[Ed(Seth): Ben Mathis-Lilley usually writes for Slate, but he’s going to slum it with us a bit this year for an occasional report on the mood of the program and the fanbase, both of whom have granted him access even though it’s already established he will write about all of it. Maybe it’s because he’s not tall.]

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The vibes were fine, even bordering on good.

The vibes have not been fine. For my own record-keeping purposes I put together a list on Saturday night of fourteen distinct events, situations, and developments in the last calendar year—none of which were actual football games—that have induced or manifested feelings of despair, disappointment, and bitter, recriminatory message-board rage-arguing among at least some portion of the extended Michigan football community.

The reason I’m tracking such things is because I’m working on a book which is, in a nutshell, about why college football makes people so crazy—and, in a longer nutshell, hypothesizes that it does so because its programs and, especially, their coaches, are representatives of personal and cultural identity and status to a degree that is unlike any other sport. (Or, that is, any other sport which is historically preeminent in the United States.)

College football programs—their players, coaches, and fans—are ships in an undulating sea of circumstance, attempting to steer their self-conceptions on a straight course through swells and gusts that would seem at first to have little to do with who wins or loses a throwing and running game that is played on a field with an unusually shaped ball. Did you know that in 1970, Cuyahoga County, Ohio—Desmond Howard territory, prime Michigan recruiting territory—had the same population as Harris County, Texas, which, as home to the city of Houston, is prime Big 12/SEC recruiting territory? And that today, Harris County is four times as populous as Cuyahoga? You may not have known that fact per se, but if you follow Michigan’s recruiting or have feelings about its changing status relative to other national powers, you’ve felt its effects. The spread of affordable air conditioning throughout the South has ultimately become a problem for you on fall Saturdays. That is college football.

As a Michigan native and longtime fan, it seemed natural to orient a project about such craziness around this program and this season. (It’s going to be called The Hot Seat). Hence the offseason-of-discontent chronology. For me, that list starts with accomplished alum and nationally relevant commentator Brian Griese seemingly signaling his endorsement of a Jim Harbaugh dismissal via tweet in November 2020. It ends with Michigan-sports social-media polemicist ThiccStauskas being suspended from the 247 message board over his incredulously pessimistic reaction to a “fall camp rumblings” post which indicated that the team planned to “pound the rock” with its offensive playcalling.

In any case, a lot of people have left Michigan Stadium and Schembechler Hall in something less than a great mood since last season began. (A large part of the mystique embodied in the statue of Bo Schembechler outside the latter building has vanished as well.) I made the trip to Ann Arbor to see how the vibes collided with events on the ground and on the field, in what is the first of (hopefully) three or so dispatches I will file to MGoBlog as I work on the book. (If you have thoughts, ideas, or tips I’m @benmathislilley on Twitter and my DMs are open. If you like this post and know someone in the athletic department, urge them respectfully to issue me a credential for the Ohio State game.)

On top of all the football anger stuff, this wasn’t a great time for a big social event because of the ongoing threat of a resurgent virus that spreads most effectively in crowds. There was a buzz around Main Street’s restaurants and bars on Friday night, but not quite one that could qualify as electric or jam-packed; the pandemic and recovery have created labor shortages, which means a lot of empty tables, which in a circular way then serve as a reminder of What Is Going On that is unavoidable even when you are trying to Not Think About What Is Going on for a Second (By Having Beer).

[After THE JUMP: The love that the fans gave off]

On Saturday, the mood was tentative—I heard more than one expression of concern about Covid—but upbeat. The diversity of fan viewpoints and attitudes is a good thing to be reminded of. The family that organizes parking at their church across from the Pioneer High School lot, the Fountain Church of God in Christ, attested that fans were, on the whole, enthusiastic. At one Fountain Church-lot tailgate attended by, uh, a journalist (me), the journalist’s friend Brian (not that Brian) (I later shook hands with a different guy named Brian Cook, though—true story!) was not expecting much from the season; his mom, however, was “thrilled” to be back, and excited that Mike Hart is a coach now. She and her friend, who she knew because their sons were in the marching band together, also said that Cade McNamara was “cute.” The guy next to us was from Canada, has been attending games since 1979, and remains a huge fan of Harbaugh’s. In fact, he—and a lot of other male Michigan fans of a certain age, you start to notice—was dressed exactly like Jim Harbaugh in what seemed less like an homage than a convergence. Perhaps that is part of the man’s enduring appeal.

