Anger Management Watching on TV

I was watching the game with a group of friends in a bar I frequent. TCU made some big play (can't remember which one as there are many from which to choose), some State fan cheered really loudly and obnoxiously. I, pretty much reflexively, yelled out, "Oh, suck a dick!" in reply. He looked over and I realized it was a guy I know. I tried to make like I was yelling it at the TV, but I think he knew lol.

A couple more reserved Michigan fans looked over at me too. I was a little embarrassed, I don't usually act like that during games. Alas, it was a particularly aggravating game, in an environment that I knew would add to the aggravation if the game was anything less than a Michigan blowout right off the bat (I live in the Lansing area), that I probably shouldn't have selected as my spot to watch it.

I watch by myself.

Everyone in the family knows to leave me alone during games.

After the loss, I take some deep breaths, calm myself, and return to being a normal human being.

I regret how much I'd let sports affect me in the past. One book I've found quite helpful (in particular for falling asleep after a bad loss) is the book Chatter. It's by a U of M psychology professor (Ethan Kross) and is about how to manage the voice in your head. 

When it's going badly, I remind myself that it's a bunch of kids playing a game, and this affects my life in literally no way except the stupid tribalism we've invented between schools about this silly game.

When it's going well that stuff is still all true, but I let that serotonin flow.

I was definitely throwing stuff and the expletives poured out of me like water from a fountain.

As other have mentioned here, as a very long time fan, it was double-triggering to me as a uniquely Michigan thing to do in shitting the bed on national television at least once per year to mess up up an otherwise stellar year.

Back then.....if they made it through the regular season relatively unscathed (basically a W or L against OSU), they inevitably showed up at the bowl game looking like they had just started playing football that day and handed the game to USC, Washington, Florida, Alabama, whoever......with a one-time epic contest against Texas in the Rose Bowl being played valiantly only to be lost in the final seconds for maximum heart/gut wrenching impact. It was a thing, believe me.

If it wasn't that, it was an otherwise great season where they would drop a completely inexplicable game to a completely unworthy opponent (looking at Iowa, Purdue, MSU, Northwestern, Wisconsin, etc., etc.) in an era when that pretty much sealed your chances of winning a MNC and put you in a good bowl game where the outcome really only decided if you were going to end up top 10, or top 20 based on the outcome. Often you squeak into the top 5 post season poll on the strength of a lot of big wins and a convincing victory over a good OSU squad and a bowl win.....all the more frustrating to have inexplicably soiled the sheets against a mediocre, or bad, Big 10 opponent earlier in the year.

In 1997 someone forgot to spike the team's water at the Rose Bowl, coupled with a rather fortuitous match up with WSU instead of a Pac10 top dog, so we got to split that one. Or maybe we just had a Heisman winner that was god enough to resist whatever the universe had planned for us....not sure.

Then came decades wandering the desert of BPONE, where bowl games weren't guaranteed, when they did occur they were certainly crapshoots in terms of results, but also never nationally relevant and a mixed bag of random performances, many completely "wet fart" style showings. It feels like a period were we played in the (Alamo) bowl evey year, beat Florida once, then lost to them 5 more times, although a vision of a guy named Clowney doing something horrific pops up in that fever dream as well.

But.......one hoped that this period had at least disconnected us from the past and forged a new team, with a different approach, a new lease on both the regular season (Illinois was NOT that game where M shits the proverbial bed) and still slayed the dragon lurking at the end of the season....in Columbus....AND got an upper seed in the CFP in addition to a fairly favorable match up. On paper anyway. This team would not show up post season and make unbelievably huge mistakes and look lost for major portions of the game, would not seem to check out mentally and appear like the stage is a bit too big and the coaches would, as they had all season, have game plans that were dialed in, or be able to make adjustments to get them dialed in.....that was then, this is now. We were an "almost there" program for a looong time, that got a very long reality check into a few decades of mixed "not at all there" "not even close to there" "spirit award" with a few "also rans" that we all hoped were completely over.

Then the game against TCU. It really felt like old times......I was watching with another long time M fan and we both said then same thing repeatedly.....this feels familiar, "it's just like [insert 70s/80s/90s anomaly game of choice here]. Stellar year, great team, championship attitude.....shit bed in one game.....roll into the post season Top 5/10.

Am I suggesting M is cursed by the cosmos or there is some shadowy conspiracy? No, that would be dumb. Do I think we are doomed forever and that this pattern will exist for all eternity and therefore we should all get BPONE tattooed on our foreheads lest we forget we can't have nice things? Not that either. 

I'm just saying that being an M fan has had a uniquely improbable and gut-wrenching history and.....in some sense...we should all be proud that we are still here. Hopefully the team will get it together for an entire season at some point in the near future and do the number 1 thing again, though I think with play off expansion it will get even harder (more beds to shit).

As far as answering the question of anger management.....my personal philosophy.......you can throw whatever you want, as long as it doesn't leave a mark, break a TV, hurt/threaten a bystander, or in any way leave evidence the next day that you threw it.....all good. My hat, your visor, across the room where no people occupy that space....fine. Multiple times I eyed my glass containimg a 4th quarter strong pour of a Kentucky Mule and considered hurling it and opted not to, also many times did what I hoped JJ would have done and pulled up on a throw that would have sent my hat and visor spinning into the screen of my television, only to make a last second adjustment and have it go out of bounds toward my front door instead. No lasting damage. As for cursing.......I think as long as you aren't using words they haven't heard before, that for kids this is a teaching moment as to the when/why/how of appropriate usage for this type of vocabulary. Lastly, I think that taste and decorum DO still play a role here.......red-faced rage and appearing to be unhinged, out of control, and in general crazy, probably sends the wrong message. I can moan an "mf" in exasperation and toss my hat at the front door to the same result as doing so like a crazy/out of control person shouting at the top of my lungs and would choose that option.

This is why I only watch games we win after the fact. I don't need to spend 4 hours of my weekend getting repeatedly punched in the dick (or 2 hours a couple nights a week for basketball). Sure the highs aren't as high but the lows are much less low.

Biggest problem was watching a game with a OSU fan. My best friend in the world is a MSU grad, and my dad a lifelong OSU fan. We don't watch games together. I barely talk about football with them. It's best for everyone involved. That said, once kids are there, can't do anything you have to explain to them. If you have to explain it, then you went over the line. Much love Will, we've all been there I think. Glad I didn't have to watch that abortion (was working).

Anger is a normal human emotion, no shame in being a human, and honestly theres appropriate times to express it. But the likelihood of appropriate rage over a football game is probably slim. I have struggled with getting too frustrated,  a john navare interception to the oregon ducks caused me to punch the ground in high school and give me a boxing fracture. I like how some people have posted about prepping themselves before the game and decide what level of frustration is ok. Lately ive had some relief telling myself and other people around me when they start getting my hopes up about winning - that we are still probably going to lose. Maybe that sucks but it balances out the perspective enough for me to enjoy it more.

Anger management? Yeah, it got so bad that my "management" became not watching most big games live.

Over the last couple of seasons, I have gotten more able to watch, but it's still an issue. I used to, and still do to a degree, have such high expectations that I was inevitably disappointed and pissed off often. 

Yeah, no doubt I have issues.....ugh.