I was going to suggest the same thing. There are lots of little lakes in the greater Grand Rapids area that would be great to live on. There's plenty of shopping, things to do, and a major airport within a 20 minute drive. Grand Rapids is big city feel with small town benefits. East GR is nice, as is anything in the Forest Hills school district. Jenison has a nice academic and arts district as well. There's not a ton of diversity in any of those districts, so if you're looking for something more diverse, I'd hit the east side of the state :)
Seriously, though, you can't go wrong with the mid-west side!
I watched the first quarter on the ground in Waco, where my flight to Houston was diverted to because of the storm. I watched the first half of the third quarter on the phone screen of the nice man that I met on the plane and gave a ride to the game while I was breaking land speed records to get to the game in a minivan rental because that's all Enterprise had left. I watched only the last 71/2 minutes of the game from my seat. Most expensive 7 minutes and 30 seconds of my life.
Oh, and my flight home to Grand Rapids from Charlotte got diverted to Cincinnati (because, you know, there are no major airports between mid-west Michigan and northern Kentucky) after riding the vomit comet flight from Houston to Charlotte and I ended up riding home in a rented Dodge Ram pickup truck with random strangers because American was going to strand us in Cincinnati overnight and I had to get home for cancer treatment.
Best wishes for your health challenges, and for financially surviving them.
Side note: I'm actually researching how to start a foundation for people who can't afford to write a check for $2,286.27 on the day of cancer surgery like I had to. I'm not poor by any means and I struggled with that one, I can't imagine how people without resources do it.
To be fair, I do have really good health insurance. Just not when an entire year's worth of bills happen in the last two months of one year and the first two months of the next year. Thanks for the well wishes!
I have to pay a cancer radiation bill (getting cancer in November...0 out of 10 stars, can't recommend...finished my copay max with surgery in November, and started radiation on January 2nd...new deductible, new max out of pocket. Yay me) so I'm waiting for the cheapest tickets possible. Have plane ticket, have hotel reservations, have parking spot at stadium. Adjusted my radiation schedule. Just need tickets under $1k out the door. So close!
I don't have a problem paying 8-900 per ticket, it's the 2-300 in broker fees I can't stomach. Especially knowing that they're jacking the seller as well. Absolute ripoff.
Parking? I have a flight that lands on Monday at 4:15 and hope to rent a car and make it somewhere near the stadium by kick-off. How late will I be? (I've been to Houston once and remember the traffic being horrible....)
Already have a flight booked, have permission to switch my time for radiation, and have a plane ticket for my 78-year old dad to fly in from Tampa. If you're looking to get rid of 2 tickets to guaranteed Michigan fans (and season ticket holders), holla. jeandevries2 at gmail dot com.
No lie, we were driving in the car a few years ago and my 40-something sister was singing along and I heard her sing, "Dirty deeds...THUNDERCHEEKS!" and my face was all, "What the hell did you just say?" and then I had to pull over because I was laughing so hard at her.
Seriously. I had to give up my Rose Bowl tix because I couldn't find airfare for less than $1600, and that was into any LA airport, San Diego, Phoenix, or Vegas.
Now I have cheap airline tickets to Houston and no game tickets :)
I have two DIEHARD Sparty fan friends who are semi-converted because of UM Hospital. One saved two of her kids' lives with a special heart surgery they don't do anywhere else in the state. The other friend's daughter didn't make it, unfortunately, but it wasn't for complete lack of trying and compassion on the part of UMH.
If anyone bought tickets and then gets a set for Christmas and therefore has extra, I'd really like to take my dad. We already have plane tickets (because he still had credit from when he bought plane tickets last year and we shat all over the field in Glendale and didn't go) and I have backup plans to send my sister with him if I can't work out my radiation schedule (but I'm having it done at UM Health West, so I think they might understand???) Alas, my measly 161 points didn't make the cut this year.
Happy to buy them off of you at a reasonable price. Please don't let the fact that they are 0-2 in playoff games I've attended, and 3-0 in B1G championship games that I haven't sway you.
Unrelated note: Did the school just get less tickets this year? I got tix last year with my 160ish points, and NRG seats about 2K more than SoFi.
