Slate piece on college sports fans' misery, especially ours; Ace quoted
I thought this piece was interesting. Some of it hit pretty close to home...
https://slate.com/culture/2021/03/march-madness-basketball-football-schools-michigan-indiana.html
https://slate.com/culture/2021/03/march-madness-basketball-football-schools-michigan-indiana.html
Edit:. I'm sorry, but venerable? cumong
It's a very true article. I think the intensity/expectations are also significantly lowered with Livers out and losing three games in the last week or so. That said, I'll be bummed if we don't at least make it to the elite 8 (Great 8?).
I always preferred "Great 8." The rhyme is easier to say than the alliteration.
Great 8 reminds me of Grape Ape. He was a giant cartoon ape when I was a child. Now, he’s a strain of marijuana.
I remember Grape Ape. I hope the weed is better than the cartoon was.
I don't know. I've never really agreed with the idea that we're a "football school" and nothing else matters. I think it really depends when you come of age as a sports fan.
I came of age in the Steve Fisher era and to me, basketball was just as important. To this day I'd say the 1993 national championship game is my biggest heartbreak as a sports fan. No football game has ever hurt me that much as that one. Colorado '94 was probably the closest . . . but we got revenge on them later and won it all.
More and more I'm just feeling like college football's "playoff" makes no sense and it's not really worth getting that invested in a sport that requires you to be one of the top four teams in the country to have a chance at the title. In basketball, as long as you're halfway decent, you have March waiting at the end of the season. In football, you drop a game and your season's over. I used to think this was cool because it prioritized the regular season, but I'm finding it's just not fun most of the time.
I'm with you. Not just the "lose one and your season is over" but the fact that only about 5 schools actually have a chance of making the 4 team playoff (the same 5 schools, maybe 6) and it's just makes it kind of dull and pointless.
I was just considering this today - how dull college football has become. Think about last year, the entire year's conversation was "who is going to be the fourth team to get blown out by Clemson, OSU, or Bama." And that's what happened! There's no surprise, no cinderalla upsets, nothing. It's the same thing over over and over.
I used to consider college football as my number one sport, but over the past few years it's definitely been replaced by college basketball. Perhaps because M has been good, and the B1G is a great conference - but more than that it's a more fun sport where anything can and does happen. I mean, Kentucky and Duke aren't in this year's tournament - there's never been anything close to that happening in college football!
I was 12 for that game...only time I've ever cried because of a sporting event that I wasn't playing in.
I was fairly indifferent to football until about 10 years ago when I joined the blog. I watched all the big games, went to at least one game per year, but I never made a point to watch the game, just check the score. But it was 10/11 years ago the Big Ten Network started and all the games were on TV. I remember watching the National Championship game in 97...I remember leaving the house with a minute or so left during the Colorado game. I remember I was out car shopping during the horror and at the dealership a salesman mentioned the halftime score which I promptly ignored because....they aren't going to lose right??
I think Twitter mostly...so many personalities, and the formerly voiceless fans of your opponents now being a constant swirl around your team, it really does suck you in, because you root for your team, but also take shit from everyone else who dislikes your team. And because football has been a popular whipping boy for the last 14 years, I can see how fans NEED their football team to win, much more than their basketball team.
I'm in the fifth of five generations of family members to graduate from UM (LSA 1995, MBA 2002). Both grandfathers were UM athletes (tennis and swimming), and my dad played basketball for UM in the 1960s (left just before the final 4 teams with Cazzie and Buntin).
Our family loves M football, but there was no ambiguity as to which sport mattered most to us growing up.
Stewart to Westbrook was painful, as was the loss at OSU in 2006.
The losses in the 1993 and 2013 games were absolute torture (1992 and 2018 less so, because those were more "pleasantly surprised we're in the title game" years).
For my family, at least, basketball matters more.
2013 will sting for a while (especially since Louisville had to vacate that title). We had that game and we let it slip away (and we were robbed on that Trey Burke foul call).
2018, on the other hand, was house money. We made it to the National Championship Game without facing a team seeded higher than 6th. If we played that Villanova team 20 times, we would probably lose 17 or 18 of them. They were loaded and firing on all cylinders. The dude who torched us for 30+ (DiVincenzo) came off the bench. The final margin was sixteen, and I think the game was a lot more one-sided than that.
I’m 73 and have maybe 15? or more games (many Michigan but not all) tied for “biggest heartbreak”. Maybe the biggest was when I was 12 and the Yankees lost Game 7 of the WS to the Pirates, “Maserowski game”. Left my house and just walked aimlessly crying for 2 hours. For real.
Haven’t cried about a game then but was certainly miserable and depressed for several days after 2015 MSU stunner, 2016 Ohio larceny, 1994 Colorado, 2013 Ohio, etc. And of course Yankees Game 7 loss to D Backs in 2001.
I’ve told my grandson, a freshman at UM btw, that it’s a good thing he is not a sports fan..at all. I never asked but I doubt he could name anyone on M’s basketball or football teams. Lucky kid.
I’m a bit more measured now in my golden years but still are far too anxious watching and rooting for Michigan.
