Survey says I, a Michigan grad, will definitely trash talk my Fighting Irish dad.
The first college football game I ever attended was USC at Notre Dame in 1999 and I was seven and with my dad. It was, apparently, one of the top 10 games in the two school’s rivalry. What I remember was that Notre Dame was losing, badly, then it started raining, then Notre Dame came back, then Notre Dame won. I remember my dad saying I was good luck. I also remember I got a leprechaun pin that I kept on this amazing Salt Lake City Winter Olympics pullover fleece-like thing that I loved, then lost for at least a year when it got folded up inside a tent after a camping trip. When I found it again, I had outgrown it. Honestly, I still think about that pullover.
The third college football I ever attended was Michigan at Notre Dame in 2010 as a fully indoctrinated freshman Wolverine. (The second college football game I ever attended was Michigan’s home opener that year: Connecticut.) I had not yet learned to moderate my tailgating around my parents (or, at all) and as family lore goes, at some point during what was a peak Denard Robinson performance, I turned to my dad and said, gleefully, this is your tuition dollars at work.
(Thank you, Mom and Dad, for college.)
My dad loves football in a low-key kind of way that I, as a child and an adult, didn’t really register until I started thinking about it. Sure, I knew that as babies my sister and I were constantly at risk of being thrown across the living room after a particularly exciting play, good or bad. And, yes, I will never live down picking out a Chicago Bears travel mug from a preschool gift fair for my Green Bay Packers fan father because it had a football on it, and football is football, right? Oh, and when we lived overseas, he would order (?) DVDs (?) of Notre Dame games that would arrive weeks later (?) — but he’d only watch the games they won. (He still does this, only it’s DVR and the next day.) My parents now live 45 minutes from South Bend and the football season is a centerpiece of their social life. My dad’s not a fanatic and he is fully aware of the sport’s institutional and societal woes, but he also loves his teams. He’s happy when they win, and sad when they lose.
All of which is to say, he did not take my Denard Robinson trash talk well!
I know little, and care less, about college football but I do know the Michigan vs. Notre Dame series had a really fun run from 2010 to 2014. Naturally, there was that first game — Michigan won, 28-24, love you forever, Denard. The next year, my parents and their Notre Dame friends came to Ann Arbor and, boy, did we rip their hearts out, 35-31. (But oh my god, it was so much better than that. Denard was truly his best self against Notre Dame.) My junior year I brought my best friends with me to South Bend. I was a better sports fan (and a more experienced tailgater) by then. Notre Dame won that game, which, good for them. It was later vacated. Then, my senior year, back in Ann Arbor, Michigan won again, 41-30. A nice, familial rivalry that never had the stakes (or resultant petty larceny/arson) of Michigan State or Ohio State, with consistently entertaining games that my team almost always won? I was very into it.
In September 2012 — so, after Notre Dame’s single victory — the Irish opted to end the series in 2014. And in the last game of the series, Notre Dame beat Michigan 31-0 in South Bend. I would not describe it as a fun closing note! Afterwards, sitting on the back ledge of one of my parents’ friends’ SUVs, next to the remains of what was, hours before, the greatest Bloody Mary bar in the Midwest, I was bummed. Not because Michigan lost — I bounce back from Michigan football losses fairly quickly — but because the series was over. It felt like one more thing that was now a relic of the past. Because when you’re four months out from graduation, you feel melodramatically about everything, including the end of a football rivalry.
Over the course of the subsequent 2014 season, Michigan went on to lose so badly, so consistently that one of the student centers on campus gave out free football tickets with the purchase of a soda. The team bounced back by snagging Harbaugh. That was good. Harbaugh brought a different kind of heartbreak. That’s been bad. In 2016, it was announced the rivalry was back on. And here we are.
My dad and I do not really talk about college football in any other context and even the extent to which we have discussed any expectations for this weekend have more or less started and ended with jokes about my sharing a name with Michigan’s expectant lord and savior, Shea Patterson. I am optimistic on behalf of Michigan, mostly because I watched a lot of hype videos while writing this.
Michigan’s most anticipated season in recent memory starts this weekend in South Bend, against Notre Dame. It’s easily my most anticipated game of the season. I’m going and I’m bringing a small entourage of Wolverines. And this time, like the first time, I’m sitting with my dad. Trash talk TBD.