OT - Your best sports year as a fan

Michigan Football - Citrus Bowl victory over Florida and looking to have a great 2016 season

Cavs - First Cleveland championship in 52 freaking years!

Indians - First place in the division and looking great

Browns - No failed drug tests since April (knock on wood)

However, The 1995 Indians were my favorite team ever.

1997 was great between Michigan and the Indians 2nd run at the World Series

2007 was a lot of fun with the Browns going 10-6, Michigan beating the shit out of Florida, and the Indians being one god damn fucking win away from going to the World Series where they absolutely would have won because anyone was beating Colorado that yeah......ok, that one still bothers me a little.

IMO

IMO

None of my Michigan teams won NCs that season, and of course since then we've had a FB and BB NC, a few final fours, a couple of which were actually final games, Hockey Championships, Softball Championships and Hockey as well. We've had Olympic gold medalists, individually and in team sports. Admittedly(except for one game) never being more excited than the '89 BB NC - just felt the '97 FB NC was ours and we should have won it breathing easily if the ref had not, inexpicably, put the flag back in his pocket. You all know the play.  But  '68-'69 is special to me. 

Of course, in '68 the Tigers - still liked baseball then - won the series, coming back from a 3-1 deficit and to be honest I don't know how long it had been since we won a series. I do know the excitement level was so great, our h.s was allowing things that just didn't normally happen. My best friend and I arrived in the Principal's office to sign out, only to realize that would be a 10 minute wait in itself. It went quickly. My friend wrote, "Going Home, watching series finale. I wrote, "Going to Mike's house - same reason. 

Then '69 as I've shared on more than one occasion - was not a cfb fan when that day started - would be one forever afterwards when that game was over. Even on that black and white t.v., it was, other than a few bowl games and the MSU-ND game in'66, the first cfb I sat down to watch and based on the MI football team coming out of that tunnel, visibly pumped as hell, hitting the banner and having Keith (I believe)fill me it on all that was at stake and introduced me to one Bo Schebechler. 

I watched Pryor and his teammate on the other end of the DL, play after play, just get into the "nation's top qb's grill" not allowing him time to throw and when he did, I saw a young man from the U.P. named Barry Pierson nab a couple of those and return them as if he had a clear field in front of him. Also had one hell of a punt return.  Could not believe, as my love for this team grew, just how many players were from the state of MI and I think that's the way it had to have been that day.

I watched Mooreheed throw short effective passes all day and Mandich pull them in time after time. I watched Billy Taylor, among others, bust through well blocked holes for significant gains, but in a style I would learn to love, they weren't huge gains, but significant then meant moving the chains and could range from 4 to 12 yards. After OSU's first TD, I watched that team with helmets I fell in love with immediately - even though it was black and white - outscore them by a 5 - 2 count with one TD being ruled no good due to an infraction.  In other words, except for that penalty, their play was flawless, given they were playing, according to the  announcers, "The Greatest College Team Ever Assembled," and sporting a 22 game winning streak, who was I to argue? Moorehead, in addition to his timeley passes, made perfect decisions on the option and when he kept it always seemed to pick up 5 to 6 yards. 

Can't recall (Curtis maybe?) an undersized defender in the middle who seemed to be wearing a jersey too large for him but played into it that afternoon and as difficult  as Pryor and Keller made life for Kern, Curtis did the same from tackle to tackle and made life just as miserable for their run game, at times, blitizing from the same spots, especially on those big 3rd down plays. The three of them, together with the back wall of defenderes were extraoridary. I've watched many games since then, even designed some defenses to out duel an extremely difficult offense, but I believe on that November day in 1969, I witnessed perhaps the greatest job, probably never to be approached, definitely not surpassed, of motivating a football team to a height that is only imaginable unless you watched it. We who saw it were blessed. 

So yeah, we had national championships in all sports other that baseball - we might have won one in that sport as well - but the game I fell in love with, the man I grew to believe was the greatest coach in the game made sure all the good that was to come for UM football did so in '69, the second semester of my Junior year. And if he had won 7 games, the fans might have thought it was a "good start,: I don't know. Given the MSU loss, I doubt it. However, that 8th victory, over a team that had embarrassed the wolverines the year before, left no doubt in my mind, I had witnessed greatness and it was done on the part of a team so motivated by a young coach who had, prior to taking the Miami of OH head job, had worked for this man called Woody, a very mean man who went out of his way to hang half a hundred on us just a year earlier. I knew I had just witnessed a seminal moment a year or two before I would know what that word meant and I knew , regardless of where the fellow UM fans had watched from;  the stadium, a party, a local watering hole,? they were as equally as happy as I. 

I've had many people from w/in the state ask me why I was a Michigan fan, most of whom were Spartan fans, of course. I could always answer in one word: Bo. They, of course, asked me to elaborate and wished they hadn't. I made them revisit that game with me and the research it motivated me to do and why I decided to turn my back on a team that was enjoying it's best run since its current one, instead opted for UM because thirty-four years before Bo, with the help of Dan Ewald penned Tradition - nice to have that book beside my desk - I was inspired to learn more about this school, this football program, and within a couple of years I understood why this was the perfect place for Bo and why he knew it. Pre-Google Days, my friends.

I sounded like Bo on a recruiting visit. I told them just how great I thought it was and how all universities should aspire to be what Michigan was; a world class academic institution that just happened to have more football victories than any other school in history. As stated, I was new to cfb, but as a h.s. quarterback, I loved the game and when I saw it played, year after year with the same discipline, never worrying about the problems with rules that seemed to plague other schools, many continuously, and the MEN that Bo recruited as those just becoming old enough to own that label and if they didn't pursue a career as a professional athlete, somehow, inordinately, rise to the top of whatever profession they decided to pursue, one(unless they were born with a defect, somehow causing them to be attracted to those colors, green and white) simply could not help but, once becoming aware of the above and many, many other things unique to that wonderful school in Ann Arbor, grasp them, respect them and admire them the way Bo did. 

So it was at the end of the 1970 season, the year I graduated that Bo had, I believe, 19 victories and when I returned from an area representing a bad chapter in this nation's history, and then visiting my obligation, sat down just three years later, as he was entering his fifth year at the helm, minus that GREAT YEAR where he delivered a promise to Canham four years early, and at the end of such would run off a five year record of 55-5!!!! BTW, 63-8 isn't bad. 

Knowing full well, that marriage had to happen, the one between Canham and Schembechler, for all that has occurred to even have had a chance at that marvelous forty year period to follow. To have the perfect man to bring us back, but learning from hisotry, to do it after only 8 year this time, would not even be a consideration today. He and Hackett are as important as Bo and Canham but aredependent upon the former, nontheless. That,my friends, is why I choose a year, not even calendar at that, no national championships to my knowledge, as my favorite year as a fan. Without it, I don't have Michigan. I had no choice.