Heroes Get Remembered, But Legends Never Die

In the wake of Denard's impending final game at the Big House this Saturday, the Michigan sports world is overflowing with tribute videos and fond stories of #16, all striking a resounding chord in my always sentimental nature. He doesn't know it, but me and him have been through a lot together. Not just through some good games and bad games, but he's been with me through my senior year, through graduation day, through a move to a new city, through a transition to post-grad life. I feel like I owe him. So I guess this is my tribute.

They come from quite different places, Denard Robinson and Zack Novak. The former hails from Deerfield Beach, Florida - a place where many young kids don't make it out alive - including Denard's own brother - a place where football is not just a game but a safe haven from gang-life, drugs, and a route to prison or the cemetery. In stark contrast, the latter hails from Chesterton, Indiana, one of those quiet Midwestern towns secluded from all those devilries corollary to a life in Denard's hometown.

Quite different places. But they share a special place adjacent to each other in my heart. Because despite their widely contrasting backgrounds, the two have a lot in common.

Neither Novak nor Robinson was recruited heavily out of high school. Most schools told Denard he could play defensive back for them, and few believed he could hack it as a quarterback at the next level. The same holds true for Novak. Undersized and self-admittedly lacking in great skill, Zack possessed but one college scholarship offer - from a small mid-major from his home in the Hoosier state, Valpraiso - when John Beilein came calling. Both were underdogs, long shots by all accounts.

And both Zack and Denard received more than their fare share of criticism while donning the Maize and Blue. Novak was constantly labeled a stepping stone in the grand scheme of Michigan basketball, merely a clog in the system until the real cavalry - the four and five star recruits - arrived to play basketball at Michigan. I constantly had to listen to my own college roommates poke fun at Novak, always insinuating that he wasn't any good. The critique was even more pointed for Denard. His ability to throw was perpetually under question, from both the national media and from his own supposed fans, despite statistically accounting for 90% of Michigan's offense at times. Most notably amongst his critics, Michigan State players took to the Twittersphere to mock and ridicule Robinson after an embarassing loss to Alabama.

Admirably, neither one ever fired back at their critics. Instead they chose to do their talking on the court or on the field. A la the infamous Mike Hart route, Denard could have easily hushed the Spartans who mocked him via tweet after beating them this year; he took the high road and never spoke a word about the incident.  Novak never complained either. Not once did he comment on how he was always paired against oversized power forwards, he simply went out and played his heart out.

Perhaps the similarity between the two closest to my heart is their roles in the respective resurgences of Michigan football and basketball. But I think my fondness for these two Michigan athletes stems from more than athletics.

I've been a Michigan fan for a long time. Players with more talent than either Zack or Denard have come and gone time and again. I've watched the Charles Woodson's and Tom Brady's and Manny Harris' and Braylon Edwards' of the Michigan world come and go, yet none of their departures affected me quite like the exits of Zack Novak and Denard Robinson.

I attribute that to the fact that these guys were my peers. (At least at one time) They walked the same diag on campus as I did, occupied the same lecture halls, went to the same pizza parlor's on weekends, and attended the same parties I did. I read about them in my student newspaper. I watched them with the college friends in my college house. I associated them with college, which was the best time of my life.

And maybe that's why I'm so sentimental about seeing them go. Because I associate them with college, their departures mean whatever lingering bonds I may have left to my alma mater will be permanently extinguished. More players will come to replace them, but those guys will be years younger than me, part of a different generation of Michigan student life. When I tell my grandkids about Zack and Denard, I won't just be looking back on athletics, I'll be remembering my own experiences in college.

Thanks for everything #0 and #16.

Sports Days That Changed My Life, Volume II: August 26, 1995

Sometimes dates are inadequate; I think oftentimes in life we remember the different chapters in our lives not by the dates they occurred on but by the moments that defined those eras. Maybe you remember different time periods by the loss of a loved one, by a new relationship, an acceptance letter into a school, a new job, or a certain mistake. For me, many of the chapters of my life are not defined by dates, but by sporting events.