Hear ya. Had to give up the tix I had because airfare from Michigan is RIDICULOUS. Could not find a plane ticket for under $1600. Tickets to Houston are MUCH cheaper, now I just have to talk my radiation oncologist to work around a football game schedule. Lol.
If one does not see that hazing as described as sexual harassment but rather as a "tradition" or a "rite of passage" then one sees nothing wrong with it. If one sees nothing wrong with it, one goes about their day being a good person and doing all of the things that Eduardo says. One also could have had it reported to them and not considered it a big deal (see above) and therefore wouldn't do anything about it.
What I kept thinking when I read Eduardo's note is that Pat Fitzerald could be all of the things that he described, and still enable locker room assholery. It just requires a myopic view of what is acceptable in the world these days, and a sport where testosterone is king is probably not the place that shines a light on that with any regularity.
I also kept thinking that every player that voluntarily participated is probably in charge of something somewhere, and this behavior has been taken from the locker room to the board room.
Hold up. All that happened to you and you WEREN'T on the football team? So there was another team/coach that was OK with this?
I'm so sorry this happened to you. Adultier adults should have protected you from what is clearly a systemic problem at NU. I'm disgusted on your behalf and hope you are able to heal.
I'm going to the semi's, so I might just extend my trip to Phoenix when we win since it's stupid to come home on the Tuesday after the Semi and go back out there 3 days later.
"Quarterback is going to be interesting. You're returning a redshirt junior McNamara and a sophomore McCarthy. McNamara is the starter for the defending Big Ten champions. McNamara is outrunning safeties and just casually doing stuff like this:"
I believe it is McCarthy who outrunned safeties and the like, not McNamara.
Based on previous bowl game experience at that stadium.....
If you're eating at the stadium, eat early. Because it's not regularly used, they only have so much food and once it's gone, it's gone. They ran out of most things by the third quarter last time I was there.
Oh, and also....I spent a weekend in Happy Valley earlier this year. It was (college) wrestling season. For some reason, wrestling is REALLY big in that part of the country....like, bars were full and all the TV's were on PSU wrestling. They probably won't care if they lose. They're a wrestling school.
FWIW, my dad is my other season ticketholder. I've never actually thought him to be an a-hole, but I have, on many occasions, passed up more fun Saturday plans so that I can spend 7 hours on a fall Saturday afternoon with my dad because, one day, I'll only be able to look back on Michigan football together.
Jubilation FTW only because that narration is almost literally word for word what went through my head on that play.
Also, because I'm in a really bad headspace right now and any opportunity to literally laugh out loud is a welcome reprieve. OFAAT is my favorite post of the week, every week.
Also also, I like how these clips highlight that new thing we seem to be doing where we actually wrap a guy up to tackle him rather than just throw a few curled fingers in their direction and hope that does the trick.
My rafting guide one summer in Colorado was a (then) current NFL offensive lineman for the Colts. I was all like, "Dude. You play in the NFL, what are you doing here?" and he said he was learning the ropes so that when he wasn't in the NFL anymore he could make money owning his own rafting company.
He did say that Peyton "tipped" his OL very, very well.
However, cryptic tweets, transfers, Don Brown interviewing to leave, and the timing of the "pay us more money for your seat" email all point towards a shoe dropping in January. Not sure what size or brand, but it feels like once something big happens, we'll all be discussing how the writing was on the wall the whole time.
Isn't this the time of year final grades come out? Or at least the realization that you can't save all of those tests you didn't study for or papers you didn't write?
(I'm not saying that's the case here, but there seem to be a lot more people who drop out/transfer/leave towards the end of the semester than at the beginning....)
While that may have been true in the past, the fact that they're not deductible anymore (save for probably the businesses that are paying for those $90K PSD suites, cuz you know they didn't lose their tax deductions), what calendar year you pay them in is no longer relevant. May have sat better with a little more time after OSU, and a bowl win under our belts (she says optimistically.....)
Dropping this story now does take away from the "Don Brown is leaving to go to a no name place" story. And is better than dropping those in reverse order.
As my UofM Public Relations degree taught me, timing is everything, as I explained to Warde in my email to him just now.
