The Fire Sermon

You could be somewhere else instead. Somewhere far away and detached from all of this, the disaster that continues to blend into last year and become everything we swore this wasn’t. You could have been drafted. An apartment with barren white walls in some city you’ve never been to; clean and empty aside from a plasma television, a sectional sofa, a stack of sneaker boxes in a corner and a wireless router sitting on the living room floor. It’s not much but it’s better than this. You could be there.

And so you lug this defense’s incompetence around like an anvil chained to your ankle. Your shoulders are scrunched. You don’t say much and you don’t take your mouth guard out. Leadership as an art form is mostly foreign to you; to you it is transmitted involuntarily. It is impulse and fury. It reaches critical mass, and then you fake a smile on Monday afternoon. There are sporadic bursts of rage and then you pace the sidelines by yourself with your helmet in hand.

“Brandon was just telling everyone, 'Remember this feeling.’ Just yelling it.” Mike Martin told us about that after you lost to Michigan State.

When you are calm, leadership is all procedure. I have been here a while and I will say uplifting things; that is my job. Beyond that, it is up to them. They recognize your pain but they do not feel it as thoroughly as you do. How could they? No one else’s talent is as immense, as glaringly squandered on this.

“We said so much before every game, now it’s just all about what’s inside your heart, and what you believe you should do.” You said that two days ago.

You block punts. When you did it Saturday you hardly needed to run through anyone because the blockers had already begun to flee. You are frighteningly good. When you’re playing your eyes are wide, you stare like you’re in search of something. But afterward you squint, you’re exhausted. You’re constantly compartmentalizing the frustration and the ferocious anger, constantly redefining what this all means to you. To be undefeated … to be conference champions … to salvage this, whatever it is. Until all that’s left is you and the man in front of you and the need to win something, anything. There are only moments left.

And when they ask you about it afterward, outside of the stadium when it’s dark and you just want to go home, you shake your head and stammer before you figure out what to say next. You close your eyes for a moment and then open them to stare at the ground in awe and disbelief, as if you’ve spent the past three hours climbing a mountain only to arrive at the top and realize that you are looking upon a sprawling canyon. There was a vast chunk of earth that once existed but doesn’t anymore. Something is gone and you don’t know how or why, just that there is nothing where something once was. It is colossal; it is beyond all reason or comprehension. What can I do? This is bigger than one man.

“It hurts…we’re just trying to get to a bowl. I’m gonna go in there and make sure that we don’t lose focus, you know…we just gotta make sure it don’t happen again. It just hurts to keep saying it.”

It has come to irrelevant bowls, places deserted and and ignored -- a reminder of all that you could have, but don't. It has come to this:

We want to believe that this will eventually give way to something better. That in two years we will accept that it happened and smile because of how far we came – a jagged scar on our knee from when we first learned to ride a bicycle on just two wheels. In the distance, where we came from, there is rubble and smoke, but here now things are clear, things are good. Look at all that we have endured. That is what we want. But now a fear, however slight, envelops our subconscious with every loss. Maybe things won’t get better. They probably will, but they might not. And in two years we will instead realize that the signs were there and we should have known all along. This was just a part of a thick, interminable haze. It can be that way.

Everything you wanted was right here. You didn't lose for an entire month. You held this season in your hands. But now it feels like every time you step on the field it continues to erode. We know there are others to blame. We know you know. But it haunts you anyway because this is your identity. You close your eyes. You’re surrounded. There are bright lights from cameras and people asking questions; they keep asking but you can’t answer. Are you disappointed, exactly? “It’s just … ,” and again you drift away. They want to know, but you don’t know. You’ve tried, you have. There is just this canyon.

Love vs. Porn

I wanted to believe otherwise but despite finding an heir to the throne, this team is not ready yet. It is still young, still an infant. Sometimes it makes a building out of little wooden blocks without knocking it over, or says “I love you” for no reason at all while sitting in the back seat during a long drive home from your grandparents’ house, but most of the time it just stumbles around drooling on itself. It keeps falling over until it can stand. And then it does. Darryl Stonum fumbles twice and then runs 65 yards across the field for a touchdown.

Most of the time it takes a little while to turn a program around, no matter how hypnotic four wins, zero losses, and a freshman who seems oblivious to the fact that he’s 19 years-old can be. For more than a decade Michigan was just formidable enough to keep believing in, even when that meant having a season crushed by the stark reality of how mediocre it was becoming, and that we were at least a little aware of it all along. This is what starting over feels like, I guess. It’s perplexing and exhausting but with the evolution comes satisfaction. Like Martavious Odoms spending a year fumbling punts to become someone who can disappear for quarters at a time only to emerge with the ball in his hands and Michigan in second and manageable.