The peak of that unadulterated, blissful youth will always be equated with the '97 Michigan National Championship sandwiched in between back to back Hockeytown Stanley Cups, perhaps the Indian Summer of my life. The Day Bo died and the subsequent loss to Ohio State that following day, spoiling a perfect season my freshman year: the first real onset of adulthood. Chris Osgood's 2008 Stanley Cup: the epitome of the golden years of college. The 2011 New Year's Day Gator Bowl, when Al and I drank too much and Michigan got mauled by Mississippi State in the final days of the Rich Rod era: maybe my first heartfelt realization that college was truly over, in more ways than one.

August 26, 1995

My memories of the pre-August 26, 1995 era of my life are scattered. There are flashes of moments - the playgrounds, Happy Meals, digging up worms, art projects overflowing with glue, the cartoons - but there is no definite timeline in my memory. In my own head, the timeline of my life begins on that late summer day in 1995 just prior to my first day of second grade, and the timeline is marked by each subsequent fall Saturday thereafter.

I imagine the day started much in the way most Saturday's did for me back then. Waking up in my bunkbed, chowing down on some Lucky Charms, some Saturday morning cartoons, maybe a little Gameboy action. My dad was taking me to Michigan Stadium that day for my first game. I wasn't particularly excited for the game, but I wasn't disappointed either. It was just something I was doing, like going with my mom to the grocery store.

On the way to the game I didn't pay attention to the sports radio dad was listening to. I didn't know Scott Dreisbach would be starting at quarterback that day, and I didn't know I would be part of the largest crowd in America in just a couple hours. I pointed out the horses and the cows on the farms on the way to Ann Arbor.

I only remember select things for the first 3 and 1/2 quarters of that football game against Virginia. I remember the throngs of people, and having to hold my dad's hand so as not to get lost among the sea of maize and blue. I remember the novelty of peeing into a trough amongst a bunch of old men. I remember it was extremely hot as the sun beat down on us while we sat on those metal bleachers. And I remember it being difficult to see over the taller heads in front of me when people stood to cheer.

Things truly changed in those finals seconds. As Scott Dreisbach connected with Mercury Hayes in the endzone to complete an improbable comeback - one of the marquee plays of Michigan history and the first chapter of Michigan's Lloyd Carr-era - fandom came into focus in my life. For the first time that day, I heard the Michigan fight song trumpeted from the marching band, I smiled and cheered in unison with my section, and most importantly, I felt like I belonged with the rest of the crowd. There was no looking back.

On the ride home from Ann Arbor, the cows and horses passed by unnoticed. Instead, I listened intently to the sports radio, in disbelief that the radio hosts were talking about the game that I was just at. I peppered my dad with questions: 'what was the quarterback's name again?'; 'who were we playing next week?'; 'could we go to another game soon?'.

Saturday morning's were different after that. Cartoons and coloring books seemed to me mere child's play in those following weekends; they were promptly replaced by a morning ritual of dressing in my Michigan Dreisbach jersey, heading out into the backyard where I tossed the football to myself or to my dad - always re-creating that Dreisbach to Mercury Hayes reception, going over the roster in my program once more to study the names and numbers, and religiously plopping myself in front of the television to watch that day's game.

Things would never be the same.

Paint Me an Ann Arbor Winter's Night

Feeling particularly nostalgic for winter nights in the college town as seasonal change is upon us once again.

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I woke last night to the sound of thunder
How far off I sat and wondered
Started humming a song from 1962
Ain't it funny how the night moves
When you just don't seem to have as much to lose
- Bob Seger

The last leaves clutching to autumn dangle from the oak trees lining the diag. The campus paths that bustled with energy and vigor just weeks ago have grown somber and lifeless; only a few bundled up students scuttle down the lamp-lit paths, on their way home from class or on their way to stow themselves away in some library cubicle.

Turning the corner onto State Street, a chilled gust of wind reminds me once more of seasonal change. The buildings on State tower over the street, emanating a sense of history and tradition. I can almost picture John F. Kennedy delivering that speech on the steps of the student union. Or some lofty-minded student groups protesting on the lawn in the sixties, triggering the wheels of revolution. The pillars of the fraternity mansions speak of their own history, where well dressed young men once signed up to serve their country one night in the forties.

Yet nothing seems to be happening in Ann Arbor now. Students tucked away in the warmth of their houses sit aimlessly staring at the television. Or drinking cases of beer, drowning out the lack thereof of our generation.

Those thoughts of State Street's past are flushed away as I walk up the steps of my front porch and open that front door. Inside, my friends and roommates, dressed in our school colors, take swigs of whiskey concoctions while dancing around to the tunes playing from the speakers, drowning out some unnamed sporting event on the television. Feeling behind in the pregame festivities, I disregard the stack of unwashed dishes piled up in the sink and the beer spills covering the countertop, dispose of my backpack, and embark upon the evening unfolding in the living room. The night seems alive again.

With our whiskey overcoats draped over us, we walk amongst the throngs of students down Hoover, taking sips of whiskey from our flasks along the way. Though we walk among strangers down in the chilly night, there is a proud sense of community among us. The lights of Crisler Arena guide us to our destination - that evening's sporting event.

The winter nights go on that way. And though it seems like nothing happens on those November and December nights, and though maybe no one but us will look back on those days like one looks back upon the students registering for military service in the forties or the student protesters planting the seeds of change in the sixties, we create our own piece of State Street history on those cold, dark Ann Arbor nights.

1984

Two of my best friends' dads - Bryan and Jimmy's dads -  have the Detroit Free Press cover from when the Detroit Tigers won the '84 World Series framed and hanging in their basements. I grew up with both Bryan and Jimmy, so I often frequented those basements in which the 1984 newspaper slogan seemed to stand out as the centerpiece. A sentimental guy since birth, whenever I ventured into either one of those basements I always would pause for a moment and stare at that captured moment, an iconic moment in Detroit history rivaled only by maybe that unforgettable Stevie Yzerman '97 night that captivated Michigan's hearts.  And even while I was young I thought about where Jim or Bryan's or even my own dad was for that epic scene.

I imagine they were much in the same place my group of friends are now: in their early to mid twenties, young and alive with enthusiasm, the world still coming into place, that nervousness a younger man feels about how the future might unfold, and of course emotionally attached to their sports teams. I obviously wasn't alive in 1984. But in my own mind I can picture my father and Jim's father watching those playoffs unfold: watching the Justin Verlander of their era, Jack Morris, pitch yet another gem; watching Kirk Gibson and Chet Lemon from some bar in the metro Detroit area; clanging their Labatt Blue's against one another; talking about their past while thinking about their futures.

We're not so different, I bet. 1984 Bryan's dad and 1984 Jimmy's dad and 1984 my own dad would probably get along quite well with 2012 Zac, Adam, Jimmy, Bryan, and Steve. We're at the same stage they probably were in life: getting a little bit older but still learning how to navigate the waterways of life; at a point where your best friends mean pretty much everything; still young, but on the verge of what will become our married lives.

It's not hard to explain why I always stared in awe at those framed Detroit Free Press covers feautring Kirk Gibson's famous trot around the bases. From the moment I was old enough to understand baseball through high school, the Tigers were not a good baseball team. In fact, they were historically bad for most of my lifetime. In 2003, the Detroit Tigers won 43 games. 43 games. That's 119 losses. I still have memories as a boy, listening to Detroit sports radio with my dad, and the radio guys talking about whether the mandatory rule that each team gets to send a player to the all-star game should be eradicated - because the Tigers didn't have anyone worthy of the All-Star game.

Then something weird started to happen, though. The Tigers started getting not bad. I remember that special fall in 2006 - it was the first time I left home as I was living in Mary Markley Dormitory Hall in Ann Arbor. I remember watching those games with my roommate that year, Andy - a guy I would say cares more about the Tigers than anyone I've ever met. I remember those magical October nights shelled up in that dorm that was so small but I now think about it like it was Hogwarts, watching as Magglio Ordonez sent shock waves through small towns all around Michigan. I remember those nights, but I won't lie, I wouldn't consider myself a true fan then.

Things start to change when you graduate college. Tuesday night beers turn into lemonades, friends move away, and you're left with an abundance of time of which you've got to figure out how to spend it. The summer after graduation, when I lived in Petoskey, is when I started to fall in love. I watched Rod and Mario narrate those games almost every night - it was probably the best time of my life, watching those Tigers and looking out into the Northern Michigan woods in the backyard and waiting for the girl that I was in love with to come home from work. But it wasn't until probably last July when it became a full-on relationship for me and the Tigers. I was going through a particularly rough time then, and watching the Tigers each night became my rock. I've said it once before, but it's times like those when sports become a hell of a lot more than a game.