Nappa that fumble in the 77’ Rose Bowl didn’t bother you! It was funny I ran into my room and prayed before the goal line play with USC’s Charles White and at the time I do believe my Father was in school at Michigan, and our television was probably a whole 13-15 inches. I ran back into the living room to watch the handoff. Charles White takes the handoff then proceeded to go airborne and after his ascension he was then awarded a touchdown. I was looking for a glimmer of hope and what do you know there’s a football underneath the pile and I could see it with my little ole eyes on that huge television screen. I yelled,”Dad, dad, he fumbled it, he fumbled it!” After USC kicked the extra point I was the saddest kid Michigan fan in the whole entire world. As you can probably tell I haven’t forgotten that day, yet! GO BLUE!
*Mazeroski.
It was the year before I was born (in Pittsburgh), but I remember folks talking about it when I was growing up.
Same. As a lifelong Michigan fan who grew up in Ann Arbor during the era of the Fab Five and the '89 National Championship, I would find a basketball national championship to be every bit as satisfying as a football national championship (and the former looks a lot more attainable than the latter these days).
Certainly not only football matters.
However, objectively we're a football school. Football is #1 all time in victories, #1 all time in win percentage until just a couple seasons ago, 11 national titles. Basketball is like #50 in victories and doesn't make the list of about a dozen schools with multiple national titles. It's really no comparison. Michigan football is absolutely a blue blood. Michigan basketball is absolutely not.
That said, I love them both equally.
I'm with jmblue. I attended grad school at UM 1964-65. Great year for football and basketball (with Cazzie Russell). We came tantalizingly close to national championships in both.
For my own mental health, I have focused more and more on the basketball team every year since the disappointing 2017 football season. Being a fan is supposed to be fun. And focusing on the basketball team makes it fun.
To be sure, the Livers injury is a dick punch, but the future is bright.
Ahh, so BBall is how we become enlightened. Manuel should put a Bodhi tree next to the waterfall in Crisler.
Even when I was an undergraduate, which was in the early Carr era, I never really felt comfortable with the "football school" thing just because I never liked to think of some sort of dichotomy existing in revenue sports where you were one thing but not another thing. Indeed, with proper investment in personnel, it can certainly be both, or at a bare minimum, you can at least be competent in both most years, not to mention competent if not great in all the other varsity sports.
Does anyone stress about the OSU game anymore? After 15 of 16, I just go into that game assuming we're going to lose.
True, not nearly as much since about 2008. Just hope we don’t get embarrassed. Sad turn of events.
Pretty much all true. Going into this tournament is actually fairly relaxing.
MGoBlog is journalism! This article proves that cuz it quotes Ace saying "of late," and that is a journalist's phrase.
Others use the phrase but mainly comes from journalists trying to avoid the too-common "lately."
Just my two cents but I think the misery index has gotten worse in the social media era, used to be your team would lose a game, you would sulk with your buddies and then go about your day. Now, you look at social media/ the web and some person you don't even know post something that makes your blood boil and draws out the emotion fans feel after a loss.
I here you guys been there done that, been watching Michigan sports since 1969 lotsa of fun and heart break. My motto now is Michigan is the only school to have won NC in football, baseball, basketball and hockey. I know the warmer states don’t play hockey so if you remove hockey from that scenario we are one of just 3 schools along with Florida and Ohio State to have won in football, basketball, and baseball so we are in elite class.
I'm too old to care about social media. People get attention by posting the hottest take. A good percentage of stories in "real" media outlets are about someone's hot take on social media. Which further encourages the trolls. You often read about some entertainer making millions throwing a fit and deleting accounts over something some anonymous teenager half-way across the country wrote just to get a reaction.
Even here, you sometimes get the trolling, though sometimes the obnoxious ones get booted.
I've reached a point where I'm immune, I think, to what people say online. I used to think I should defend myself sometimes - especially since I'm not anonymous in most places. But trolls smell blood in the water when that happens - their enjoyment rests solely in how much they can escalate nothing into something.
I have barely exchanged a single cross word with someone online in years, and maybe that means I'm not doing social media properly or just that I'm truly ancient.
I don't know about this football/basketball school thing. Success breeds expectations of success. I get that. We care less about football today than football 20 years ago because OSU has absolutely owned us on the field. No way around that. Also, I think the COVID thing has taken me right out of sports entirely for the time being. I know I was rooting for the Bucs last month because Brady and all, but not even a fist-pump watching a game as calmly as I've ever watched one (OK, one little "Gronk, Gronk" for that first TD).
Social media does make a difference. Having to see crap posted all over when your team loses makes it worse than before social media existed.
HOWEVER, like it or not the football team is a blue blood program, and that is a badge of honor. With that comes high expectations. No one here expects Big Ten titles every year. It is telling though that you have fans of other teams always asking "Why does Michigan always underachieve?" Think about that, other fans think Michigan should be better than they are. And plenty of our own fans are willing to say "No, that's okay, there's always next year". Meanwhile the program is always talking about being the "winningest program and that it "believes in championship football".
Compare that to the basketball program which is a top 15-20 program that goes about its business, doesn't advertise how great they are, and routinely overachieves and competes with blue bloods most years.
I'll never be as big of a basketball fan as football, but the program is a lot more likeable at the moment.
Hard to take this article seriously when football DID win a division title in 2018. Ask WD.