Tomorrow marks the 5th anniversary of this website. Holy crap, my blog is in Kindergarten already (that makes sense, because when I was running it a couple years ago, it always did seem kinda like pre-school).
The guys have asked me to submit my favorite memory from the 5-year history of the site, but that was nearly impossible. There were way too many great memories, but I think I found the one that I like the most.
Everyone has a story about how horrible the fans are of their rival school. It seems to go with the territory….”I hate (university) because their fans are the worst. One time, I saw (university’s fans) do (something awful).” Yeah, we have those fans at Ohio State. I know it, I’ve seen them and it’s embarrassing. But you know what….your school has them too. Sadly, most of the tales of bad behavior never get countered with a mention of the good side of the fan base.
The following is the story of my day at Michigan Stadium from the 2009 version of The Game, in which I encounter some of the most horrifying episodes of fans in jackass mode….and some of the nicest people you could ever share a rivalry with. Enjoy.
————
I’ve missed you all. Did you all get along while I was out of town?
You saw the game, you know how it went down. There’s not much that I can add to the actual contest between Ohio State and Michigan. We could go over each and every play (which we just might), but it’s not anything that you haven’t read on the internets already.
My review, therefore, will be about my encounters and my experiences in Ann Arbor on Saturday. Trust me, it was one hell of a day.
The trip from Canton, Ohio to Ann Arbor, Michigan clocks in usually at 3:40, but we knew there would be traffic and whatnot, so we left around 5am. Yikes. Now is as good a time as any to point out that I went to the game with my best friend, Megan and her boyfriend, Tony….both of them are Michigan fans. I know, I know.
We hit traffic five miles outside of Ann Arbor, and the result was a feeling of relief that we had left so early in the morning. We found a campus parking lot and began our walk towards the infamous golf course/tailgate area.
The remainder of this post could have been titled “Michigan fans are all assholes”. Because, trust me, I met my fair share of massive d-bags that could have tainted the entire trip.
As we walked through the tailgaters, one Michigan fan started to walk into the walking lane where we were going. He slightly tripped over a football and stumbled in front of me. I reached out and caught him, keeping him from actually falling to the ground. His response was….”what the fuck do you want? I’ll kick your ass and piss all over you”. I just smiled and walked on. No sense in debating a drunk. He screamed obscenities as I kept going.
As Megan was looking over a merchandise booth, a handful of Ohio State fans emerged from the tunnel separating the tailgaters from the stadium lot. The shouting could be heard loudly as voices rattled off the walls of the tunnel. Another over-intoxicated…at 10am…Michigan fan was following the OSU fans, cursing repeatedly. The Ohio State fans had a 10-year-old child with them, which the drunk referred to as a “faggot”. His screams of “win a fucking bowl game once this decade” appeared to have no sense of irony whatsoever.
The drunken man had a 10-year old child with him as well, and the child was wearing a shirt that said “Fuck O-State” in large letters. I may have been shocked, but I wasn’t actually surprised.
Inside the stadium, I went to the end zone to watch the Buckeyes warming up about an hour before kickoff. About ten feet to my left were four Michigan fans taunting the Buckeyes. Nothing wrong with that….but…..one of them repeatedly screamed at Justin Boren and his apparent “lack of family fucking values, you asshole”. Hypocrisy is delightful when you’re a direct witness to it.
Shortly after that, I started walking up to see where my seat was, and a Michigan fan a section over hurled a handful of rocks towards the Ohio State fans. Then he high-fived his friends. Yay, assault is so cool!
Five rows in front of me, a fan decided to stand ON his seat as the game began. Being the Ohio State/Michigan game, everybody stands the whole time anyway…but this guy was 6-feet tall and he was standing ON his seat. His ignorance and arrogance forced people behind him to do the same, which only irritated more people. We began yelling for him to stand on concrete rather than metal (Michigan fans AND Ohio State fans were joining the cat-calls). His response was that we should stand up (we WERE standing up). He refused to get off his seat for several plays, despite several threats from the UM fan two rows behind him. That man gave him three plays to get down or he was getting forced to the ground. Security was called, and the guy was ordered to stand on the concrete. His view was not blocked whatsoever, he just wanted to be above the crowd, I guess.
After the game, a Michigan fan was leaving the end zone, and screaming his head off at Ohio State fans, who were all over the place at this point. He decided his best course of action was to spit on a couple of them. Did I mention that Ohio State fans were all over the place? That guy must have forgotten. His penance was hilarious.
Why did I share tales of these angry, bitter failures? You see, I read plenty of asinine stories about how OSU fans are the worst ever, and they always have a story about how they were oh-so-abused by those terrible people. These stories often are embellished and repeated ad nauseum until everybody ends up having a lesson that involves “a guy I know whose cousin got beat up outside of a place I heard about somewhere near Columbus”.
In reality, every fan base has people like the ones you hear in those stories, just like the ones I encountered Saturday afternoon. Assholes are everywhere, and it’s a lot more fun to spread around the exploits of people like that.