Raising the prices less than a month after your brand shit the bed for the eleventy billiointh year in a row, coupled with the increased price we were already going to pay for three premium games in one year, and a non-conference schedule that makes it not worth the expense to get to the game is #PRFAIL.
Add on $15 for a hot dog and water, sweating to death in a climate-changed September that feels more like mid-summer, that damned rock music, and the idiot red hat guy who doubles the time games take, and I feel like they should be paying me to take tickets.
That being said, I'll renew this year. Next year is another story....
But why though? Michigan State brought out their basketball team during the game. Patrick got a photo and everything:
The football team was inspired to also lose to Michigan by double digits.
This site is my favorite on the whole internet.
Oh, also, SpartanWire, we can be pretentious because we actually know how to spell condescension. As I told one of my Sparty homer friends..."We're not arrogant, we're just better than you."
The thing about Michigan and it's fanbase is the condescention and pretentiousness is only millimeters below the surface. The moment they get a millimeter of daylight it's back to business as usual.
The last two weeks I've flat out laughed and said, "How dumb does a defense have to be to get faked out the second and third times?" (or in the case of MSU, after watching the film where it happened three times the previous week)
Then I realized that I've been faked out four times now as well.
I got in an actual text and FB argument yesterday with a Sparty friend who said that Devin Bush should be kicked out and banned from collegiate athletics.
I was all like, "Um. For cleating a field???"
He then went on to say that this kind of escalation and invitation to violence was worse than the Little Brother thing, and that it was going to get out of control quickly, and that Michigan should take immediate steps to defuse it.
To which I texted back, "Um. I'll get right on that. Not." (Mind you, this text came in at 10:00 pm, long after the team had arrived back in Ann Arbor, violence free. Likely the only violence being incited by that time was against couches in EL.)
Even when I pointed out that their tardy red rover walk clotheslined our guys, he said that we had no authority to be on the field, it was bush league, and typical Michigan arrogance.
I texted back with, "We're not arrogant, just better than you."
Spending 2 hours wages on the cheapest food/drink possible on the menu = greedy bad
Drunk walmart Wolverine behind me passed out and falling into my back every 6.5 seconds = annoyingly bad
Spending the day with my dad = priceless
We don't tailgate. We don't wander A2. We drive 2 hours for the game, we game, we drive home. That's at least 8 uninterrupted hours with my dad (which wouldn't be possible watching the game on his house at the couch...his football A.D.D. doesn't allow him to watch just one game at a time). My dad is of the age where I don't know how many more football seasons he has in him, so I don't care how much of the above I have to endure, it's worth it.
Just don't tailgate to the point where you ended up like the guy behind me on Saturday who passed out in the first half, but wasn't polite enough to just lay down in the stands. Instead, he just kept falling forward into me, prompting me to elbow him back into momentary consciousness so he would sit up. When medical came in the 4th quarter to wake him up and make sure he didn't have alcohol, sun, or not-enough-liquid poisoning, he yelled at them because "he was only taking a nap." Nevermind the fact that he pissed himself during "the nap."
This is the same team that recently had a "Millennial Night" and the first 1000 fans through the door got a participation trophy. Additionally, there was a "best manbun" contest, and selfie stations scattered throughout the park.
Recent Comments
I was going to suggest the same thing. There are lots of little lakes in the greater Grand Rapids area that would be great to live on. There's plenty of shopping, things to do, and a major airport within a 20 minute drive. Grand Rapids is big city feel with small town benefits. East GR is nice, as is anything in the Forest Hills school district. Jenison has a nice academic and arts district as well. There's not a ton of diversity in any of those districts, so if you're looking for something more diverse, I'd hit the east side of the state :)
Seriously, though, you can't go wrong with the mid-west side!
I watched the first quarter on the ground in Waco, where my flight to Houston was diverted to because of the storm. I watched the first half of the third quarter on the phone screen of the nice man that I met on the plane and gave a ride to the game while I was breaking land speed records to get to the game in a minivan rental because that's all Enterprise had left. I watched only the last 71/2 minutes of the game from my seat. Most expensive 7 minutes and 30 seconds of my life.
Oh, and my flight home to Grand Rapids from Charlotte got diverted to Cincinnati (because, you know, there are no major airports between mid-west Michigan and northern Kentucky) after riding the vomit comet flight from Houston to Charlotte and I ended up riding home in a rented Dodge Ram pickup truck with random strangers because American was going to strand us in Cincinnati overnight and I had to get home for cancer treatment.
Best wishes for your health challenges, and for financially surviving them.
Side note: I'm actually researching how to start a foundation for people who can't afford to write a check for $2,286.27 on the day of cancer surgery like I had to. I'm not poor by any means and I struggled with that one, I can't imagine how people without resources do it.
They looked like they were headed back up, so I panicked and grabbed some just a fuzz above my price range. It's ok...it's just money. I'll make more.
Thank you!
To be fair, I do have really good health insurance. Just not when an entire year's worth of bills happen in the last two months of one year and the first two months of the next year. Thanks for the well wishes!
I have to pay a cancer radiation bill (getting cancer in November...0 out of 10 stars, can't recommend...finished my copay max with surgery in November, and started radiation on January 2nd...new deductible, new max out of pocket. Yay me) so I'm waiting for the cheapest tickets possible. Have plane ticket, have hotel reservations, have parking spot at stadium. Adjusted my radiation schedule. Just need tickets under $1k out the door. So close!
I don't have a problem paying 8-900 per ticket, it's the 2-300 in broker fees I can't stomach. Especially knowing that they're jacking the seller as well. Absolute ripoff.
Parking? I have a flight that lands on Monday at 4:15 and hope to rent a car and make it somewhere near the stadium by kick-off. How late will I be? (I've been to Houston once and remember the traffic being horrible....)
Already have a flight booked, have permission to switch my time for radiation, and have a plane ticket for my 78-year old dad to fly in from Tampa. If you're looking to get rid of 2 tickets to guaranteed Michigan fans (and season ticket holders), holla. jeandevries2 at gmail dot com.
Looking for 2 tix to national championship for me & my 78-year old dad to give him a once in a lifetime experience.
Text me at 616-560-7955.
Looking for 2 tix to national championship for me & my 78-year old dad to give him a once in a lifetime experience.
Text me at 616-560-7955.
Looking for 2 tix to national championship for me & my 78-year old dad to give him a once in a lifetime experience.
Text me at 616-560-7955.
No lie, we were driving in the car a few years ago and my 40-something sister was singing along and I heard her sing, "Dirty deeds...THUNDERCHEEKS!" and my face was all, "What the hell did you just say?" and then I had to pull over because I was laughing so hard at her.
Seriously. I had to give up my Rose Bowl tix because I couldn't find airfare for less than $1600, and that was into any LA airport, San Diego, Phoenix, or Vegas.
Now I have cheap airline tickets to Houston and no game tickets :)
I have two DIEHARD Sparty fan friends who are semi-converted because of UM Hospital. One saved two of her kids' lives with a special heart surgery they don't do anywhere else in the state. The other friend's daughter didn't make it, unfortunately, but it wasn't for complete lack of trying and compassion on the part of UMH.
If anyone bought tickets and then gets a set for Christmas and therefore has extra, I'd really like to take my dad. We already have plane tickets (because he still had credit from when he bought plane tickets last year and we shat all over the field in Glendale and didn't go) and I have backup plans to send my sister with him if I can't work out my radiation schedule (but I'm having it done at UM Health West, so I think they might understand???) Alas, my measly 161 points didn't make the cut this year.
Happy to buy them off of you at a reasonable price. Please don't let the fact that they are 0-2 in playoff games I've attended, and 3-0 in B1G championship games that I haven't sway you.
Unrelated note: Did the school just get less tickets this year? I got tix last year with my 160ish points, and NRG seats about 2K more than SoFi.
Hear ya. Had to give up the tix I had because airfare from Michigan is RIDICULOUS. Could not find a plane ticket for under $1600. Tickets to Houston are MUCH cheaper, now I just have to talk my radiation oncologist to work around a football game schedule. Lol.
If one does not see that hazing as described as sexual harassment but rather as a "tradition" or a "rite of passage" then one sees nothing wrong with it. If one sees nothing wrong with it, one goes about their day being a good person and doing all of the things that Eduardo says. One also could have had it reported to them and not considered it a big deal (see above) and therefore wouldn't do anything about it.
