Congrats to Tom Brady, Alan Branch and Cam Gordon! 45 SB Champions!

         I'm pretty sure you're trolling.  You told me you thought "it was bullshit that you [me] think that . . ." but then you throw out a paragraph calling me a barabarian for not being civil when I said you were an "asshole."   Whatever you need to do to feel smart, I guess.

I'll give substantive argument one last try here, but I suspect it's pointless.  First off, Tom Brady was a good college quarterback, but not a great one.  You're "we might have gone undefeated" claim is impossible to disprove, but the fact that Brady didn't win the job outright probably shows he wasn't great.  Just to be clear, Brady in the NFL has been all-time great.  But in college I don't think he was that much better a QB than Schilling was as a lineman.

It's not fair weather fandom to celebrate the success of alums.  I said in my own post that I want Michigan alums to succeed.  This holds for athletic and non-athletic endevours alike.  If the Seahawks won, be glad for Schilling.  If the Patriots won, be glad for Brady, Branch, and Gordon.  That's fine, and why I apologized for posting this as a general response to WD.  But it is fair weather fandom to root only for the alums who have been successful.  It's fair weather fandom to root for Brady and the Pats but not for Woodson and the Raiders (or Packers in years past).  It's fair weather fandom to root for Brady over Schilling just because Brady has already won more.  Favor Brady because you like the Patriots, or like his hair better, or whatever.  But don't pretend that Michigan fandom generates some reason to prefer him to Schilling.  Would you rather see Steven Ross close a deal over a lesser known Michigan alum, just because he's Steven Ross?

It's one thing to be proud of people connected to your institution.  It's another thing to hope for the success of some alums at the expense of other alums. I just don't see the grounds (with respect to Michigan) for rooting for Brady over Schilling in this Superbowl.  Is it so you can say the greatest NFL QB ever when to Michigan?  You could have said that before this game, and the same people who would have agreed would agree and the same people who would have disagreed would still disagree.  There seems to be an equally strong reason the other way, in that Schililng winning one would have been another success a long line of Michigan O-linemen in the NFL.

To put it another way, if the only reason I have to like Brady and Schilling is that they went to Michigan (which happens to be true in my case), then I don't see how that reason weighs heavier for the one than the other.   I suspect, as I said in my last post, people are inclined to think this favors the more successful alum, but that's  because they like to root for a winner.

An interesting objection to my view is that Brady's accomplishment as starting QB is greater than Schillings as a back-up lineman, so we should root for Brady because his success would be a greater accomplishment.  But this seems post-hoc.  Prior to the game, one could be rooting for Schilling to get put into the starting line-up and play the game of his life, starting a dominant career, and then the accomplishments look similarily important. 

Further, to be honest (an maybe this is the crux),  I don't take much pride in alum accomplishments at all.  I take pride in Michigan teams, because they are directly representing the university and feel a strong (perhaps irrational) connection to the university.  Once that cord is cut, I would like to see them succeed, because I know they worked hard to represent the university.  But I don't really take much pride in their successes in their careers, because the relationship between that success, the university, and myself becomes increasingly tenuous.  E.g. for a football player, a successful draft is very closely tied to the quality of the university coaching and so on.  A successful rookie year is less so, and so on until the university (my only connection to the player) is so distant that my taking any pride in the accomplishment seems silly.  I'm already many degrees removed from the player as a non-coach and so on, ten years or whatever after his graduation I'm even further removed from him.  I think pride in the actions of others requires a degree of personal closness, so once that's lost its over.  So even if Brady's victory would be more worthy of pride (a greater success) than Schilling's, I don't take that as a reason to favor him.