michigan doesn’t need to talk about it, they’re just it. To use a #Tiktok trend to describe what happened... OSU fucked around long enough to find out.

 

 

The secret is to work less as individuals and more as a team. As a coach, I play not my eleven best, but my best eleven. — Knute Rockne

 

This team is fun, it’s made up of an awesome group of guys who deserve every bit of praise. Seniors like Cornelius Johnson, Mazi Smith, and Mikey Sainristl who exemplify what we want our Michigan teams to look like. Cornelius comes from a badass family that values education (Mom is a Dr. and Michigan Med grad and Dad is a Stanford MBA and Marketing Exec). Mazi’s grandfather was a key part of the civil rights movement in Grand Rapids. Mikey’s an immigrant who comes from Haiti. It was fun watching each of those guys ball out when it mattered the most. 

 

They are carrying on the standard from Aidan and Hassan from last year. And next year Donovan, JJ, and Junior will carry it forward. This is what we’ve been waiting for… a team that isn’t built around a collection of individuals. You need 5-star talent to take it to the next level, but you need the right 5-star talent mixed in with the 3 stars that you developed.

 

It’s a shock they even allowed this game to be played with the sheer talent gap between these two schools. I almost forgot that football is played on a real, physical field and not some NCAA 14 football sim of an amalgamation of the top 5-stars you can find. This result has hopefully broken the brain of the “Starzzz matters” crowd. All things being equal, sure you’d love to field a team of 5-star talent, but that’s not how football works. Stars kinda matter, but it isn’t the only thing when you’re building a team. And it annoys the hell of me that we’ve allowed the narrative around college football to be as simple as that. Fans are smarter than that, and we’ve been forced to co-opt this narrative that you shouldn’t even step on the field unless half your roster fits the Blue Chip Ratio™. It’s lazy analysis and I’m tired of having to defend why college football is more nuanced than Blue Chip Ratio ™.

 

OSU is the definition of Blue Chip Ratio ™, but none of this mattered, because Harbaugh has built a team of dudes. Dudes like him that eat, sleep, and breathe football. Michigan went out and smacked a team upside the head with “more talent” with their own damn playbook. A team filled with the shiniest offensive toys in all of college football put up 500 yards of offense and all they had to show for it was 23 points. They had 9 penalties for almost 100 yards and looked every bit as tight and scared as the Head Coach responsible for it. Their Heisman QB faded away when it mattered the most. Congrats on landing your 8th 5-star WR.. it doesn’t matter if you don’t build a team around them. 

 

They were a team that spent 365 days telling everybody how tough they were and constantly touted the toughness of a guy playing who had “two broken hands aka just two broken thumbs.” Michigan’s best player didn’t play. His backup had one thumb and spent an entire 2nd half running away from the guy on the other sideline with none. They talked about how physical they were, but couldn’t convert third downs running the ball because their OL is built to pass pro and not pick up the tough yards. 

 

You’ll hear about how it was fluky that we broke off those big plays… don’t listen to that…the tape doesn't lie. Michigan wore this defense down as they did against absolutely every single defense this year. At Michigan, it’s a mindset and a mentality and not a mantra you plaster on the wall. It freaks me out a little bit when I hear the praise I hear from NFL folks about this team and how they play. It’s almost an orgasm of grunting of football words: smash-mouth, tough, well-coached, disciplined, and most importantly.. Future NFL pros. It’s almost jarring hearing this much praise juxtaposed against the cacophony of blowhard media types. The hype is real, it’s deserved, and I can promise you that what we’ve built is sustainable if we put the right support system behind it. But that’s a post for another day.

 

"I have yet to be in a game where luck was involved." –Urban Meyer

 

Straight from God himself. Today, if you asked an Ohio State fan, would you let Urban Meyer sleep with your wife if he returned to coach OSU? I would venture a guess that the percentage who would take that deal without hesitation to be somewhere in the ballpark of the number of points Michigan has hung on OSU these past two years. 

 

This game was a whooping – and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I have found over the years that the number of “reporters” and “journalists” who have trolled Michigan has reached astronomical numbers: Finebaum, Barrett Sallee, Steven Godfrey, Stu Mandel, Heather Dinich, Pete Thamel, Clay Travis, sadly I could go on and on.

 

The Michigan fanbase is an easy troll. A: Because our perceptions of the program have not equaled our success on the field the past 15 years; B: because the sheer number of Michigan fans means excellent click numbers and fake engagement; and C: none of these people have likely interacted with Michigan fans on any real level in their lifetimes and prefer to build their narrative around a tired trope of “baaarggh Michigan Man, elitism, Harbaugh is so weird dontcha know, Michigan hasn’t beaten OSU in 15 years hardy har har har”.

My interactions with most Michigan fans aren’t at all like those people have described.. but there are times where I open up Twitter or Facebook or Mgoblog and I have to shut the laptop, lest I get too angry. I wrote a Diary post two years ago about how football wasn’t fun anymore. It detailed a mixture of a sense of jadedness from working in this industry for over two decades, a sadness about where the game was going, and a realization that I didn’t know where Michigan would find itself at the end of it all. 

 

What these last two years have taught me is that football is FUN, especially when you win, and we as fans don’t need to consume it ‘the whole hog’ all the time. Ignore the troll toll, there’s another way around this sport. It’s magical when you can look back at the seasons and the moments that will stick in your brains forever… Desmond’s punt return in ‘91, Woodson’s punt return in ‘97, Aidan Hutchison and Hassan Haskins willing a team to rip the monkey off our backs last year, and now adding to that Donovan Edwards is still running free from Tommy “Two Thumbs” Eichenberg. 

Because Ladies and Gentleman, remember this for next year “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action” -- Goldfinger