Saturday began early. Mister has been waiting for years for ESPN's Game Day program to come to Ann Arbor. Of course I took him. We got there before 9:00 and still weren't within the inner barriers!
It was fun--if long for me. I would have bugged out for donuts and coffee in the Alumni Center next to the show if it was up to me. But Mister had a ball. And I enjoyed sharing his thrill.
We took the bus back home. Game day tailgating was in full swing city-wide, it seemed.
After so long in the morning on a football theme, I had to remind myself that we still had a game to go to at night.
We got to the stadium and took our seats just as the sun was setting.
I won't recap the game. What I think was an old Dakota did a flyover, and two Army parachutists landed in the stadium at half time. But I was disappointed with the small number of fans who left in vocal disgust near the end of the third quarter, convinced we were doomed. With hardly any time left in the game, we finally took the lead. The stadium went crazy. All we had to do was hold Notre Dame out of the end zone. Even a field goal would be fine! But we couldn't hold Notre Dame, and they scored.
As we prepared to receive Notre Dame's kick off, I just said, "Well, we have 30 seconds." I wasn't willing to give up. I rarely do. If I can see a way to win, I retain hope of doing so. We've done it before. Apparently, the stadium agreed because I don't think anybody else left the stadium after we lost the brief lead that we'd finally clawed our way to getting.
And then we won. With 8 seconds left, instead of setting up for a field goal to send us to overtime, we went for the end zone and won. Honestly, I assumed that with 8 seconds to go we had time for a shot at the end zone. Since I don't know how our kicking game is, I didn't assume a field goal even at the short range we were at was a given. Notre Dame wasn't expecting the touch down try, apparently, and we won. However troubled our program has been the last few years, we have at least owned Notre Dame. It was a fine day to honor Desmond Howard.
As a personal aside, part of the debate over honoring Howard was whether the University of Michigan should retire his jersey. I wrote the resolution from the state legislature commemorating that event the last time it happened for Gerald Ford's No. 48, and it was read aloud at halftime (although I was not there for that). It might be the only resolution that ends with "Go Blue!" That was one of the proudest moments of my alumni life to get that task. I sometimes wonder where the framed copy is displayed. I have no idea. Sadly, nothing but internal work records will show that I wrote it since it was ghost written for a legislator (Hmm, I wonder if I saved my original somewhere?). Although my fingerprints are more visible when I had the honor of memorializing Gerald Ford when he passed away five years ago (my initials are in the lower right corner). I got the House side.
This is what the fans who left early missed:
Few wanted to leave the stadium after the win. This is Michigan. Although I confess I have no idea why taking off one's shirt is the height of fan happiness for some.
As we walked out of the stadium, tired but happy at having burned South Bend again, I noticed that it was just after midnight. It was September 11th. I was dragged back to reality a bit. A helicopter flying low repeatedly over the crowds as we trekked south from the stadium, with its search light playing across us, showed us what a different world we were in because of what we endured ten years ago. Life goes on, it is true. It must. And a walk home from the stadium, happy in a tough win is part of that. But the war goes on, too. It must as long as tough enemies keep trying to defeat us.
