Giving MGoThanks 2015

Submitted by LSAClassOf2000 on

GIVING MGOTHANKS

After seeing a couple Thanksgiving messages on the board this morning, I was a bit hesitant to post my own, but I did want to point out some of the things that we as a community of highly engaged fans do have to be thankful for.

As we walk towards our game with Ohio State, who among us at this time last year – when we were playing this game merely to be bowl eligible – would have thought that now we could be 9-2 and #10 in the CFP rankings in this week? I am going to assume that not many of us – probably none of us – thought this was a possibility. The future was cloudy indeed.

The occurrence for which most fans of Michigan football are undoubtedly most thankful for in this past year came about a month after that game, in a winter that for us would be quiet, without a bowl but on the blog, full of “CC threads” and understandable hand-wringing about what laid in store for the program once Brandon and Hoke had been removed. Oakland was not in play, and Jim Harbaugh came home to Ann Arbor.

Even so, after that introductory press conference, the future was brighter but now the timeline was uncertain. Many of us thought 2015 would be another transitional year – perhaps a bit bumpy, but necessary – and over the summer, numerous prediction threads amounted to cautious optimism for 2015. In the background, however, we could see the rapid transformation of the program into something far more familiar to many of us. It was transformed – again – into a program which lives “The Team, The Team, The Team” and preaches competition and accountability, not only to the staff but to teammates and the university and its traditions.

We assumed the cultural changes would lead to the on-field success down the road, but I don’t know how many of us in the MGoCommunity thought we would see the cultural transformation change the on-field performance that rapidly, and not just in the sense of being 9-2 right now. The team has bought and is emulating the message of Jim Harbaugh and it is translating into a ruthlessly efficient, never-quit team that has improved itself in every conceivable way.

Now, we walk into the Ohio State game with a considerable chance of winning it, being 10-2 and going to a New Year’s Six bowl after a season where we went 5-7 and watched others go bowling in December and January. We shall see how it shakes out at about 3:30 PM on Saturday and then so on into the final CFP rankings, but that we can do it is an amazing feat for this staff and team indeed.

Thanks to Jim Hackett for refocusing the athletic department in general – not just for football – on the things that are indeed part of the department’s stated mission, which is to serve its students and its supporters. Thanks to Jim Harbaugh for coming home and beginning a new chapter in Michigan football in which possibilities are seen in places where we were beginning to doubt they existed. Thanks to the MGoCommunity for keeping itself somehow glued together – albeit elaborately and with what seemed like the psychological equivalent of Elmer’s at times – and sharing now in this much brighter future.

Before I forget, thanks to Brian and the paid staff here for providing a place for us to ruminate about all this and share statistics, ideas, strategies and information in a quantity that I don’t think you’ll find on many college sports blogs. The MGoCommunity is different – not merely fans, but extra nerdy fans who can remember down, distance and formation on specific plays in games played long ago and write treatises on whether it was or was not the best call. That’s part of the Michigan difference, and it is on display here.

Further, thanks to my fellow mods for helping to maintain this place as one of the better-run, most readable boards out there. Even if we struggle with the amount of content at times, we do our best to pick through it as much as possible and streamline it for everyone. Thanks to my parents as well, for if I weren’t raised by such obsessive people, my obsession with Michigan athletics and everything Michigan might not have come into my makeup.

Finally, thanks to the MGoCommunity for allowing me to give back and help manage the place and for keeping me sane in moments that have been trying throughout the last few years. It means much.

Have an excellent Thanksgiving.

-LSAClassOf2000

Comments

Njia

November 25th, 2015 at 11:18 AM ^

Not the least of which is my MGoDaughter in her first year as a student at Michigan! Then there are my MGoWife and our MGoSon who have "converted" to the secular religion that is our beloved University (due, in no small measure I'm sure, to having a second family member who proudly wears the Maize and Blue).

I'm no longer alone in the wilderness, sweating out every game. Wow ... This is pretty cool! I think I'll keep these guys around a while longer.