No, those are not Craig Ross’s ticket stubs.
My father gave them to me. His father had season tickets back in those days, at Michigan Stadium, long before it became the Big House. Neither my father nor grandfather attended U of M but Dad passed on his enthusiasm for football to me.
I continued his tradition of playing second string on my high school team, though his De La Salle team was #1 in the state and my team fulfilled our freshman year 0 and 6 record by going 0 and 9 as seniors. It was actually worse than that. Monroe beat us 28 to 14 but had to forfeit because their center was 20 years old.
My first UM game was the 1965 opener v Georgia. (It was decades before another SEC team played North of the Mason Dixon line). The UM 1964 team lost one game by one point and won the Rose Bowl 35 to 7. But Georgia beat us that day 15 to 7. What I remember is there were enough Georgia fans to form a card section showing the Confederate flag.
After the close of my perfect. high school freshman football season, (0-6) a teammate’s Dad took us to the last home game – Ron Johnson ran for 347 yards and 5 TDs in the mud and the rain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbnFs_mQD9Q as UM won its 8th straight after opening loss to Cal. The 1968 Ohio game was not televised so I had to listen to the radio, in increasing misery, as the Buckeyes rolled over us in the second half. My fandom was only strengthened.
In 1969, was the only sophomore to have a cup of coffee with the Border Cities’ League champions and still had high hopes of playing for UM. My Dad took me to the 1969 Ohio game. My bond with UM football was cemented.
In the summer of 1971, Dad apologized to me for not sending in for tickets for the Ohio game before it sold out. I surprised him when I told him I had purchased two, so I could take him, for his Father’s Day present.
I have blogged before about my ticket hustling days as a student. That 1969 win over Ohio started the upswing in football ticket demand so I remain grateful to Bo and the team for indirectly helping finance my education.
When the Lions moved to the Silverdome, Dad gave up his Lion seats and switched to Michigan. My parents frequently included me, with the guests who used his other 2 tickets, in post-game dinners at area restaurants. Somehow, my blood alcohol content never led to being excluded.
After the 1983 game, I was driving to the Upper Peninsula to deer hunt when it occurred to me to call my Dad to thank him for taking me to those games and starting me on the UM fan path. Thanking him was not something I regularly did but am glad for this occasion, especially since he passed in November 2000.
Daughter #1 had to outdo me so she has 3 UM degrees. She and her sister started attending games in utero so they cannot remember the first game they saw. Father-daughter bonds strengthened over UM football (and hockey). She has stayed in Michigan and lives ten minutes from me.
Daughter #2 fell in love with horses at age 4 so went to the University of Kentucky to major in their new Equine Science program. She saw 9 Michigan hockey games her freshman year as the schedule cooperated. Football attendance slowed considerably.
Knowing she would not be living in Michigan after her last year of high school, I decided to attend as many games as we could – road trips to Happy Valley and Columbus included. As (bad) luck would have it, that was year one of Rich Rod. 3 Wins and 9 losses.
I called her after the first home opener she had missed in forever. She had gone to Kellog Field (look it up) for the UK home game. Resoundingly unimpressed by SEC football, she said The Big – and Little – House experience was so much better. “More fans, better food, and less Buckeyes.”
During her college years, I once mentioned the only thing we ever discussed was Michigan football. “That is a blatant lie. We also talk about Michigan hockey.” she immediately responded.
Daughter #1 had 7 years of student tickets but we still saw each other at games as both daughter still enjoy the world renowned Wolverine Little House tailgate gatherings.
Brady Hoke used to say, in any team of 120, 135, college football players, there would be 10-15 “knuckleheads.” Not so the Michigan men of 2023. Not a knucklehead among them.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
Daughter #2 had to miss the 2021 game but I got to watch with Daughter #1. The beatdown in the “blizzard” let to our longest embrace ever as tears rolled down our cheeks. I wondered why she was so emotional. She had to miss the 2003 Michigan win to play for her high school hockey team, so the only eyewitness win was the 2011 game. She said “Dad, that was so long ago, I had not met the girls who have been my best friends for years!”
Ahh, context. Relative to me, she is in the early years of roller coaster fandom. And her years were largely the down loop
Daughter #2 had to miss the 2022 game at Columbus to tend a sick horse. She and her fiancé have a small horse farm outside Lexington Kentucky. So, after spending Thanksgiving at the horse farm, I attended without her. After a seemingly interminable time, the road losing streak in the series was broken. It was my 11th game at Columbus and I never saw the fans so, literally, dumbstruck. Those who could speak were largely talking to themselves “we had a whole year” while shaking their heads to and fro, eyes to the ground.
It was an ecstatic experience. Long calls to both daughters on the ride home.
Back to the, yes, the season of perfection.
