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Something's been missing from Michigan gamedays since the free programs ceased being economically viable: scientific gameday predictions that are not at all preordained by the strictures of a column in which one writer takes a positive tack and the other a negative one… something like Punt-Counterpunt.

PUNT

By Bryan MacKenzie
@Bry_Mac

I’m getting old.

Not OLD old, mind you. I don’t get the discount at McDonalds, and no one is surrendering their bus seat for me just yet. But still, I’m 40, which is quite a few. The beard is starting to show the occasional gray hair. The dad jokes flow freely and without regard to the audience. And, most recently, I have started wearing glasses for the first time in a few decades.

I got my first pair of glasses in kindergarten, but by sixth grade I’d moved on to contact lenses. Then, in 2006 (the day before the Running The Option In Hurricane Katrina/Choked On Apple Sauce game), I had LASIK surgery. And that was back in the EARLY days, when LASIK stood for “Large Ass Stick In Kornea,” where they just grabbed a tongue depressor, jammed it into your eye, and wiggled it around until you could see good. Lasers were only introduced to the later, weaker generations. We used to be a proper country.

[After THE JUMP: An eye chart]

So my vision was 20/20 from the day Drew Stanton threw that final Pick 6 right on through the day when Mikey Sainristil planted that flag in the middle of Ohio Stadium. Or at least I thought it was 20/20. But in the spring of 2023, as my wife and I fired up Season 3 of Ted Lasso, I noticed that I was having a hard time reading the closed captioning.

Oh, that’s the other “old man realizes he’s old” thing I forgot to mention: I watch TV with closed captioning now. 

I’ve played it off as wanting to keep things quiet for the kids, or because we don’t always want to the kids to hear Brett Goldstein drop a seven-second long F-bomb, or as a convenience because we can’t hear the TV over the kids. Also, televisions aren’t designed the same way, so without the proper sound setup, dialogue is objectively harder to hear than it used to be. It’s the dang kids, you see. And the dang fancy technological doodads. Certainly not my age.

And it’s not just me. Lots of people, including an apparently increasing number of the Youngs, have started to use subtitles on a regular basis. But when I realized that the combined Wonder Twin powers of my eyes and ears weren’t enough to make out what was being said, it was time for a trip to the optometrist. And, sure enough, at some in the intervening 17 years I developed an astigmatism and a mild case of “damn you old,” and I now don my first pair of glasses since the mid 90’s. 

A machine called a “phoropter” should be way cooler than this thing

But when I got back to reading/watching my Old Man Shows, I started to notice something. Thanks to my fancy new spectacles, I was now getting 100% of the dialogue… and I was missing more of the show than ever. When the text was on the screen, the text was my primary focus, and I was only secondarily taking in the actors delivering those lines and the scenery and the physical movement. And in a way, that makes sense; the dialogue conveys the most information about the plot. For a show like Ted Lasso, with its menagerie of incongruous accents and fast dialogue, subtitles allow you to pick up a lot of little things that you might otherwise miss. 

I’ve come to the conclusion, however, that I might lose more than I gain in this exchange. Television is not designed as solely, or even primarily, a reading medium. We have text-based entertainment: it’s called “books.” Books, knowing that they are on the hook for providing all of the little nuances and subtle clues, put those clues in the text. Television has to⁠—and gets to —use visual cues to give the dialogue context and meaning and depth. It’s why great acting can rescue a terrible script, and why bad acting can ruin a project out of the gates. Ted Lasso wasn’t great because the script was great. The script was fine, but Jason Sudekis and Hannah Waddingham and Phil Dunster chewing the scenery was what made the show. It’s why you could put Tim Curry in literally anything and make it better. It’s why the nonsensical plot bullcrap Michael Bay puts out is still wildly entertaining. Visual media are far more than just the words.

The temptation in a college football game, and especially in a season opener, is to try to wring it dry for every morsel of information. After nine months of speculation, the flood of new data points assaults our brains as we try to extrapolate the meaning. How quickly did such-and-such linebacker recognize the screen pass and was the ball what’s-his-name dropped a catchable ball and WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN FOR OHIO STATE AND GEORGIA. 

It's not my place to tell you how to watch football. Lord knows I’m not a healthy example of this genre. But I do have a suggestion: watch this one as if you were watching the sport for the first time. Take it in as an event, rather than a series of plays. Don’t rewind every third snap to watch what the left tackle did or to see whether the QB was actually making a read or whether it was just a straight give. Just watch it. Listen to it. Watch the players between plays. Listen to the crowd. Chuckle at the random anecdotes from the sideline reporter. 

I say this for two reasons. The first reason is that there probably won’t be much to take away from this one. ECU isn’t very good, Michigan is nursing their injured players and generally tinkering with the lineup, Kirk Campbell is calling the plays for (probably) the only time this season, and Michigan will generally have very little incentive to treat this as anything other than a glorified scrimmage. Barring… uh, you know… the events of today’s game are functionally irrelevant.

