Where are you all emotianally and existentially in your fandom

I'm feeling great.  It's been a good week.

Right now? Basking in reflected glory. 

zen

The weirdest part about all this is that I can think back to App State, Toledo, all the rest now - and it makes me laugh. 

Those were my 'Roman Empire' - I thought about them several times a week and winced, still. I do not care anymore. The spirits have fully been purged of their power. 

O m00n, where is thy sting? O Angry Michigan Secondary Hating God, where is thy victory?

I want another. 

At peace … this season began with hope , had to endure an attempted sabotage from outside twice, and ended with our integrity in place … as Blake so aptly put it “ business is finished “ … I am at peace and in the greatest place I’ve been as a Meechigan fan spanning back to 1974 !!! 

I'm elated with the National Championship, of course, but a feeling of apprehension has started to creep in.  I fear Harbaugh is going pro, which I totally don't fault him for, but the bigger fear for me is that any combination of Moore, Minter, Herbert go with him.  Michigan has the best staff in college football.  If all three stay in some capacity, we keep the train moving.  If not, we're rolling the dice on a whole new staff.

I can echo the peace part. 

I have been a fan my whole life, my earliest faint memories are watching the team in the 90s. I grew up out of state, but I remember coming to Ann Arbor for homecoming every year as a kid. I was a student at UM from 2010 to 2014 (thank God for Denard because those were some years man). This championship is incredibly satisfying. I'm feeling a little bittersweet that this run is over, and the fact that we won just hits me in waves, it's a lot to process! But I also feel like a huge box has been checked. No matter what happens, we will always have this season, this championship, and this three year run. My family can vouch that I have been more than a little grumpy or obsessively desperate watching games over the years. Going forward I'm going to work to use this joy to let my Michigan highs continue to be high, and my Michigan lows not be such lows.

Besides, we still keep a ton of our defense next year. We aren't going anywhere. After all, who's got it better than us?? NOBODY!!

Feels like we beat the game. I love the game, so I'm going to reset the Nintendo and play it again, and then again, and then again, because the game is the best one ever made, but the stakes won't ever feel the same. Because we already beat the game

15-0, National Champs.  Cant wipe the smile from my face. Ear to ear, baby!

I’m on top of the world right now. Never been better. I know we’re entering into a new era of college football right now with lost traditions and crazy rules, not to mention the NCAA being the NCAA and we’ll see what happens with that, but this season happened, Team 144 happened, and my maize and blue heart is full. They can’t take a damn thing away from me.

My sons and I watched the last two games together with our wives. They are 27 & 25, both with baby sons (who wore the M gear too) while we were decked out in our strategic M gear. Oldest son wore something different from last week so the game would be "cleaner". The place where I am is when Andy Dufrense escaped from the sewer line and found himself 500 yards from his cell, hands wide in the air, and sweet rain falling on his freedom. Ahhh, finally. Simple sports joy. 

I was at the "trouble with the snap" game, (and heard the best line about that game on radio- "It feels like I've been jail-sexed by a bunch of angry woodpeckers"), have been a fan since Gordy Bell & Rick Leach played the Selmon brothers in the Orange Bowl. This has been the best three year run I've ever watched from the football program. I could have never gotten into Michigan, but I was born in Ann Arbor and Maize & Blue is in my blood, and in my son's, wife, and now grandsons.

Brian wrote so many cathartic pieces during the wandering, and it resonated so much during that time. I found the blog in 09(?) during the RichRod times and it has been a must read weekly. 

That said, this is pretty amazing from a sports perspective. 

Desmond did his pose. My osu brothers and dad hated it. I loved it. The next year they took me to see Tyrone Wheatley run back the opening kickoff vs. Houston. Been a season ticket holder since 2003. 

I want this to be the longest offseason ever.
I want every hater that sees people in Michigan clothes to seethe with their hate. I want every Michigan fan that sees people in Michigan clothing to revel in seeing it. 

Michigan vs Everybody 

Michigan beat Everybody 

I hate every single person who isn't a Michigan fan and I want them all to have horrible lives. 

this has been the single greatest year of football in the XM household in the history of my life, and i cannot imagine a better year: 

high school sons had a phenomenal year and i coached them, as i did their older brothers. 

college son who is playing now had a great year, 2nd yr starting, and the team did well also.

michigan won it all, of course.

and to top it off, the lions are really good and in the playoffs.  

i may have died sometime this year and am in football heaven, but have not been informed yet.  there is a lasting peace and calm and gratitude that will hopefully take a lifetime to wash away.  walking around smiling, still.  

With Saban retiring right before the 12 team playoff, and in the infancy of NIL/portal, college football has a more wide open feeling than ever, as if it’s crossed some spiritual threshold and the old guard is fading, and it’s stepped into a totally new frontier. 
 

So in light of this, I truly hope Harbaugh stays as he seems to be at the forefront of structural innovation in the college football world, while still holding true to the heart and soul of all that is football. No one loves and respects the game more than Harbaugh. 
 

Like you, I’m content either way, as I believe his culture is cemented in many of these players and into guys like Sherrone Moore, but Harbaugh feels like the leader college football needs, and he would just be another coach in the near-passionless NFL, even if he’s a great one at that. 
 

I expect Michigan to have its best next 20-30 years it’s ever had, as I feel they are primed for the new spiritual frontier college football has entered. 

Cloud 9

I'm about as happy as can be. I am temporarily content. If he stays or goes I'd be ok with it.

But I'm pretty sure come like April I'll be thinking about the next one. To prove the haters it had nothing to do with any asterisk. To make OSU feel what we felt. That futility.

Im sure my fandom may ebb and flow - I'm just a bit younger than you and I'm sure I'll care more about my kids sports than Michigan someday. But, I don't know if I will or won't hang on every play. I don't know if it'll fade some years and come back the next. I am about as happy as can be. If they keep this up, great. If not, I'm sure I'll get sorta hungry again but also that as life changes I may not have the time or emotional capacity to care as I do now. But that's fine. They fucking did it.

One of the really great things is that the kids growing up now again know Michigan is a place to play championship football.  A whole new set of heroes to sit alongside Desmond Howard, Charles Woodson, etc.

Keeps the machinery moving for another generation.

I watched a Meechie video yesterday and I lost it. In many ways I still can’t believe the University of Michigan football program are college football’s National Champions for 2023. Incredible. 

Simple. I am at peace. Whatever happens in the off-season, it'll happen.

National Champs. I'm good.

[EDIT TO ADD: Everyone just got banged....sorry to invade your personal spaces, but I'm feeling great!]