After multiple changes in the allotment of tickets I had procured, Daughter #1 was in my section with her hubby, Daughter #2 was with her fiancé and I was with my son-in-law’s uncle. The spontaneous “Let’s Go Zach!” chant will bring goosebumps to me every time I watch the replay.
I was able to stay with a college roommate in LA for the Rose Bowl. Neither daughter could make that one. My confidence was decreasing by the day as kickoff approached. I had the same pre-season prediction as Seth, an undefeated National Title season. I was at Crisler Arena when Blake said the only reason he returned was for the Natty.
The team was talented, united, unselfish, focused, in synch with the staff, and knucklehead free. It was their destiny to win. Which is exactly one of my MGo postseason post comments.
Daughter #2 called the day before the Rose Bowl and we talked for an hour and a half. Loved it. We only went about 45 minutes the day after the win.
For me, the days of sleeping on Colorado Boulevard to be in the front row for the Rose Parade and then walking to the game, are over. Though it was a great time with the girls before the 1998 Rose Bowl. I pre-paid parking by the Stadium for my Turo mobile and picked up a friend out for the game who had lived in LA and navigated for me.
If we played the game against Ohio that we played against Alabama, we would have lost. Ohio was the second best team in the country last year. For whatever reason, the mistakes and flukes went against us to the point of reminding me of the Fiesta Bowl the year before, which I also attended.
For the only time in his Michigan career, JJ had to lead his team in a 4th quarter comeback. He was as cool as a glacier on Pluto. I fretted that he was injured as I kept my eyes on him when he was flattened after throwing a complete pass. I can still see Blake wide open on the 4th and 2 that HAD to be made. What a great play call! When that last minute punt was bobbled in front of me inside the 2 yard line I thought “I can’t believe the special teams are going to blow this season!” but we recovered. Blake dominating over time was a foregone conclusion but we still had to stop them.
4th down. Both teams line up. Time out.
Rinse, repeat.
The tension is close to unbearable in the stands. What must it be like to be on the field?
At long last, the ball is snapped, the play is stuffed and, well, jubilation just does not cover it.
I posted this pic on the MGoBlog site and the most spot-on comment was “You cannot fake that kind of joy!”
For those of my vintage, the Rose Bowl is the Grandaddy of them all. I never planned to attend the next game.
My host asked what I thought about our chances in the title game? “Anti-climactic.” I said. “This was the big one. The playoff monkey off our back. The mistakes are in the past. We will roll.”
To my surprise, Daughter #1, at great expense, pulled a trip together for her and her hubby with tickets. Her first Instagram to me showed the rented car radio playing Mr. Brightside. They flew into Houston so had a drive ahead but the DJ announced he was playing it for the visiting Michigan fans.
More good vibes.
I was able to meet Seth a few years ago before a UM hoop game we attended. And we discussed quantum physics and Planck’s constant. Sometimes there is a wormhole in the time-space continuum. After the decades of fandom, the Harbaugh years of rebuilding, the heartbreak of the TCU game, I momentarily felt as one with the Universe. Reading the blog the morning of the game, some of the comments were of the nail-biting BPONE variety. My comment was that we would walk away with it, final score: 35 to 13. I had already seen it.
Yes, my certainty wobbled a bit with the Washington TD just before the half. Being down 17 to 3, they were forced to go for not one but two fourth downs on that drive. Opening drive of the second half, Will Johnson – from my high school! – gets the pick that does seal the win.
It takes a while for a momentous event like this to fully sink in.
Life happens. My mom, from whom I lived across the street the last two plus years, after a full and rich life of 93 years, passed away the Thursday after Mother’s Day. If you – and you should – listened to the season summary MGo Podcast, you know the roller coaster ride of life Brian and Seth have been on and how much this season meant to them. I am blessed to count Seth as a friend. As a father, it is unfathomable what he went through last summer with his son. But I get how all-consuming that was for him.
Through the ups and downs of my own, and my family’s life, UM football has been a unifying thread. My own journey brought me from the early years of supreme disrespect for our Little Brothers and egregious loathing for our rivals down south.
Over time, those emotions have dissipated to the point where my focus was desiring Team #144 to win, for them, for the players, for the coaches, for the support staff, for my friend Big Jon Falk, for all the Michigan Men and Women. For them to reap the reward of their very hard work. For them to have the experience of holding that trophy and wearing that ring. For their place in the pantheon of Michigan football.
Coach Harbaugh talked about everything that went into the season, that the number of people who contributed was like “the thousand pieces of confetti” that were raining down after we dispatched the Huskies.
Was my voice chanting “Let’s go Zach” and yelling myself hoarse at the Rose Bowl and volunteering for the U of M Club of Greater Detroit over the years one of the pieces of confetti? I like to thinks so but it matters not.