The second reason is that this season could be something special, and you might not get many shots at something like this in the future. Between the current roster and the changes coming to the sport, these kinds of things won’t come along very often. So rather than spending the first two months worried about the third month, just take it in. Yell “BALL” when someone fumbles. Make insightful comments like “GET ‘EM” and “RUN RUN RUN” and “WOW THAT GUY IS BIG.” There will be time for hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing. But this is a time to simply smile and watch JJ McCarthy and Blake Corum and Donovan Edwards and Zak Zinter do JJ McCarthy and Blake Corum and Donovan Edwards and Zak Zinter things.

And after you’ve experienced the game, if you STILL feel the need to try to figure out every line of dialogue, you can always rewatch it later. With the subtitles on, of course. Michigan 38, ECU 17

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COUNTERPUNT

By Internet Raj
@internetraj

I’ll never forget my first time. The entire lead-up was tinged with a palpable, nervous energy. Anxious anticipation. Electrifying excitement. But, towering above all else, were roiling waves of fear that instantly and indiscriminately subsumed all other emotion. 

“Am I doing this right?” “Is this even the right entrance?” “I hope it doesn’t end too quickly.” 

And then, after a series of awkward maneuvers and fumbling to get in a comfortable reclined position, the moment finally arrived. The angst and terror gave way to one singular, jubilant epiphany: “Oh my God, I’m inside. It’s actually happening.” And the most shocking thing to me personally? I didn’t even have to pay for it. 

Oh yeah. I’ll never forget my first time in Business Class.

A product of a squarely middle-class upbringing, the first 27 years of my air travel life was relegated to Economy, where I was physically cramped but emotionally cocooned in a blissful ignorance of the finer things. I never once second-guessed my standard airport rituals: lining up like cattle in Zone 4, having my kneecaps bludgeoned by the passenger in front of me who’d invariably recline their seat, and dining on my stale 1oz bag of pretzels on a mysteriously sticky tray table. And why would I? When I’d occasionally stumble upon them while cruising Expedia, business class ticket prices were comically inflated to the point of fantasy land. Economy class was my station in life and that was that.

Well, that was that, until my wife started to travel for work and rack up miles. And then, one fateful day, she bestowed upon me a life-changing upgrade on a long-haul flight to Europe. Like a wide-eyed Charlie and his golden ticket, I cautiously made my way through the airport clutching my boarding pass with an iron grip, as if I held it too loosely it would fly away directly into the gnarled hands of some sort of cackling Wicked Witch dressed as a Spirit Airlines flight attendant. My initial tentativeness, however, was quickly (to my shame, too quickly) chipped away by the lavish accoutrements of flying business: sipping cocktails in the premium lounge (with my pinky outstretched off the glass, of course), lining up to board the plane first (with an unmistakable smug look and air of self-importance), and finally the most crude perversion of classism there is: swirling my pre-takeoff flute of champagne while the procession of Economy flyers trudged by me to engage in their barbaric battles of fighting for overhead bin space. And that was before the flight even started! The actual flight was a collage of warm fuzzy memories of drinking wines I couldn’t pronounce, eating better food that I did on land, and being able to fully recline my seat and drift off into a peaceful slumber.

“Rutgers Class” coming soon to an airline near you

And just like that, in a span of one flight, I transformed into a caricature of capitalism, a Gordon Gekko donning lululemon while sprinting at 10.0 on the hedonistic treadmill. Was I proud of it? Absolutely not. Was I addicted to the intoxicating excess of Business? Absolutely.

But here was the problem: I was addicted to business class, but I still couldn’t afford business class. This is decidedly not a great place to be. Unfortunately, my veil of blissful ignorance was not just pierced, it was torn to shreds. And there’s nothing worse than having tasted luxury and then come crashing down to reality. Sure, I still get upgraded from time to time, but my personal travel now is dominated by that bitter, long walk from Row 1 all the way back to my seat in Row 42. Staring at the reclined elites, sitting in what should be my chair, sipping on what should be my champagne. But alas, this is my cursed fate.

Searching the Inflight Entertainment system for “42-27”

The last two seasons of being a Michigan football fan has been one long lavish trans-Atlantic trip in Business Class. I’ve been sipping champagne and heartily laughing at the plebes that need to tie neon-colored shoelaces to their 9-year-old Samsonites because their luggage isn’t emblazoned with orange “Priority” stickers.  After a decade-plus of humility, wallowing in the dredges of the BPONE, and never tasting the sweet highs of success, I have, overnight, been irreversibly corrupted by back-to-back Big Ten Championships, Playoff appearances and throttlings of Ohio State. And as I knock back a cocktail in the lounge that is non-conference play, I freely acknowledge that I am addicted to this success. I embrace with open arms the ridiculously lofty expectations of being a pre-season national championship favorite. I’ve only been here for two years but I’m already too comfortable with the top hat and monocle of winning. And, in the back of my mind, I have that small but nagging voice reminding me that a humbling is always closer than you think it is. Sooner or later, I will find myself bitterly walking by a first class cabin populated by the Bamas, the Georgias, the Clemsons and the OSUs. But for now, I’m sitting my ass in there, right with them. 

Now let’s strap on and take off.

Michigan 59, ECU 3