In high school, I repeatedly tried to tackle a very paradoxical problem, with no conclusive result: Once I’m in college, do I root for my school (expected to be UCLA or possibly Stanford) when it plays Washington, my favorite football team for the greatest portion of my life?
To make a long story short, I’m still trying to figure out how I ended up at Wisconsin, but I don’t need as much deliberation to decide who to root for this Saturday.
It’s going to be Michigan.
Parasite! Iconoclast! Philistine! Troglodyte! Call me what you will. I know it’s a little confusing and very disorienting. How does the sports editor at the Badger Herald cheer for the Wolverines?
Mary Motzko is still shaking her head in disbelief, trust me.
I’m not going to lie. I like Michigan because they’re better.
They are better on the field, certainly. They are 7-2 and the Badgers are 5-5. Year in and year out, the Wolverines beat Wisconsin. The Badgers beating Michigan Saturday is about as likely as the Kool-Aid Man busting through the Camp Randall wall to declare them Super Bowl champs. Even when UW won two consecutive Rose Bowls, Michigan beat them. In 1998, the last year Michigan was not easily the class of the Big Ten, the Badgers were only in the Granddaddy because the best team (Ohio State) and UM had been to the Rose Bowl more recently.
But I say the Wolverines are better because they are a better team to like: the kind of team with a sort of magnetism that draws you toward it. There is nothing so powerful as this lure that accompanies the program. A daily campus newsletter recently described UM’s “mystique”. Notre Dame has mystique. Michigan has tradition, class and, most of all, success.
Hail to the victors, valiant!
Hail to the conqu’ring heroes!
Hail! Hail! To Michigan,
The leaders and best!
Probably, I would like Michigan even if I hadn’t lived in Ann Arbor for 10 years. But I would have liked them the way I like the Yankees or North Carolina basketball: a detached respect without any real loyalty.
Even after moving from Seattle I was a Pac-10 guy, and the Huskies were my Dawgs. In 1991 and ’92 I had Washington’s back in the Rose Bowl. I never lost my love of Washington football, but I did gradually grow fond enough of Michigan.
I don’t really know when it happened. I began to like Michigan State less and less, began to hate the Buckeyes more and more and began to hold a reverence for a simple block ‘M’ that represented such a complicated history.
But I didn’t start dying a little bit inside with every Michigan loss until I knew what it was like for them not to lose.
Yes, I suppose the national championship in 1997 converted me for good.
It was impossible not to like that team, with Charles Woodson putting on a show every week, Brian Griese pulling plays out of thin air and a defense that just wouldn’t give anything.
But it was that year when something transformed inside me. The No. 5 Wolverines were down 21-3 to No. 15 Iowa at halftime. I was there, at Michigan Stadium with my little brother. And together, with me holding him up at times so he could see over the standing students, we watched Michigan come all the way back to win 28-24 on a clutch Jerame Tuman touchdown. It was magic, as was the rest of the undefeated season. And I can’t ever let go.
I have been to exactly one Michigan football game each of the last seven years. Since that Iowa game, each of the last four has been against Wisconsin. Every time, whether in Madison or Ann Arbor, I cheer for the Wolverines.
As a side note, the only time in recent memory I didn’t root for Michigan was when it went to Seattle Sept. 8 and played Washington. But I didn’t go against them either. By this point, it was like watching my mom face off against my dad. I just enjoyed that they were both competing in the same place at the same time. Until the Huskies and Wolverines are in direct competition on a regular basis, I have no preference.
With Wisconsin I don’t get that luxury, and the issue has never really been a contest. Don’t get me wrong. I’ll back the Badgers in any sport, especially basketball, and I love Wisconsin football too.
If you cut me, I’ll bleed Badger red, but when it comes to Michigan, I’m true blue through and through.
