First attempt at writing a diary, so let's start this thing off with a You Be the Michigan AD segment. How many wins in 10 years would you reasonably expect against the following programs:

• Notre Dame
• Auburn
• Florida
• USC
• Texas
• Penn State
• Iowa

Michigan is one of the most historically significant programs in all of college football. We've heard plenty of Tales From Old Blue, whether from this site, or HTTV, or directly from our parents or grandparents. Sometimes, however, we have Only Child Syndrome with our precious baby Blue and fail to see that, if we were to dig deep into a dozen or so programs from around the country, we would find a similarly significant history. In fact, all 7 teams listed above might be on par with Michigan's history for various reasons (coaching tree, success as an independent, tv exposure, had Bo Jackson, etc.). And while our knee-jerk reaction to You Be The AD might be "We should win every game," the problem is the You Be The AD answers for other programs that place just a much or more significance on football would likely be the same. If every parent on planet earth thinks "my child deserves the best" then all but a few will be disappointed. Instead, "my child deserves what's fair" might be more realistic, even though "fair" isn't always a universally accepted thing.

Fair, in my opinion, would be either 50/50 split with those teams, or maybe 6-out-of-10. If we were Alabama the answer would be different, just like it would be if we were Northwestern. Beating a competent, not-going-through-a-coaching-transition USC team 6-out-of-10 years would be something to be proud of considering there are so many factors that go into winning a football game. And when your schedule mostly consists of programs traditionally less successful than the ones listed, 6/10 would probably set up Michigan with a chance to run the table every 10 years or so. I understand that someone else's idea of "fair" might be different, though.

Now let's extend that You Be the Michigan AD to include one more team:

• Michigan State

How many times would you expect Michigan to beat Michigan State in 10 years?

...........

I have suddenly realized how unsympathetic it is to use the phrase "felt like I've been hit by a truck." I would guess most people who say that don't have the faintest idea of what it would feel like to be standing in the street, maybe bending down to grab a basketball that just bounced there, only to be suddenly run over by an inattentive F-150.

On the other hand, I don't think people who have been hit by a truck have the faintest idea of what it feels like to be a Michigan football fan.

To me, the most important factor in a healthy fandom is having realistic expectations. And this is where I think I differ from Dude Hit By Truck: unless something has been going very wrong, I would guess DHBT doesn't wake up saying "Mornin' sugar! I sure hope I don't get hit by a truck today!" It was probably just a normal one-on-one game in the driveway until it suddenly wasn't. But me, the poor Michigan Fan, woke up last Saturday thinking... knowing how much I wanted this win. Maybe more than any other game I can remember. And during the game... my God I was an absolute wreck. A slant expected to be a 1st down turned into a 93-yard touchdown, and a sack expected to be just a sack turned into a touchdown, then back to a sack - just a wet, fancy, Scottish sack.

If expectations are unrealistically high then appreciating the little successes becomes difficult, and if they're unrealistically low then... what's the point of being a fan in the first place? But sports has a weird thing where in that moment right before the opening kickoff, pitch, tip, faceoff, or whatever the hell it's called in rugby, the rational mind gets violently thrown aside by some lizard brain particles that are convinced We Should Win This Game! And this is completely okay. I expected Michigan to win the game, and anyone who felt any trace of hurt after the loss had that expectation too, at least subconsciously. It then becomes important to gain our rational mind back once the adrenaline of the game wears off.

The signature trait of football isn't the physical contact, or the calling-a-play-every-time thing, or the crowds, or the regionality, or Mike Leach's interviews, but actually the frequency of games. One game a week for 12 weeks is absolutely perfect. It's juuuust enough to keep it more relevant and on our minds than, say, golf or the Olympics, but not as saturated as basketball or baseball where individual games lose impact. Something happens for 3.5 hours (or 4 if it's on FOX), we get to think, write, reflect, read, and talk about it for an entire week, then it happens again. So as fans it becomes really difficult to set realistic expectations because of the insanely lopsided ratio of time spent watching the thing to time spent thinking about the thing.

My fandom for Michigan started at probably the perfect time to have a very confusing lens on both Michigan football and Michigan State football. The first year I ever watched was as a 1st grader seeing Charles Woodson win the Heisman and the Wolverines win a National Championship. I was raised to believe that Michigan was an elite program and MSU was a thorn that would snag once every 5 years or so. And my first impression confirmed this.

As you all know, this narrative did not hold as the landscape of College Football changed - with the BCS, then with national recruiting, then with Vince Young beating USC, then with the College Football Playoff, and other events in between. History's version of College Football was clashing with what was presently going on. And here's the present reality with our in-state rivals, with total wins from 2010-2019 in parenthesis:

• Notre Dame (92 wins)
• Michigan State (92 wins)
• Auburn (87 wins)
• Penn State (87 wins)
• USC (86 wins)
• Florida (81 wins)
• Iowa (81 wins)
• Texas (71 wins)

Michigan comes in right behind USC with 85 wins from 2010-2019. In fact, there are only 11 teams* with more wins than MSU over the decade. That... is absolutely nauseating to think about, but critical to understand. They can still be Little Brother, but, like, Daxton Hill is Justice Hill's little brother. If Justice thinks he'll beat Dax in a fight 8 times out of 10, then he is insane.

We would absolutely love to get to the point where our all-time record against Michigan State is reflective of what is going on presently. The problem is, oddly enough, Michigan State is employing people who decidedly do not want that. In reality, beating State 6 out of 10 times would be a very impressive thing to do in the current environment of College Football, and is a worthy goal to strive for whether we want to admit it or not. Once we get there we can talk about more frequent success. The game on Saturday gave me that miserable reality check the same way the 2018 Ohio State game did for my 1st grader impression of Michigan being elite. I just wish it was literally anyone other than Sparty we are chasing.

*Boise, Oklahoma, Ohio State, LSU, Georgia, Oregon, Wisconsin, Clemson, Alabama, Florida State, Oklahoma State. I also counted vacated wins because they still played the game.