This weekend we should have been together in Ann Arbor, toasting a victory over a (probably overrated) Washington with some new gear in a bag at our feet. The places we would have been are hurting. Hoping to soften the blow a bit, we're partnering this fall with Underground Printing to do a t-shirt a week for the places we love that normally rely on football traffic to operate. All proceeds go to the restaurant/bar/whatever.

Limited time offer: We'll keep the order open for a week (because ordering bulk means more for the institution). Previously: Good Time Charley's (order's closed). This week: The Brown Jug. Shirt? Shirt!

My one and only contribution to the field of child psychology is Developmental Sports Brain Theory. In it I postulate that there is a certain stage of development at which the child begins to be able to store large amounts of shifting information, and have an opinion about all of it, and if it happens to fixate on sports at this critical juncture there's no going back.

Abstract: Sports Brain syndrome varies by individual but by their early teens many children in our study had already developed the ability to roster most of one's starters in one's head, hate a few rivals' players, and prefer the backup quarterback. We found the sports experiences that occur during this crucial development window will determine how the sports brain functions for the rest of the child's life, for example if your baseball team's shortstop hits .343 when the league average is .243, twenty-five years later you'll lose your shit on the internet if he's not inducted into the Hall of Fame. Sports brain development may last two years or into early adulthood, and reaches maturity at the moment when it's completely blown.

Here's the spot in the box score where I contracted Sports Brain:

It was early November 1991, a weekend I spent with my grad student cousin at the University of Michigan. Unfortunately my eleven-year-old body wasn't quite as developed for standing in the cold through Tyrone Wheatley Time as my sports brain was. The whole walk back to campus I was a swimming popsicle; I don't even remember my cousin stopping us at street bookstore, as promised, to pick up an annotated Adventures in Wonderland.

It wasn't until he sat me down in a corner of The Brown Jug, and put a hot cider in my hand, that the young noggin was able to boot back up. As it came online I found much of what had been there before—Ninja Turtles, Superfriends episodes, etc.—had been wiped. The sensory system was taking in my surroundings, and downloading a completely new operating system.

[sip].

[sip].

So that's the reason I am this way.

It's also the reason every recruiting trip since 1936 goes through the Brown Jug—you can't spend a few hours here and not want to be at Michigan forevah! If not for the Michigan shlock, the standard American Midwest ratty gray hoodies and jeans would be the only thing separating it from the universal ties-worn-on-forehead college pub everyone who went to college is really thinking about when they want to go back. The beer is always a good pour. The spacing is always just right for interacting with the people you came with, but with just the right amount of conversation overlap to make table friends with the next one. And everyone in the room presents the textbook criteria for a diagnosis of incurable Sports Brain.

Also there's pizza out back. Let's celebrate The Brown Jug! Get the shirt here: