OT: How did you become a Michigan fan?

My dad worked for Bosch and we moved up from Mexico to Dearborn when i was 3 since my dad was working on a project around the detroit area with Ford. We lived there for 3.5 years and I fell in love with the state and the summers and the fall and winter. My dad was transferred to a factory in Juarez and we subsequently moved to El Paso and i HATED it.

My stubborn 7 year old self swore that I would move back to Michigan and found myself supporting anything state of Michigan related so I followed the Lions, (Barry Sanders was etched in my mind), the Tigers, Pistons, etd. I knew that I would go to college and my child mind just assumed (correctly) that the defacto flagship university that truly represented the state of Michigan was UM. Luckily, it was a great school and I had the grades.

Growing up in Texas surrounded by Cowboys and Longhorns fans was incredibly obnoxiuous and any time that UM had a big game, people would root against Michigan for some reason. I proudly grabbed whatever Michigan gear I could find and wear it at school. Especially after the Rose Bowl against the Fighting Vine Youngs and THE GAME in '06. I just loved the state of Michigan and when I started following UM, i was enamored with Mike Hart and Chad Henne, and those 2001-2007 teams. I loved the colors and fight song. I have had a deep love for the state of Michigan and UM for a long time and I'm really glad to now call Michigan my home and myself an alum of UM. Go Blue!

p.s. - super fluff, but I love hearing about other people's fandoms and how they came to be, regardless of whether they attended UM or not cause you don't need to be enrolled to be a fan, Sparty.

Always hated Woody Hayes. Loved the helmets and "hail to the victors". Thought Ann Arbor was one of the coolest names for a college town. Why? I know not. Finally, most of all, my son, daughter, son in law, son in law's two brothers and several cousins are UM grads.

Well, being born in Michigan I always cheered for any team from Michigan. Then I picked Michigan over Michigan State when I decided I didn't want to grow up to be a douche bag. And that was that. 

In 2nd grade I took a blue marker and made a Michgan 33 jersey. It did not come out well. My mother was not pleased.

Unfortunately when several of my kids' friends didn't get into M and had to attend MSU they switch loyalties to Sparty.  While this is obviously natural, it is kind of sad to see kids who were decked out in maize and blue throughout their childhood go over to the dark side.  It's also interesting in talking to their parents (often family friends) how bitter they are about Michigan.

On the other hand, I had a coworker that went to Michigan (as big a die-hard as you ever met) and sent three of his kids to State but said that they stayed Michigan fans their entire time there - even during their so-called glory years.  He says there is a larger clandestine fan base amongst MSU students than most people realize.

Bob Ufer.

As a 9 year old I would help my Uncle rake leaves at a property he owned in Grand Rapids.  He'd have the Michigan games on the radio and I was introduced to some crazy announcer, honking a horn for TD's and shouting "Meeechigan".  I was hooked.  Over time I've become a fair-weather fan for all my other teams, even the Tigers.....but Michigan football has my heart until the day I pass.  Go Blue.

Decided to leave Bell Labs as it was breaking up and to take a job at U of M when I was three years old, and now the rest is history.

so not much NCAA fandom there.  Got in to college bball on my own around 91 and CFB around 97 so it was easy to get hooked.  Started grad school at M in 2012 and was accused of being a bandwagon hopper.  I then pulled out my Robert Traylor jersey.  

My father works at UM to this day.  As a child, I could walk out on the back porch and see UM football stadium.  Walking distance to the Big House and Yost.

 

Moved to Ypsi when I was 13, then Indiana when I was 16, but by then I loved UM and I hated Ohio State.  I barely graduated high school with all the travel hockey, LSD, shrooms and pot keeping me from my studies so I never had an opportunity to go to MM as an undergrad.

 

Got accepted for Grad school but I also got into UC Berkeley, which was much higher rated so I went there instead.

 

Go Blue and Roll On You Bears.

Both my folks were MSU alums. They raised me as a faithful State fan, until Charles Woodson happened. Never looked back since.

Refugees from the Soviet Union; settled in Ann Arbor when I started elementary school.  It took a while for my Dad to learn the rules of the game, but once he did he transfered his love of Soccer to Michigan football.

I grew up with it injected into my blood; not born with the blood.

Watch and wallet in a trash can, the wallet actually had a ton of money in it. My stupid nephew bribed me to get the watch back in a bathroom.

Used that money to buy tickets to a game, never looked back.

I miss that watch. You never see bands like that.

Even though my older brother went to Michigan, I had no identity with the school because he was a hippie who spent most of his time in the Arb. I was a young football fanatic and was sick of waiting for the NFL pregames and the Lions' game at 1:00. So, I started watching Michigan Replay on Sunday Morning between cartoons and came to think of Bo as a grandfather-like figure who I could watch football replays with over Eggos. 

That fed my love of both football and the university as I finally went to the BIg House as a Jr. in high school. I was major-league stressed about getting in and when I did I was already a rabid blue blood. 

A Michigander in Nam 68-69 having to listen to Armed Forces Radio with comrades from Ohio bragging about the great OSU.

My dad was from Michigan and was a fan. Some of my first memories of watching sports on TV are of the Fab Five when I was 7 years old. Then Michigan won the National Championship in football when I was 12. Watching those successful teams with my dad in my formative sports fandom years stuck with me and I never looked back. 

But 1969 , 24-12 did it.

I grew up in Michigan so I always felt like I was rooting for my state when I rooted for Michigan. I liked State too but it was ALWAYS Michigan #1.

I became an even bigger supporter when my Mom received a kidney transplant (from my brother) at UofM. The Doctors, Nurses, staff, etc were awesome and always kind to us.

My Mom passed away recently after a fight with cancer and a portion of her estate will go back to Mott Children's Hospital. I know she'd like that.

I cant even remember

Grew up in Northeast Indiana and when I was about 6 years old I fell in love with the Fab Five and have been a Michigan fan ever since.

When I went to undergrad there.

My Dad grew up in Ann Arbor and my younger brother got hooked before I did. I personally didn't care about college sports before I went to UM. Was much more of a pro guy. Went to my first game my freshman year (the first RichRod year....guh) but really was just going because everyone else was going. Didn't have a huge emotional investment in the team. I cared more about the NFL. 

After the '08 Wisconsin game, that started changing a bit. Was never at a game so loud as that one. The energy was just contagious. After that, I slowly started paying more attention. By the '09 ND game, man I was hooked. Didn't matter that the team wasn't that good. As cliche as this sounds, it truly felt like I was part of something bigger than myself. And the band....my god the band. Hearing them come out of the tunnel is like hearing them for the first time, every single time. 

By I'd say midway through my junior year, I was the guy who started following recruiting much more than he ought to. Still that way today, and now pro sports take a very distant second. You just can't beat the pagentry, the tradition, the bands, the fight songs, everything. Its also like Bo said: when you go pro, you play for yourself. You play for a contract. When you're here, you play for the team. 

Rojo vs Wisconsin and the weather.

Butch Woolfook lived on the street I grew up on leading up to and during summers of the years he played for M.  Seeing the winged helmet for the first time, on a local sports hero, I was smitten.  Never left me, and nine years later I became a Wolverine.

I was born a highly intelligent, precociously wise child.

my dad came by his sparty fandom the old-fashioned way, by attending msu for a year after he graduated high school, before he got drafted, and before he started seeing my mom.  he was a lifelong sparty...and as a result, i was too.  

but i wanted to be an architect, and i had great test scores, so i decided to go to michigan, which had and has the best architecture school in the state and world.,,but you bet i was going to remain a sparty.

well, that changed within minutes of my first home football game.  i was hooked, 100%.  the band, the stadium, the team the team the team...i was all in, almost literally the moment i walked in as a dorky freshman, barely even moved in to alice lloyd.

i am the oldest of four.  my sister and youngest brother followed me to ann arbor - my mom and dad sent three kids through the greatest school in the world.  one of my fondest memories of one of the worst weeks of my life - the week he died, while i was in grad school - is that my dad was buried with a classic michigan 'bo' hat.  because we eventually turned him to the bright light, and now i get to think of him as an honorary michigan man.  you send three kids there, you get to wear the hat in heaven.

go blue.

cycle of life type thing....

Parents didn't attend college so I had no real rooting interest other than what was on TV as a kid. Remember watching Des, Tyrone, Tim B. as a little dude in KC and it just stuck. Went to KSU and had a blast but still rooted for UM as well. Started making some money after school and made my first trip to AA, and I now continue to make the trip to a game about once a year.

I was born Blue, but my love was cemented in place in late fall of 1973. The big boys were playing poker and they let this youngster hang out with them. They were so filled with love of Michigan and hate for what just happened after the tie game. My heart grew 10 times that day.

 

My 2nd grade teacher was a big Michigan fan, she would have Michigan helmets and block M's on one of her class bulletin boards in fall of '72 and would tell us all about how Michigan kept winning all their games. I started watching football with my Dad but he was a big ND fan. I remember watching the '72 M vs OSU game was upset that Michigan loss.  From this point forward  I became a big Michigan football fan. When I was 10 I thought I would play football for Michigan and wanted to be like Rick Leach. Well that never happened, though I did go to Michigan for my BSE degree.

i paid the deposit for my freshman year.

My Pops, uncles, cousins and pretty much all of my family were and are Michigan fans, so growing up that's what I loved. I didn't know there was a team in East Lansing or anywhere else in Michigan. I found out a few years ago the bit about my Pops being a Michigan fan growing up then converting to MSU as he was accepted/enrolled/graduated. He tries so hard to act like he hates Michigan, but he doesn't. And I thank the gods that he did not raise me to be a Spartan.

2007, Michigan vs MSU. Before that, I was a casual fan. I was just starting to learn more than just the basic constructs of the game itself. The 4th quarter comeback left me emotionally invested for the first time. The deal was sealed. Everything since has been mostly pain. At least until Harbaugh. It's okay though. I more than willingly signed up for it.

Born in Grand Rapids but moved all over the country with my Father's job.  Neither parent went to Michigan nor were they particulary interested in being Michigan fans.  I don't know why, but I always was a Michigan fan.  Looking back I can only think that it was a way that I could "anchor" myself to the State of my birth considering all the moving we did.

I'm an Ann Arbor native, close enough to the Stadium that a bike ride could get me there, just a bit too far to walk to a game. My Dad was a huge fan, and my mother was a fan as well, so rooting for Michigan came rather naturally. The earliest memory I still retain of a Michigan game is watching the 1985 Iowa game on tv at home. 

Hard not to be a rabid fan when you can just pass the Stadium while riding in the backseat on the way home from somewhere out East (we lived just behind the Discount Tire on W Stadium Blvd, and I used to think Arborland was a long trip--the Stadium was much closer). In high school I had spots of poor discipline and focus and would occasionally cut a class and just sit in Michigan Stadium for 45 minutes, since it was rather easy to get there from Pioneer.

I was living and dying with game results by the late 80s, though occasionally there were things that would keep me from watching the odd game. In 1997, though without really planning to I wound up using lawnmowing and birthday money to attend all but one home game (Notre Dame being my lone absence), and that was that for watching home games on tv until my wife and I moved to California in 2005.

I'm still a bit perplexed about which pro sports affiliations to pass on to my children. My Dad, a native of Toronto, adopted all Detroit teams when he settled in Michigan (including the Wings over the Leafs, a fact proven in 1993 when we watched game 7 of the Norris semis between the Wings and the Leafs with our family in Toronto), but turned me into a hard-line fan of all of them. My kids grow up knowing the Victors and wearing various pieces of apparel, of course, and they see me rooting for the Detroit teams, but if I inculcate a fandom of, say, the Pistons in them, I am actually breaking from my father's pattern. And, in the case of my Lions affiliation, potentially injuring them for life.

Oh well. They root for Michigan and Michigan above all in college, and that will never change.

I went to Michigan for college and graduated a very long time ago.  I was a fan when I was there but over the years my interest waned a bit as I had a family to raise and we were always out of state and far enough away that coming back was work.  Both my sons ended up going to Michigan and the passion was rekindled with a vigor about athletics I didn't have previously. I always like college football but I became an NFL guy.  Happy to say that I now have my priorities right.

On balance, the Michigan package, academics, sports and culture, is as good as it gets.

Grandparents were fans, Dad grew up a fan and my mom did her grad school work there. Family has had season tickets for three generations now.  I was born and raised in Ann Arbor, and grew up going to every game.  Got in for college but decided it was better for personal growth to not go to college in the same town I'd grown up in (to my mild regret).  Neither that (I went to a D3 sports school, so no conflict of interest) nor moving to California has lessened my fandom.  

The 1969 Ohio State game. That's when my father became a Michigan fan. The rest was inevitable. 

First football game was inexplicably the 1998 Rose Bowl. 

Lived in Ann Arbor for 13 of my first 18 years before attending U of M.

The rest as they say, is history.

Indiana classic in 79. 3 years old. Dad was season ticket holder from 1969-2002. Our seats were in section 4 starting in row 14 and eventually row 20 around the late 80's. First memories are of scoreboard watching as I couldn't see over people especially before they lowered the field. First players I remember were Steve Smith l and Rick Rogers. Harbaugh was one my favorites, I remember Chris Carter catching at TD on 4th and 16 and then Harbaugh dropping one to Johnny K. The ball Kordell threw came right at me it seemed. Couldn't see "the catch" as that corner is tough to see from our seats. Was in student section for Desmond against OSU. Missed maybe 3 home games from 79-2005. Now living in Chicago I get to a couple every year.

Granny and Grandpa met in the law library over Thanksgiving break.  Mom and Dad met at a twist party at Jordan Hall (later Mo-Jo).

Somehow Michigan football really took hold of my older brother and me as kids.  We didn't attend any games until I was 13 and he was 17, but I have been to at least one game every year since then (30 seasons so far) and just over 100 games total.  My brother has probably been to twice that many.  It helped that our formative years were in the 80s, when Michigan was usually favored to win the Big Ten.

During my high school years we beat OSU four times in football, won the basketball title in 1989 and then returned to the championship game when I was a senior.  There were many things to appreciate.

Play basketball in 1964. It was over for me. Been a lifelong fan since then.