Where are you all emotianally and existentially in your fandom

I actually wrote a pretty lengthy piece about this topic, and had considered posting it as a Diary, but no one really wants to read it. I just wrote it for myself. To help me understand what Michigan Football has meant to me in my lifetime.

The short version: this program is such a big part of my life, and I so thankful for what this football team was able to accomplish.

The longer version:

• Raised to root for Michigan by my dad, who was a casual fan.
• Moved from Michigan to NW Ohio when I was 7...not ideal.
• First memories were hearing names like Ricky Power, Desmond Howard, Elvis Grbac, and Cornflakes Brown on the radio while riding around in my dad's truck.
• 1994 Colorado game made me realize that I was in...and deep. I immediately went outside, screamed with rage, and chucked my football at a tree as hard as I could.
• I was 15 when Michigan won the '98 Rose Bowl to solidify a National Championship, regardless of what Nebraska claims. At least in my 15 year old brain. I was confident Michigan would continue to be elite for the rest of my life...I was wrong.
• By the time I was in college (Toledo), I never missed a game (on TV), got to attend a game at the Big House for the first time, and Braylon Fest.
• Then...a decade of what felt like darkness. I discovered The Blog during this era, and it undoubtedly helped me cope, knowing others felt like me. Optimistic and hopeful at times, but often angry and sad.
• My fist child was born during the day of the COVID shutdown. While watching the 2020 season, I started to wonder if it was right to possibly burden my son with this fandom. I worried.

Now, 3 years later, I'm feeling so much joy and peace. I had convinced myself this would never happen in this era of college football. But this team was special. They were special because of their dedication and love of the University of Michigan, and one another. Coach Harbaugh, and Aidan Hutchinson, Brad Hawkins, Ronnie Bell, Hassan Haskins, and Josh Ross. Those guys set the tone and expectation, and this year's TEAM 144 finished business because they believed in the goal and their teammates. 

So thank you. Thank you to Team 142, Team 143, and most certainly, TEAM 144. Thank you Brian, Seth, and the rest of the gang. Thank you brother and sister MGoBloggers. As I watched and celebrated with my brother like we were 12 and 8 years old again on Monday night, I hope and trust that all of you enjoyed this as much as I did. As others have said, this has erased all of the anger and frustration of years past, and I'll never fret over those times again. Because THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN FOOTBALL TEAM ARE NATIONAL CHAMPIONS AGAIN AND FOREVER!

I’m at peace with what comes the next few years for Michigan football, so long as we don’t revert to the Rich Rod/Hoke years.  I can finally watch a Michigan football game in peace:). The last few games were so anxiety producing, I could barely  watch, as I knew what the narrative would be if we lost.  I was at the Ohio State game-I sat for large portions of it, which is totally pathetic.

Off topic, but is anyone else annoyed that Saban takes all the oxygen out of the room by announcing his retirement 48 hours after Michigan’s victory?  I’m suspicious that was on purpose, to take the focus off of our team. If Georgia would have won, I bet he would have waited until Saturday for his announcement.  I say let’s raid his team for talent….

Also was at UM from 99-03. Hopefully our paths crossed while there.

I'm in a weird space. I'm happy Michigan won it all, but it isn't affecting my day to day life in any way. No plans to commemorate the championship in any way other than maybe enjoying a glass of Weller 12 year.

My outlook for next season depends on who is in charge. If Harbaugh (and I hope it is), I like our chances of reloading and competing for the B1G title and playoffs. If not, while I think we can reload and compete, my expectations would be greatly tempered.

All that said, the 2023 team is probably my favorite. I love the staff, the scheme, and the players, both for their skills and their character. True Michigan men.

Hail to the victors!

I am literally and metaphorically over the M00N.

I cannot wait for the next year and running into people wearing Michigan gear, sharing a knowing Go Blue.  Have had some real interesting conversations in those situation. While waiting in line for coffee at the airport in San Francisco, had a nice couple in front of me notice my block M hat and tell me that their neighbor was just named the AD and I was going to love him (they were wrong, I did not). Earlier this year, while passing by the restaurant of my hotel in Dublin, I overheard someone say, "we have a really good team this year, JJ McCarthy is my favorite player since Denard Robinson".  Did I stop what I was doing and go late to my research conference because I went over to say Go Blue? You bet your National-Championship-winning-ass that I did.  We're everywhere and we're happy.

I was an East Quad kid who was hostile to frats and football in college, and still remembers stories about Jimmy Harbaugh throwing footballs at kids' heads from his dorm room in South (?) Quad. True? I dunno. I discovered sports after living in Europe for five years, coming back and feeling very alienated and discovering the LA Lakers, watching them at a Celtics' biker bar, staying very quiet, in Somerville, Mass after I graduated and moved there from Ann Arbor. Sports ended up kinda saving me. In '97, I moved to San Francisco and found refuge and kinship with a lot of people in a tiny bar on Saturday mornings to watch Michigan football right through the championship. I was hooked. (It took me a long time to accept that Lloyd Carr wasn't god.) 

Now, I'm gonna take a year-long break. My wife asked me to--because it was consuming a lot of my life--and it's a good year for it, I believe, with hoops (my other love) down and a championship behind us and--critically--our daughter home from college grappling with three diseases and a blood disorder. I do love this community, including the people in it who I love to be annoyed with. That's the way community works.

See you guys on the other side!

In his great book "Ball Four," Jim Bouton used a description he'd heard in the minors. It was the feeling of coming back on the team bus after an away game. They'd won, he'd pitched well, he'd thrown well all spring, and he felt like his position on the big-league club was assured. It was the same feeling of sitting on your front porch, the days' labors done, maybe with a cold one in your hand, and watching the sun set. He called it as "the cool of the evening."

