But IMHO there's a big difference between having your heart ripped out on a long, unlikely field goal as the clock hits zero and losing a game no one thought you'd be playing in.  We were playing with house money after getting to the Sweet Sixteen as far as I'm concerned.  This was the youngest team in the tournament.  They went 6-6 coming into the tournament.  It sucks being the runner-up, especially after enduring it twice in college.  But would you prefer the alternative?  I'm here in Indiana and all these IU fans literally could not believe their team wasn't going to the Final Four.  

as on older, uh, more mature, poster, the losses hurt me LESS.  

I was sitting in the ND stands when Oliver kicked that FG at my face.  I just got back from driving to Atlanta yesterday for the game.

That was the best played college basketball game I have seen in person.

It just wasn't meant to be.

I count Red's 2 hockey championships, and, if you want heartbreak, go back through the OT and triple OT and disallowed goal playoff losses.

I sat with a Kansas fan last nite, still recovering.

 Indiana AND Wisconsin beat us twice.

But go back to Kansas guy's post a month or so ago about having great teams lose, almost annually.

We left it all on the court,  the team and coaching staff represented the U extremely well.

What more can you ask?

Awesome post.

For me, my version of your moment was coming downstairs on January 3, 1998, the night after my dad and I watched the Nebraska bowl game and their players begging and pleading in the postgame interviews for the national championship, to find him at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. He'd sat up all night waiting for the poll results.

"The coaches picked Nebraska." That's all he said. We sat there for about an hour, mostly in silence, trying to digest the whole thing. 

This is a guy who went to the Rose Bowl in 1972 and watched us piss away the game against Stanford. Who went to Columbus for The Game twice, and watched Michigan lose both times. Whose senior year ended with the '73 tie against OSU and the ensuing AD vote. Who went to the Rose Bowl as a fan two more times in the 1970s, and after the Phantom Touchdown in '79, swore off the place forever until he went with me in '07, and watched us lose again.

I can think of no one else who has been dong-punched more by Michigan Athletics than my dad. It's a constant barrage of letdowns in seemingly the most personal ways possible. For almost 45 years.

And yet year after year, since the late 70s, he's been setting up his tailgate outside the stadium, feeding the masses, then trudging up the stairs with his seat cushion in hand, asking for more. He's probably missed all of five home games in that entire span, during which he raised two kids on Michigan football, basketball, and hockey games, then watched both of those kids graduate from Michigan. 

He does it, and now I'm doing it, because being Michigan outweighs the few moments where it seems like Michigan just doesn't like you anymore and is trying in every way possible to get you to stop calling.

For me, Michigan Basketball is his Rose Bowl. It wrongs me so many times. It takes me to places like Brian Ellerbe Basketball Camp and the Maize Rage during the ugliest parts of the Amaker era. It makes me buy and wear t-shirts that say things like AIR GEORGIA. It finds me in the hallways of my middle school telling my buddy Josh Moore is the future, or cheering for guys named Herb Gibson.

This season has challenged me to stop assuming the worst would happen, because that's what I've always had to do with Michigan Basketball. It just about almost worked out, too. And just like my dad, I'll be back next year, asking for more.

I'm a man, I'm FORTY (six)...which means I've been watching Michigan lose games like this since Gerry Ford was in the White House.  A few years ago when (Rich Rodriguez prodigy 1.0) Pat White became the first quarterback to start and win four consecutive bowl games, I laughed maniacally to remember that Rick "The Peach" Leach was the first quarterback to start AND LOSE four consecutive bowl games...bowl games which would today be considered BCS bowls, at that.

As much as I hate to say it, it's just what they DO.  Pick a sport, and they'll break your heart.  They'll draw you in, give you all manner of faith, hope, and above all CONFIDENCE, and then somehow manage to pull the rug out from under you in excruciating fashion until after awhile you just shake your head.  You think about how many "classic" games are re-run that feature Michigan teams on the losing side and you wonder what cosmic wrath must be endured for an entire program to be "posterized", to use an NBA term, as the subject for so many other teams' favorite highlight reels.

It's not unlike following the Red Sox at any point from 1919 thru 2003.  Although unlike the Red Sox (which did have some pretty bad teams sprinkled in there before the Ted Williams years and following his return from Korea), Michigan has always been generally very good, but rarely completely good enough.  For perhaps a better baseball analogy, think about the Atlanta Braves winning aaaaaaaaaaaallllllllll those Division titles during the 1990's-2000's and only one World Series during that stretch...and being called losers an chokers and anything befitting any number of teams that were nowhere near as successful over the same stretch of time.

I don't know what to tell you...at some point you will experience some sort of catharsis, where (yet another) big game loss just doesn't send you into a funk for days, maybe just hours.  For me personally it was probably the App State game.  At that point the level of absurdity affecting the Michigan athletic program reached what Bill Simmons calls "The Tyson Zone", where no action, regardless of how preposterous, could be disbelieved due to its source.  At some point you just throw up your hands and say "Well, of course they did" and you get on with your life.  You still support the team ("...the team, the team..."), of course...you just have to accept that you can't take their results personally.

Great post, by the way.  I totally understand.  And I am here for you.

People, people, why so morose?

Since Harry Oliver, Michigan has won the National Championship in both Football and Basketball.  

None of the "blessed" schools on your list has done that except Florida and they did not even exist as a real program until Harry Oliver was attending 10th year reunions.

We have a lot of championship disappointments because we're pretty fucking good.