Living as a Michigan Football Fan

Is there anything more frustrating than being a sports fan?

Before starting school at Michigan, I had largely ignored the world of collegiate sports. That became all but impossible once I set foot on campus, as Michigan football is omnipresent and enthralling, an energy that is hard to describe and harder still to resist. Although 2005 was a largely forgettable season, the hype during 2006 reached a fever pitch as Michigan narrowly lost to Ohio State 39-42 in the first-ever #1 vs. #2 showdown in the history of the rivalry.

As a consolation prize, Michigan ended up being invited to the Rose Bowl that year, and I remember being congratulated by a student of the high school I volunteered at. Yet, all I could offer in response was disappointment, as we had come tantalizingly close to playing for the national championship and fallen just short. Caught in a haze of entitlement, I believed that Michigan was always destined for more, and that another chance would come in the near future.

As a rival school's coach once commented, pride comes before the fall.

The football program lost its way over the next decade, gifting me with some of the historically worst years ever seen at Michigan, a carousel of coaches, and quite possibly the most repulsive human to ever become an athletic director. This came with a losing streak to Ohio State that seemed more inevitable every year, that cruel gust at the end of every season blowing out our hopes again and again.

In my younger years, everything felt cyclical. Every slump would eventually turn around and recover, surely. Likewise, I believed that a breakthrough for Michigan was always just around the corner, that somehow we'd figure it out and go back to our winning ways. But, your thirties are when you begin to understand that not everything is a cycle, that many things simply won't happen again. I began believing that Michigan would never again win a national championship in my lifetime, that their last triumph in 1997 happened at a point in my life when I didn't even follow the sport.

And so, even when Michigan started winning again in the last few years, I refused to let myself hope that we'd gotten over the hump. Even after beating Ohio State in 2021 for the first time in the last nine attempts, I still gave Michigan no shot against the juggernauts in the South who had dominated the sport in the past decade. But despite my lack of faith, Michigan kept knocking on that door, getting closer every year, until January 8th, 2024, when I paid an arm and a leg to watch my team claim their rightful place atop the football world.

The world of sports may be the most tragic form of entertainment. Every team trains and prepares rigorously for an entire season, yet all but one end up going home disappointed. These days, I never take victory for granted; some fans have lost the ability to hope altogether. I was surely in that boat until recently, youthful optimism having faded into adult cynicism. Yet, fate ended up rewarding me despite my lack of faith.

Was it worth the years of failure, heartache, and pain?

Yes, absolutely.