It's like that, only more so. The long season, all that fretting and worry, is over, and the result was the best it could possibly be. Truthfully, it was better than I thought it would be. Whatever happens, Harbaugh-wise or player-wise, is a concern for another day. For now, I'm just going to lean back and revel in the same thought I've had since Monday night: My God, they did it. They actually did it.

The cool of the evening.

My first memory of Michigan football was watching a game on TV in the early-to-mid 70s. I don't remember when but I would have been 6-8 years old. Afterwards, I went outside and threw a regulation-sized football to myself, pretending I was playing at Michigan Stadium. Every Fall, I had a yearning to see Michigan play, huge anticipation of the next game, couldn't wait until it got here.

After Monday? I am satisfied. For now. I'm eager to see what next year brings, but I no longer feel a yearning for the next game, which won't come with Team 144. They have already proven everything. They beat the best, or they beat everyone who beat the rest of the best, and they came out on top. They beat the smear campaign of rival coaches who couldn't win on the field so they tried to win with sneaky, underhanded attacks and media campaigns. They beat their own conference, which, instead of backing the biggest draw the B1G has, colluded with the rest of the league to stop Michigan's success. They beat the NCAA, which has gone after Jim Harbaugh ever since he had the audacity to host satellite camps in - GASP! - "SEC-owned" territory. There is no one left to beat.

What I hope for is that this is the beginning of Michigan's 20-year reign at the top of college football. No one else seems to have an idea where college football is going. However, Jim Harbaugh does (wasn't he the first one to openly say players should have the chance to transfer once without sitting out?). I hope he stays around and continues to impose his views on college football until he molds it to his vision.

Content.  Honestly, I feel like I'm able to have my fandom be put away in a lock box and leave it there.  Its weird.  I felt like I would always want more, but after the game it was just- it.  No doubt I will always root for UM, but I'm not sure I need to be as invested as I've been in the past.  Especially with the game becoming "semi -pro" I see the landscape changing in the next few years more than any of us have witnessed in the past.  The team winning it all and all those other factors, have me almost feeling like I accomplished what I needed to do-  I sought it out to the end, through decades of drama, highs and lows.  Maybe nothing will change and this feeling will be fleeting, but as of now, I feel like stepping back from it all.  I'm just content. Couldn't possibly want or need anything more.  Full.

I think you summed it up perfectly.

I agree with #9. I'm at peace. Hope he stays, happy for him if he goes. Next year could be tough with that schedule but that's alright. We're here; we did this. I'm on cloud 144.

There is the 1900's me as a Michigan fan, and the 2000's me as a Michigan fan.

The 1900's me as a fan (I attended Michigan starting in 1982) saw amazing glory:

A Football National Championship, a Basketball National Championship, 2 Hockey National Championships, 3 Rose Bowl wins and numerous New Year's Day Bowl wins, 3 Final Fours, 2 Heisman's, and too many Big Ten Championships in all sports to count without the help of Google.

I was spoiled.  I once skipped the first half of a Michigan - Ohio State game to go shopping.  I already knew how it would turn out.  

I knew that nothing was forever, but I also thought that forever would be a long time down the road.

Then came the 2000's.  Hoo boy.

Things started to fall off, first with basketball, then with football.  We imploded or just got tired of winning.  I saw what the abyss looked like. 

I always felt bad for MGoBlog for starting at the worst possible time in 2004.  At least 2003 had a win over Ohio State and Big Ten Championship in football.   

I always said that I had much respect for the passionate Michigan fans that started their fandom this century.  I was amazed they stuck with it, the program gave them so little back.  My hat was off to them.

But then, some spring shoots started to emerge.  It actually started with Women's Softball winning the National Championship, a team that was so much fun to root for.  Then Hockey made the National Championship.  Soccer made the FInal Four.  Beilein's unique system, wobbly at first, began to solidify and Basketball all of a sudden was in two National Championship games.  

Now we were no longer a lost program.  But in true Michigan fashion, we were still something a little depressing: a program that made more National Championships across all sports than any other program in the country, but a program that could not win any of them.

Enter football.  Football took the longest to recover.  Carr began to fade and retired under the cloud of App State.  The RichRod and Hoke years were a disaster after so much hope at the beginning.  The promise of Harbaugh started strong, but then fizzled in the jaws of Ohio State and bowl games.  If Harbaugh can't do it who can?  

But then came the Covid break.  A break we sorely needed, for more than just medical reasons.  I said at the time that I though that the Covid break would be "the big reboot" for us.  We needed a reset.

The Harbaugh incentive-based contract restructuring was a stroke of genius.  It woke the competitive fire in him (and he did NOT wind up taking a pay cut after all).  He responded with a new purpose, and a new younger more agile and analytical staff.  He mined his relationship with John Harbaugh to infuse some NFL coaching talent and approach.  He knew he had to beat Ohio State to survive (or die trying).  And that is what he did.

The 2021 Ohio State game will go down as a great historical reset for the 2000's the way the 1969 game did for the second half of the 1900s.  It begat 2022, which begat 2023.  Once Ohio State was slayed, the Big Ten Championship was a foregone conclusion. 

We were blinded by the lights in our first (unexpected) CFP, and shot ourselves in the foot in our second.  But third time's the charm.  Once we got past . . . SEC CHAMPION ALABAMA!! . . . IN THE ROSE BOWL!! . . . it was clear we were not going to be denied.

So now I feel that 2000's me as a Michigan fan can sit at the adult's table with 1900's me as a Michigan fan.  

What a great, great ride this has all been.

Who's got it better than me (and us)?  NOBODY!