Looking for a Silver Lining: UMass

A superior Michigan team took the field early on Saturday against an outmatched opponent.  Most figured the game was simply a tune up for more important games in the future.  A chance to rest starters and give younger back ups a few game time reps.  Michigan doesn't lose games like this.

The underdogs had other plans.  They shocked the favored Wolverines early, forcing turnovers and stealing an early lead.  Like a prizefighter who comes in complacent the home team was knocked on its heels, but soon stormed back to reclaim the halftime lead.  The Wolverines kept the foot on the gas pedal in the third, but a funny thing happened in the final quarter of play:  the underdogs wouldn't go away.  Capitalizing on defensive mistakes and a shift in momentum the game closed in to within one score late, and it looked like the unthinkable might happen.

Hangovers, Notre Dame, and Denard Robinson Making Me Love Football Like A Child Again

"I need a drink."

As Dayne Crist's last second pass to the end zone sailed high above the outstretched hands of everyone and into the third row, I slumped over against the wall and started repeating that phrase.  My nerves were wrecked.  I needed something to calm myself.  Whiskey would have to do.

--

I had spent the last three and a half hours nervously watching the game, pacing around the apartment, and yelling so loud at the TV that my roommate gave up sleeping in the next room and decided to join me in the livingroom.  All the better to watch the spectacle of a college football fan driven mad by the frustration of playing Notre Dame at Notre Dame, where anything could go wrong at any time.  I worried aloud during the first half as the offense failed to capitalize on the mistakes of Crist's replacements.  I sent frantic text messages to friends who were also watching the game, and followed the box score online looking for any signs of hope in the numbers.  I found very little encouragement not preceded by the name:  Robinson.  When Crist came back in the second half I lost all hope and optimism.  A blown coverage on his second play back was all I needed to sink deep into my chair and wish for a quick end.  I am hopelessly fatalistic when it comes to Michigan football, and I hate myself for it.

Yet the team hung around.  The defense made enough plays to hold Notre Dame off.  It looked like we might escape South Bend after all.  Then all hell broke loose.  Crist connected with Rudolph on a deep seam route that was horribly misread by Cam Gordon.  And I collapsed again.  Isn't this how it always happens against Notre Dame?

The rest, they say, is history.  Denard Robinson picked the team up off the mat and put together the first scoring drive in almost thirty minutes of game time.  He was quick, efficient, and focused as the team slowly marched forward for the kill shot.  Once he hit Roundtree between the numbers on 3rd and 5 I knew it was all over.  Denard wasn't going to let this team lose.

Born Under Punches: 2010 and Beyond

The final installment of my 2010 preview of the upcoming season as a whole.  More than just the team itself, we need to understand the state of the program, and what this year means going forward.  I'll let David Byrne take it away:

Take a look at these hands.

Take a look at these hands!

Last night I pulled this song up on Youtube and listened to it for what seems like the thousandth time this week.  I have been a big fan of the Talking Heads for a while, but only recently come around to what might be their greatest album: Remain in Light.  It is beautiful and frenetic and dripping with the kind of paranoid energy that comforts you and sets you on edge simultaneously when the song blasts over your speakers and you cruse down the highway at well over the speed limit, pushed to drive faster by the building tension.  I could have picked pretty much any song from the album to begin this post:  Cross-eyed and Painless, Once in a Lifetime ("This is not my beautiful Big House!"), or Houses in Motion.  They all seem to fit.  All of them are chaotic   Byrne and producer Brian Eno were heavily influenced by band leader, saxophonist, and African revolutionary Fela Kuti during the making of Remain in Light   and this would hardly be the first time anyone referenced revolution or chaos when discussing the Rich Rodriguez experiment.

It's been a long, strange trip and for better or worse, we will know more about the program come December.  I just don't know if we will like what we hear.