Is Michigan football more than a game?
Daughter #1 saved confetti from the Championship Game.
Daughter #2 has horses named JJ and Blake. On my last visit, she showed me her latest tatoo, longitude and latitude coordinates. “OK” I said “I give up.”
“Near as I can figure, she said “this is where our seats were at the Big House when I was growing up.”
Some time in February, Daughter #2 posted something on Facebook about football, starting with the increased appearance of Dads and daughters at Kansas City Chief games, credited to the Taylor Swift phenomenon. (Both my girls are Swifties).
Let me answer the question, Is Michigan football more than a game? and close, with part of her FB post.
“Very long post, but this has been bugging me for a while.
The response to Taylor Swift dating Travis Kelce, and thus attending football games, has been varied and bizarre. The anger of the “dads, Brads, and Chads” has been peculiar, given that all she has directly done is enthusiastically attend games and state in interviews how fun watching football is.
This is directed at the “dads” portion of NFL (and football in general) fans. I have seen several fathers sharing their joyful disbelief that their young/teenage daughters joined them in watching Chiefs games, and even wanting to watch additional games. There was surprise that the game kept their daughter’s attention, that they had questions and wanted to learn more, and that they overall enjoyed watching the game. There has been appreciation for Taylor Swift leading to those moments, statements of “do you think this happens without Taylor Swift?”, with dads telling other dads to embrace it.
While those stories are great, and I love to see more people enjoying football, and dads bonding with their daughters, it does elicit some questions.
First and foremost, had those dads ever invited their daughters to watch football with them before? Spoiler alert, girls like football too. People are interested in what they are exposed to, particularly in a positive manner. Yes, individual preferences exist, but the chances that any person will spontaneously develop an interest in something they aren’t exposed to is extremely unlikely. And given the vitriol Taylor Swift has been met with by many, it’s not hard to see why many women and girls would not be immediately drawn to the sport.
My football dedication is rooted in the college level (Go Blue!), but I can’t imagine the formula changes for the league your team competes in.
Take your daughter to football games. And when she’s 5 and wants to see the marching band, go down to the field at halftime. Your knees may not appreciate carrying her back (up 86 rows to your seat), but she will.
Buy the bowl game (or playoff) shirts for her to grow into, so when she’s 32 you can laugh that she finally grew into the shirt you got her when she was 3 (looking at you 1994 Holiday Bowl shirt).
Answer all her questions, no matter how basic or bizarre they may
You may spend a few seasons suppressing the yells at the TV to explain what’s happening, but before you know it, she’ll be yelling too (just because you’re in Kentucky doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to hear you in Houston).
Tailgate, buy the hot chocolate, and teach her to never leave early. She may spend a few seasons complaining, but she may also be one of a few people (with her sister) that stayed to the bitter end to see her team erase a 17-point deficit in less than 6 minutes and triumph in triple overtime.
Set up every TV you own in one room for bowl games and playoffs, and swap seats when she says it’s good luck. You never know what helps, and maybe it will be her dog wearing a jersey for the final ten minutes of a National Championship that tips the scales and seals the win.
Make football fun and inviting, and you’ll have a road trip buddy for away games. You may have picked the worst season in team history to go to 9 games, but that 3-9 team could still tie for your favorite. And you’ll make it up to her, it may take 16 years, but that perfect season is out there. For each of those plays she asks a question in the middle of, for all the stadium steps you carry her, and the miles you drive, you’ll have years of lost voices from cheering, halftime phone calls, excuses to skip work and go to that road game, and justification to splurge for the tickets (because you owe her a good game).
As happy as I have been to watch so many more women discover how FUN football is, I am even happier to watch more dads realize their daughters can be interested in football too. I remember my dad being asked if he’d ever wished he had a son, since he “only” had two daughters. And he’d look at his daughters tailgating with him, more knowledgeable about football and their team than most, and laugh that one played ice hockey and the other played rugby, and ask what exactly they thought he was missing by not having a son?
I never realized how pervasive the thought that so many interests are reserved for boys or girls truly was, until seeing the response to Taylor Swift being at an NFL game. People like to have fun, it doesn’t seem like that crazy of a concept. If you share your interests with your daughters, you may be shocked to realize they will share those interests for years to come. And maybe they’ll be a few less angry “dads” when Taylor Swift is cheering next season.
Thank you to Taylor Swift for showing so many more people that football is fun, to Jason and Travis Kelce for New Heights and “No Dumb Questions”, and Chiefs Kingdom for largely embracing Swifties. And thank you Dad, for 30+ years of football games (and hockey, basketball, baseball…), tailgates, road trips, and FUN.
Here’s hoping many more women decide to watch football, play sports, take up space, and ignore the misogynistic haters.”