I asked a ticket scalper just outside the gate what the cheapest pair of tickets to get inside would cost, and he said $100. He was lying—he tried to chase me down to re-haggle when I walked away—but it was not the soft market one might have expected a 2-4 team to have. The stadium may not have been at absolutely maximum capacity, but in the way that still looks full as a whole and doesn’t have that depressing patchy feel.

Things went well with the on-field stuff too, as you already know. It wasn’t a loud game—that’s next Saturday night, right, people going to that game?—but there were some good sequences of compounding big-play roars as Michigan pulled away from what was initially a pesky Western team. There were moments of giddy appreciation as players including Blake Corum, Dax Hill, and A.J. Henning demonstrated that they and the coaching staff may finally have figured out how to translate their remarkable talents and abilities into in-game accomplishment. Once the score allowed for a second team QB, J.J. McCarthy entered, left the pocket, broke a tackle, and threw a moonball on third and long that arced deep downfield. Fortunately the one other person in the building who imagined a throw could travel like that was the intended receiver, Daylen Baldwin, who readjusted to the ball’s impossible trajectory, collected it five yards from the stunned MAC defensive back, and took it the rest of the way to the endzone.

In the stands, an early middle-aged man from Marion, Indiana, was behind us with his daughter; he didn’t go to the university—neither did I, I just hang around it a lot, historically—but his parents are both from Inkster, Michigan, and he was in town for Labor Day. Our vibes were in alignment—he was clearly also a guy who knows a lot of the backups’ names, and is excited for them, but also nervous for them—and at one point while it was still touch-and-go in the first quarter he quickly put both hands on my shoulders after something non-positive happened, a quick gesture of camaraderie and reassurance between concerned strangers. It was a kind of cousin to the concern demonstrated some seventy rows in front of us when an adult man wearing a “BELL 8” shirt was taken from the crowd onto field level by a football staffer as a younger man wearing a BELL 8 jersey was carried to the sidelines by teammates and coaches following an injury on a punt return.

In part because the above occurred—the younger Bell, Ronnie, was later seen in a wheelchair—the post-game press conference wasn’t quite a loose one. There’s still a bit of tension between the coach of Michigan and the public, which the members of the press, for their part, believe they  represent. Everyone, including the players and the reporters, mostly seems to speak in the low, clipped, no-pronoun manner that has marked the post-2017 Harbaugh persona.

But it wasn’t all grim: Blake Corum described “the love that the fans gave off,” a poetic turn of phrase, and, seated next to Cade McNamara, described the proverbial purpose of establishing the run like so: “It’ll open up the pass, and QB1 will sling that thing.” Aidan Hutchinson contributed some sort of vibe by wearing aviator sunglasses and a white shirt whose open collar was draped with two gold chains. He described his experience of monstrously strip-sacking Western Michigan Kaleb Eleby as “fun”—which is probably accurate!

Harbaugh did go into a bit more detail about strategy, his elocution sometimes bordering on the whimsical, than coaches usually choose to. He was pleased with new defensive coordinator Mike MacDonald’s performance: “Right before the second half, started going to more of a two high”—i.e. deployed two deep safeties instead of one. ”We were stopping the run, and played more coverages, which made the quarterback hold the ball a little bit longer, and we were able to apply some pressure.” Said Harbaugh, in a follow-up to his preseason comments about MacDonald’s capabilities as a teacher and creator of the team’s new defensive playbook: “We needed some changeups and we needed to show some different looks, we needed to disguise some coverages. And he was able to get that all in,” i.e., rehearsed enough that it could be pulled off in a week-one game.

Harbaugh would also admit McCarthy’s cross-body throw was not necessarily advised in the section of the quarterbacking textbook about managing a 33-point fourth-quarter lead, wryly noting his five-star freshman was no “victim of overcoaching.” He meant this in a good way. If you beat a MAC team the way Michigan typically does, you get the space to make a few little jokes.

The people who did remain inside (what for the moment is still called) Schembechler Hall during the last year maintained a steadfastness of purpose—of belief that Jim Harbaugh, all considered, is the person whose capabilities, connections, and convictions are most suited to managing and representing Michigan’s effort to maintain both an old-fashioned warrior-scholar ethos and a new-fashioned big-money national football operation—that at times struck outsiders as borderline unbelievable and baffling. On Saturday, that steadfastness started to seem a little less self-deluding and a little more inspiring. There’s a long way to go, but at least it’s going again.