I don't think I'll ever forget this summer, and the only reason for that is the baseball team that plays in Detroit. My routine on those June and July days was to get home from a long day at court, change out of my suit, go for a walk in Hines Park, and then settle in for the Tigers. And somehow routine becomes more than just routine. It becomes habit. It becomes a relationship. It becomes a bad day when the Tigers are down 3 games to the White Sox. It becomes a good week when they're starting to catch those White Sox. And it becomes a night you'll never forget that Monday night when they clinch against the Royals, and you just had to crack a beer even though it was 11:30 already.

Hopefully I'll get the chance to venture into Jimmy or Bryan's basement this week and pause for a moment to look at that '84 Detroit Free Press cover. I'll think about our dad's. I'll think about where they were in their lives on that October 1984 day. I'll think about what that day means to them in terms of their lives.

But most importantly, I'll think about how special it would be if in some far off day my son could look at my Detroit Free Press "2012 Tigers World Series Champs" cover that's hanging in my basement someday. Hopefully he'll think about where his dad was in October of 2012. Maybe I'll explain it him: 2012 wasn't really that great a year, but the Detroit Tigers changed that, the Detroit Tigers made it a year I'll never forget. Maybe I'll explain to him how special a time it was to be watching with all my best friends, as my dad and Jim's dad do in my subliminal memory. And I'll tell him that that's why sports can be a hell of a lot more than a game.

Silver Linings

They say that you'll never really know where life will take you. For me, that never really rang true until my life was turned upside down. And I'm finally beginning to see the bright side of that upside down.

Four years ago, or two years ago even, if you would have told me that the highlight of my fall in 2012 would be a Michigan State tailgate, I would have looked back incredulously. The silver lining of the past two years of my life is that I have rediscovered the best friends in my life; given that they live in East Lansing, I've been spending an inordinate amount of time in the the city that once was vorboten in my vocabulary. It's weird when bad things happen in your life. Good things come from those bad things. But usually you don't realize that until way later.

For all the hell I've waded through in the past year, I don't know if I would trade it now. It's just about impossible to trade the guys who would have your back no matter what for anything.

Yesterday I wore green and white. I tailgated with thousands of Spartans. I cheered for Michigan State. Definitely not my forte, but it was more me being happy to spend time with my best friends than any college football affiliation.

Moral of the story: If you're going through hell, you may not see it at the time, but sometimes there is a silver lining in that dark tunnel.

The Sports Bucket List

(an incomplete list - but these are the most desired ones on the bucket list):

1. Hockey at Toronto Maple Leafs Gardens/ Montreal Canadiens Molson Centre As the deep south reveres high school and college football to a religious extent, Canada, the place where shinny was born, prays at the church of hockey. And Toronto and Montreal boast two of the most storied hockey franchises in the world. One of my favorite winter pastimes is watching Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday evenings, always wishing I could be sucking down a Labatt Blue in some warm Montreal or Toronto pub before venturing out into the frigid Canadian winter en route to that night's hockey game.

2. Every B1G Stadium (accomplished: Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State (by far the best experience of any I've visited thusfar), Ohio State, Notre Dame) (Left: Wisconsin (probably the best place to watch a game in the B1G), Nebraska, Northwestern, Indiana, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Purdue). A product of Michigan's auto-industry, I feel 100% a Midwestern boy at heart. What better way to explore your Midwestern roots than a roundabout of the Big Ten cities, taking you from the golden cornfields of Iowa and Nebraska to the great lake shores of Wisconsin and Northwestern through the rust belt of Indiana/Purdue and almost to Appalacia territory at Happy Valley?

3. Death Valley at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge Ironically, I would have had season tickets for this upcoming season, as well as the past two glorious seasons, at LSU if it hadn't been for the old college sweetheart. Oh, the funny places life takes you. As it is, for better or for worse, I've yet to experience the place they call Death Valley in the heart of football country - the deep south.

There are plenty of college football traditions I'd love to see: Chief Osceola riding out of the Florida State tunnel on the horse they call Renegade, Enter Sandman at Virginia Tech, or tailgating in the most famous tailgating spot in America - Ole Miss' "The Grove" - but none are quite as worthy of the sports bucket list as LSU's death valley is. Give me some southern bourbon on an autumn southern day, the ferocity of thousands of liquored up cajuns, and the glow of the lights underneath a Louisiana midnight sky - that's college football.