I could have ended this story now and left it alone. Because that’s usually what happens when you start discussing how angry and moronic your opponents’ fans are. But I pride my blog on giving you the FULL story. I guarantee you that MGoBlog would never in a million years provide one single story that wasn’t shining sunlight up the ass of anybody who wears maize and blue and shoulder pads. Hell, there’s a story up on that site right now that discusses a Michigan football player who was arrested and held in connection with a sexual assault Saturday night after the game….and several comments are already calling the girl a liar and a slut. They don’t even have the name of the player, nor the identity of the girl, but because he plays football for Michigan, he couldn’t possibly have raped anybody and she was probably asking for it.
Ladies and gentlemen, that is the most popular Michigan blog in the world. Their comments are moderated, and those are the ones that MADE THE CUT.
Here at The BBC, if we experience something good or bad, we’ll tell you about it. Sure, we’ll get snarky about it (our female readers love it when we do that), but we like to make sure we’re unique. So let’s hear about the Michigan fans that we DID get along with.
On the way into the golf course/tailgate area, a group of about 8 or 9 UM fans were people-watching and one of them told Megan “you need some new friends”. She smiled adorably like she always does, and kept walking. I looked over and smiled too, and the guy reached out his hand and shook mine and said “good luck”.
The guy who was working the merchandise booth eyeballed me as I was standing in front looking at the bevy of maize and blue items. For obvious reasons, he was puzzled why I was there, so I told him I was waiting for Megan to buy something. He smiled and said “oh, no I’ve got PLENTY of stuff just for you sir”. Then out came the handshake and the wishes of luck.
When Tony and Megan entered the open air part of the stadium, I wanted to see his facial expression….he’s been a lifelong fan and never seen the stadium with his own eyes. So I ran ahead and got my video camera ready. The ushers were waiting at the end of the tunnel, and one of them looked at me, this guy wearing a Beanie Wells jersey, and immediately gave me a suggestion of a better angle to shoot the video from. He then left his post and waited until I was done before resuming his job. Again with the handshake.
These are people who had no reason whatsoever to be nice to me. They were NEVER going to see me again and they were certainly on the opposite side of the fan base. But they UNDERSTAND the rivalry. They get it. Go ahead and razz the other guy, but at least be smart about it and be gracious about it. What’s a better way to represent, calling a guy a faggot, or cracking light jokes followed with a decent gesture?
As for my immediate surroundings after kickoff, it was like I had a family and I was the black sheep. Sure, they wished I wasn’t the was I was, but they still treated me with the love and respect they would want from me.
On my left shoulder was the man who sold me my ticket on E-Bay (name withheld because some Michigan blogs are calling for the heads of those who sold their seats to Ohio State fans). A warm smile and a handshake from him was the first order of business, and plenty of great insight followed the rest of the day. He told me of what he sees in Roundtree, and I told him how far I think Duron Carter will go. This was a man that I was honored and pleased to share a seat with…and there was rarely a second when our shoulders weren’t pressed against each other for lack of space.
He was upset when he left with four minutes left in the game (5 turnovers would do that to anybody), but as he left, he still turned to wish me a fond farewell. Classy, through and through.
But the best memories of Michigan fans I have came from the family of four seated directly behind me. Todd and Karla were in their late 30s/early 40s, and they brought their daughters with them, Abby (14) and Olivia (11). As the game was about to begin, I told Olivia to stand on MY seat so she could get a higher view, since she was at least a foot shorter than me. It took her about 20 minutes and some gentle encouragement from her father before she did, but I’m sure she saw much more of the game because of it.
I spent more time talking to this family than I did the Buckeye fans to my immediate left. They were easily the nicest people in the stadium, warm and friendly from start to finish. Todd told Olivia to “never ever marry a Buckeye”, and I tried to convince her that our colors were prettier than dark blue. Midway through the fourth quarter, I quietly told her that when she was ready to rebel against her parents, she could join the dark side and Go Buckeye. Being the bright kid I knew she was, she laughed and said “never”. Atta girl, Olivia….stay true to your team no matter what.
When a restroom break was necessary at halftime, I was left talking to Karla. I apologized if I was being obnoxious or overbearing. She laughed and said “oh no, you’re just cheering for your team. Keep it up. The girls think you’re really funny.”
Really? I mean, these are not the types of UM fans I thought I’d encounter on Saturday. I wanted to give them my phone number and drive back north to take them to dinner (but I also didn’t want to appear creepy and have them desperately searching old episodes of “To Catch A Predator” to see if I looked familiar).
So if you’re reading this and you were one of the nice people I encountered that day….thank you. You represented your team well on Saturday and I thank you tremendously for it.
EVERY fan base has people like you in it….I’m just glad that I was lucky enough to meet you.
And if you’re one of the people I described early on in this article….let’s just say you got what you deserved on Saturday. And by the way, we did this in your stadium.
We’ll return ownership of your stadium someday. But not yet. We’re still enjoying it. It’s our second home now, but we only use it once every two years.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