What I kept thinking when I read Eduardo's note is that Pat Fitzerald could be all of the things that he described, and still enable locker room assholery. It just requires a myopic view of what is acceptable in the world these days, and a sport where testosterone is king is probably not the place that shines a light on that with any regularity.
I also kept thinking that every player that voluntarily participated is probably in charge of something somewhere, and this behavior has been taken from the locker room to the board room.
Hold up. All that happened to you and you WEREN'T on the football team? So there was another team/coach that was OK with this?
I'm so sorry this happened to you. Adultier adults should have protected you from what is clearly a systemic problem at NU. I'm disgusted on your behalf and hope you are able to heal.
OK, how do I edit my post. I don't want you all triggered by my typing laziness.
That's about how many points I have as well.
I'm going to the semi's, so I might just extend my trip to Phoenix when we win since it's stupid to come home on the Tuesday after the Semi and go back out there 3 days later.
“…but, your honor, he was skipping…what was I supposed to do?”
Best of luck with that defense.
On a semi-related note, where on the freaking electronic tickets is the face value of the tickets? Trying to sell some and can't find it anywhere.
…
With all due respect:
"Quarterback is going to be interesting. You're returning a redshirt junior McNamara and a sophomore McCarthy. McNamara is the starter for the defending Big Ten champions. McNamara is outrunning safeties and just casually doing stuff like this:"
I believe it is McCarthy who outrunned safeties and the like, not McNamara.
Sent you an email
Based on previous bowl game experience at that stadium.....
If you're eating at the stadium, eat early. Because it's not regularly used, they only have so much food and once it's gone, it's gone. They ran out of most things by the third quarter last time I was there.
Oh, and also....I spent a weekend in Happy Valley earlier this year. It was (college) wrestling season. For some reason, wrestling is REALLY big in that part of the country....like, bars were full and all the TV's were on PSU wrestling. They probably won't care if they lose. They're a wrestling school.
I'll have what he's having.
FWIW, my dad is my other season ticketholder. I've never actually thought him to be an a-hole, but I have, on many occasions, passed up more fun Saturday plans so that I can spend 7 hours on a fall Saturday afternoon with my dad because, one day, I'll only be able to look back on Michigan football together.
She'll learn to cherish those days. I promise.
Jubilation FTW only because that narration is almost literally word for word what went through my head on that play.
Also, because I'm in a really bad headspace right now and any opportunity to literally laugh out loud is a welcome reprieve. OFAAT is my favorite post of the week, every week.
Also also, I like how these clips highlight that new thing we seem to be doing where we actually wrap a guy up to tackle him rather than just throw a few curled fingers in their direction and hope that does the trick.
Wait. We still have to play those three teams? We can't just end the season after last week?
After the Milton TD, my dad shook his head and said, "You just don't do that to an opposing coach."
I told him nobody needed that negativity, and to please enjoy his walk home to the other side of the state.
My rafting guide one summer in Colorado was a (then) current NFL offensive lineman for the Colts. I was all like, "Dude. You play in the NFL, what are you doing here?" and he said he was learning the ropes so that when he wasn't in the NFL anymore he could make money owning his own rafting company.
He did say that Peyton "tipped" his OL very, very well.
However, cryptic tweets, transfers, Don Brown interviewing to leave, and the timing of the "pay us more money for your seat" email all point towards a shoe dropping in January. Not sure what size or brand, but it feels like once something big happens, we'll all be discussing how the writing was on the wall the whole time.
Isn't this the time of year final grades come out? Or at least the realization that you can't save all of those tests you didn't study for or papers you didn't write?
(I'm not saying that's the case here, but there seem to be a lot more people who drop out/transfer/leave towards the end of the semester than at the beginning....)
While that may have been true in the past, the fact that they're not deductible anymore (save for probably the businesses that are paying for those $90K PSD suites, cuz you know they didn't lose their tax deductions), what calendar year you pay them in is no longer relevant. May have sat better with a little more time after OSU, and a bowl win under our belts (she says optimistically.....)