4. Ontatio Hockey League Tour Although I'm a Michigander through and through, I think there might be a little bit of Canadian blood in my system. Hockey holds a special place in my heart, particularly the junior OHL circuit. Last season, I crossed one off the sports bucket list as a couple of my buddy's and I ventured up north to the schoolhouse to see my London Knights play in the Ontario Hockey League Championship at the John Labatt Centre. It was one to remember.

Still, there are plenty of other venues left to see on the OHL circuit. With the NHL destined for a lockout, surely I'll get out to see plenty of the hometown Plymouth Whalers' games this season. But of course Plymouth cannot compare to those Canadian cities where hockey truly lives and breathes. Amongst the cities I'd most like to see in Ontario: Windsor, Niagara, Kitchener, Ottawa, Owen Sound, and Sault Ste Marie (MI). Along with the B1G cities, this is probably the most realistic check on the sports bucket list in the near future (i.e. this winter).

5. Texas High School Football The South boasts its own unique culture in Americana lore, but the high school football culture of Texas is a subculture within that Southern culture. How great would a Friday tailgate in some small Texas town be - sipping on some southern bourbon, cooking up some Texas chili, all whilst the Texas sun sets and the famed "Friday Night Lights" begin to glow?

6. Fishing on the Big Two-Hearted River I fashion myself somewhat of a Hemingway aficionado, and "Big Two Hearted River" is amongst my all-time favorite stories. Located in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the river served as a safe-haven for Hemingway after he returned from war. While not a sports event per se, nothing sounds more relaxing than floating on the Big Two-Hearted, taking in Michigan's beautiful Up North scenery, and sipping on some beers around a campfire at night, watching carefully for the ghost of Hemingway somewhere in those woods.

7. Arsenal soccer game in North London. In the same vein as the previous one on this bucket list, this one stems from a literary source. Rarely there comes along a book you can relate so closely to that you feel as if the author and yourself would make good friends, but Fever Pitch struck that exact cord for me. I've never been a soccer fan, but one of my now all-time favorite novels has me dying to hit the fish-and-chip shop that Nick Hornby frequented in North London, the Arsenal stadium where so much of his story took place, and the Arsenal pub he spent so many hours in - whether it be sulking after a brutal loss or basking in the glory of a victory.

Thoughts on "Fever Pitch"

For a long time, I've known that I'm not the type of fan that your ho-hum, casual fan really likes. I can be unpleasant to be around during the most important games of my teams due to an obnoxious fervor, I tend to sink into either a deep depressed state after an initial phase of rage when things aren't going well for my guys, and I'm unapologetic when I shed a tear or two for a particularly big win or an historic loss.

Fever Pitch -the novel, not the cheesy movie - scared me. It scared me in just how closely I could relate to the author. An account of Hornby's lifelong obsession with the Arsenal soccer club in England, detailing everything from the tears of joy during Arsenal's most glorious moments during Hornby's life to the bouts of real-life depression that mysteriously seemed to coincide with poor Arsenal seasons, Fever Pitch is an explanation of what it means to be an obsessive fan.

More than anything else, Fever Pitch illuminated to me that it's gonna be this way forever. The way it has been for Hornby and Arsenal, it will be always for me and Michigan and the Red Wings.

"I had discovered after the Swindon game that loyalty, at least in football terms, was not a moral choice like bravery or kindness; it was more like a wart or hum, something you were stuck with. There have been many times over the last twenty-three years when I have pored over the small print of my contract looking for a way out, but there isn't one. Each humiliating defeat must be borne with patience, fortitude and forbearance; there is simply nothing that can be done, and that is a realization that can make you simply squirm with frustration."

Anywho, the point is that the obsession that is fandom lasts forever. The point is that, like Nick Hornby, life often makes more sense in the stadium for people like us; like Nick Hornby, my biggest dreams have nothing to do with my own life, but rather my biggest dreams revolve around a bunch of twenty-year-old strangers one day playing for a national title, or a bunch of European-born hockey players wearing the Winged-Wheel hoisting the holy grail of hockey.