In a closet somewhere in my childhood home sits a ragged plush football eaten away by time and tosses that should be long since discarded. It was once a vibrant pattern of yellows and blues with "MICHIGAN" printed elegantly on its thin fabric skin. The ball, many unknown years older than I, has seen countless Michigan football games from Michigan Stadium and a Washington, DC living room. The ball remains firmly and invariably in the possession of either my father or me until Michigan scores a touchdown, at which time we throw the ball back and forth as many times as we can until Michigan kicks the extra point.

That ball has seen a lot, obviously. It's been hurled aimlessly in frustration and squeezed just a little too hard in terror and forgotten altogether in those wonderful moments of blissful pandemonium. It's also seen me. I've held it as a toddler without responsibilities, as a mushroom-haired adolescent trying to fart joke his way through middle school, as a skinny high schooler desperately waiting for the big envelope, and lately, as a suave, sophisticated student at the University of Michigan. The next time I hold that ball it will be because I'm living at home again, looking for a job. It will mean my time at Michigan has run out.

Everyone shipping off to college knows--in the logical part of his brain, anyway--that the ride doesn't last forever. It's certainly crossed my mind before. I knew that someday I would no longer be able to eat fourteen hard boiled eggs for breakfast or walk to Kroger twice in one day just to buy an apple and a pack of gum or wear shirts with pictures of pizza on them to class. I guess I just didn't know that someday would be so soon.

This is my last year here, and I'm going to miss it. During the past week I’ve watched a wave of freshmen pour into their dorm rooms and kiss their teary mothers goodbye and smile that dumb smile of which only a freshman is capable. I knew I was going to miss these people and the buildings through which we walked and talked and laughed together. And I thought I was going to miss Michigan Football above all other things. I thought I was never going to stand in the student section again or sing The Victors or get in fistfights with Michigan students who insist on booing Chad Henne when his shoulder is injured.

But I realize something now. The man with whom I’ve played that superstitious game of catch for 21 years graduated from Michigan 37 years ago. He doesn’t go to the Jug or Pizza Bob’s anymore. He hasn’t stepped inside Angell Hall since Richard Nixon was President. But he holds that ratty old ball just as tight and sings The Victors just as clearly and dances to touchdowns just as badly as when he was 20. Though his days in Ann Arbor are long behind him, my father has never left the University of Michigan.

To cheer for Michigan requires no admission process. It has no expiration date and no union dues. Everyone who comes to this website does so with the common interest of following Michigan athletics with bizarre precision in an effort to make ourselves better, more knowledgeable fans. There are Eastern Michigan graduates on this site. There are current Central Michigan students on this site. There are high schoolers on this site. But we're all here for the same reason.

I understand now that when I am a stiff, crotchety blue hair sitting slumped in a nursing home rocking chair because I’m too weak to sit in the 90th row of Michigan Stadium and poke the people in front of me with my cane, I’ll still be able to roar in approval and curse in dissatisfaction and throw broccoli at the Ohio State graduate sitting at the table next to mine, and I will feel just as excited, just as happy, just as good as I will tomorrow.

Certainly, the day upon which I pack my bags and leave Ann Arbor for good will be a sad one. But my joy for having been here at all far exceeds my sorrow for the necessity of my departure. I thank God every day for the blessings I’ve been given, chiefly among them the opportunity to grow up with the University of Michigan. I thank God for my parents and my friends who have grown and cheered right beside me even when there was no enthusiasm to be found. And I thank all of you for sharing this team with me for the past 21 years. The controversies that have plagued this team in the past nine months are scarcely worth consideration; our bond is unbreakable and our pride is only beginning to swell. This is my Michigan, this is your Michigan, this is our Michigan, now and forever.

Tomorrow's game can be said to be merely that: a game. An arbitrary contest of physicality and luck and preparation and little scribbles in a playbook between two schools. It can also, in a stretch, be said to be a dawn, a life preserver, a battle for the survival of a good man's reputation.  The truth, as always, lies somewhere in between.

Wherever its proper place may be, it drains the blood from our faces and punches us in our stomachs and leaves us wondering why we continue to pour our hearts into it. On Monday we'll all go back to work or class and maybe by Thursday we will have more pressing matters on our minds, but we’ll be back on Saturday. Maybe you’ll stand beside me in Michigan Stadium; maybe you’ll watch from your home somewhere in the vast American Midwest; maybe you’ll be watching on a ten-year-old computer at 4 am local time because you live in Singapore. But we’ll all be there together.

Go Blue. And whatever your dirty, beaten toy football talisman may be, hold it tight and hold it fast, and don’t ever let it go.