…
On the other hand.....
Dropping this story now does take away from the "Don Brown is leaving to go to a no name place" story. And is better than dropping those in reverse order.
As my UofM Public Relations degree taught me, timing is everything, as I explained to Warde in my email to him just now.
Raising the prices less than a month after your brand shit the bed for the eleventy billiointh year in a row, coupled with the increased price we were already going to pay for three premium games in one year, and a non-conference schedule that makes it not worth the expense to get to the game is #PRFAIL.
Add on $15 for a hot dog and water, sweating to death in a climate-changed September that feels more like mid-summer, that damned rock music, and the idiot red hat guy who doubles the time games take, and I feel like they should be paying me to take tickets.
That being said, I'll renew this year. Next year is another story....
Known Friends and Trusted Agents Of The Week
It's literally the heading of that section :)
But why though? Michigan State brought out their basketball team during the game. Patrick got a photo and everything:
The football team was inspired to also lose to Michigan by double digits.
This site is my favorite on the whole internet.
Oh, also, SpartanWire, we can be pretentious because we actually know how to spell condescension. As I told one of my Sparty homer friends..."We're not arrogant, we're just better than you."
The thing about Michigan and it's fanbase is the condescention and pretentiousness is only millimeters below the surface. The moment they get a millimeter of daylight it's back to business as usual.
The last two weeks I've flat out laughed and said, "How dumb does a defense have to be to get faked out the second and third times?" (or in the case of MSU, after watching the film where it happened three times the previous week)
Then I realized that I've been faked out four times now as well.
Suddenly, not so funny.
I got in an actual text and FB argument yesterday with a Sparty friend who said that Devin Bush should be kicked out and banned from collegiate athletics.
I was all like, "Um. For cleating a field???"
He then went on to say that this kind of escalation and invitation to violence was worse than the Little Brother thing, and that it was going to get out of control quickly, and that Michigan should take immediate steps to defuse it.
To which I texted back, "Um. I'll get right on that. Not." (Mind you, this text came in at 10:00 pm, long after the team had arrived back in Ann Arbor, violence free. Likely the only violence being incited by that time was against couches in EL.)
Even when I pointed out that their tardy red rover walk clotheslined our guys, he said that we had no authority to be on the field, it was bush league, and typical Michigan arrogance.
I texted back with, "We're not arrogant, just better than you."
I'm pretty sure we're not friends anymore :)
URBS DOUBLE SURRENDER COBRA'D!!!!!
Best. Day. Ever.
I just posted that EXACT same pic on my FB page, with the caption, "I do love me some Surrender Cobra, Urbs-style!"
My favorite part of the game?
Spartys getting more yardage on their pre-game red rover walk than in the actual game.
…
Game ridiculously hot = bad
Interminable commercials = bad
Spending 2 hours wages on the cheapest food/drink possible on the menu = greedy bad
Drunk walmart Wolverine behind me passed out and falling into my back every 6.5 seconds = annoyingly bad
Spending the day with my dad = priceless
We don't tailgate. We don't wander A2. We drive 2 hours for the game, we game, we drive home. That's at least 8 uninterrupted hours with my dad (which wouldn't be possible watching the game on his house at the couch...his football A.D.D. doesn't allow him to watch just one game at a time). My dad is of the age where I don't know how many more football seasons he has in him, so I don't care how much of the above I have to endure, it's worth it.
I did say to my dad, "You know you're playing a team from Texas when our sideline misters are on full blast and SMU doesn't even have theirs on."
Just don't tailgate to the point where you ended up like the guy behind me on Saturday who passed out in the first half, but wasn't polite enough to just lay down in the stands. Instead, he just kept falling forward into me, prompting me to elbow him back into momentary consciousness so he would sit up. When medical came in the 4th quarter to wake him up and make sure he didn't have alcohol, sun, or not-enough-liquid poisoning, he yelled at them because "he was only taking a nap." Nevermind the fact that he pissed himself during "the nap."
Don't be that guy.
This is the same team that recently had a "Millennial Night" and the first 1000 fans through the door got a participation trophy. Additionally, there was a "best manbun" contest, and selfie stations scattered throughout the park.