I started this blog for two reasons, those being I love Michigan football and I wouldn't mind making a career out of sports journalism one day. That being said, many things will surely be posted that have nothing to do with Michigan or even sports for that matter, so any definitive site description would be futile.
I'm currently a history student at the University of Evansville which is in southern Indiana (I'm sure you already knew that, of course). My dad is employed by the university so any dreams of attending Michigan were trounced by the prospect of free tuition to UE. Besides, if you haven't seen the out-of-state tuition figures at UM, well, I mean, they aren't exactly accommodating. I only tell you this so readers know that, no, I was not born and raised in Michigan and I did not and likely never will attend the university. I've only been able to attend one game in Ann Arbor (2005 vs. Minnesota *ugh*) so I'll probably never comment on the atmosphere of, well, anything pertaining to Michigan.
My journey to becoming a Michigan fan began in the fall of 1997. Some of my earliest memories are of the 1997 national championship team and namely of Charles Woodson. Something about that team, watching their games set to the overcast weather that is fall in the Midwest, listening to Keith Jackson and Bob Griese, the way my mom, whose parents are from Columbus and are huge OSU fans, would curse them... Something just clicked. They were like an event or faraway place that you would hear the adults whisper about, and you knew that whatever it was, it was important, and it was like nothing you'd ever experienced, and the romanticizing would sub-consciously begin. I would have turned just six years old just after the OSU win, Woodson's punt return and all, yet that team left me enamored. I distinctly remember praying to a God that I don't think I even believed in as the national anthem came to an end and those men in Blue and Washington State, led by a nondescript gun-slinging quarterback, took the field at the Rose Bowl, a national championship at stake. And thinking back, that moment sticks with me because it's the first time that sport exceeded everything else. It was the first time the headlong collision of peoples in competitive fury ever meant more than simply the final score on the scoreboard. The team was like a god and the final goal was something like heaven but even more abstract than a description of God's heaven; something that is untouchable and unimaginable yet something that can still take a physical toll upon you when it's all said and done. That 1997 team was the first team to do that to me, and that's where the love affair began and has lived on through good and bad.
Now that you have a perspective upon my fandom, I hope you return to read what I have to say. Perhaps being a little prophetic in terms of this blog's content, I'm fascinated by the recruiting process in football. Being a recruiting analyst for one of the big recruiting sites would be a dream job, so I'll probably write a lot about that, mainly from a Michigan perspective. I also love to write/play/listen to music and am currently in a band with some friends from high school, which I'll link here at the end. I'm sure those influences will creep in over time as well.
Happy Reading,
Mark
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