Eventually they will worry about different things. What a decent signing bonus should look like or how in four years they went from a High School All-American to someone standing on the sidelines with a jersey that might as well still have the tags still on it. Eventually, everything comes to an end. But in the beginning there is only the frenetic assault on every man, idea and perception all at once.

On Saturday after it ended, they were resigned but optimistic. Last year Brandon Graham said that Michigan would beat Michigan State, and when Michigan lost, he said this: “As you can see, we stuck with them all the way through the whole game. What are they 6-2? Whatever their record is. That don't mean nothing. They got a lot more to do, try to beat us and try to get on top. I still feel you know, they won, but ... I still have no respect.”

But this Saturday he said, “I wish we could get it back, but you know, my hat’s off to Michigan State. They came out there and played. We went out there and played hard, but they started early.”

It was still light out and he had a pair of headphones around his neck. He twisted his hips and looked off into the distance, a little distracted. He had things to worry about other than pretending Michigan was still a member of the elite. He spent last season in denial but now he was willing to accept the fact that Michigan could be bad and that he could be a part of it. I think I felt a little bit that way, too. This hurts but we were lucky to even make it this far, and anyway, we’ve felt worse before.

And so he walked up the sidelines during the Notre Dame game, alone, reciting “can’t nobody fuck with me,” because when you’ve lost just about every meaningful game you’ve ever played in, you have to remind yourself, every now and then, that you are, in fact, not one who can be fucked with.

This is why some men work at a kiosk in the mall or at Verizon call centers and why others commission clandestine projects to create an atomic bomb and thwart a fascist regime hell-bent on world domination. And why some are handed the ball with 92 yards to go while a stadium and me and you and probably a coach look on with veiled despair and no hope besides “Well, you've done it before. Let’s see how this turns out.”

This team does what Tate wants in ways Ryan Mallett could never dream of. Mallett was a carnival freak uncomfortably implanted in an offense where everyone already had a defined role. Some players recognized that he was quite obviously The Future, like it or not, but he seemed completely indifferent to the concept of solidarity. He was good in brief intervals but it soon deteriorated into arguments with wide receivers, many tales of his drunken exploits, and a coach who told him directly how little he liked him.

Since Western, the defense can charitably be described as erratic; the offensive line has crumbled since Molk got injured and sometimes can’t even snap the ball properly; and on Saturday two running backs ran into each other. But there is progress, there is a quarterback, there are the occasional reminders of last season’s craterous impact with our hopes and dreams, and the thought that this is something different. Brandon Minor can’t find anywhere to run so he stands by Tate’s side like a bodyguard instead.

“I don't really know where it comes from, but it helps the entire offense when you see him playing like that. You want to push a little extra,” Mark Ortmann said.

Things were bad for most of the day, and then they weren’t. Tate ran into things stronger and angrier than he was and at the end of a 92-yard drive, when he could barely breathe and needed to hold onto something just to stand, he reached down to grab a fumbled snap and found Roy Roundtree running somewhere out there in the rain.

Where The Wagons Stopped

I wasn’t quite sure how they did it but it was over, or over enough. A small young man wearing several white sweatbands occasionally turned in a circle as he looked up at all of us from the inside of a chaotic mass. His mouth was open but he didn’t say much. He didn’t have to; he waved his arm and we knew what he meant. “Yeah it looked a little grim but I already told you, we’re going to be alright.” There were still 11 seconds left but we’d been waiting a while for this. Don’t mind if we start a little early.

About a minute later Michigan had won, and most of the players stumbled into Rodriguez and patted his shoulder as they ran along to be apart of the steady demolition of the idea that Michigan was nothing but a bronzed relic left to remind us all of what once was. Lately it involves climbing onto a brick wall to sing a song with a hundred thousand people as they reach to grab someone’s hand, or jersey, or any proof that this is really happening right now and that we are here to see it. We’re trying to remember how this goes.

Eventually, Tate found Rodriguez and the coach hugged him like he’d spent the last two days at sea floating on half of a shattered wooden plank. Rodriguez told him something, probably that he was proud and to hell with those sons of bitches. But I think he wanted to say thank you for rescuing me when I was drowning; it was starting to look bleak for a minute and, oh yeah, that touchdown to Greg was nice, too.

“In the middle of a storm, they're calm,” Rodriguez would say later.

In the beginning, I wished Tate Forcier was on a different team. I hoped that his confidence was just a way of overcompensating for deep feelings of inadequacy (that he wasn’t tall enough, wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t Clausen enough or maybe just because his ears were too big) and that he would consider transferring as soon as Michigan recruited someone else. I thought he was scared or at least wanted him to be.

From a young age he was privileged in a way most people never are. There were private quarterback instructors, a frighteningly narcissistic website, aggressively-involved parents and his smug disregard for anyone who dare challenge him. Maybe I envied him but most of all I think I just resented that he had everything a 17 year-old could want and had to tell us all about it. When there was a chance this spring that Greg Paulus might play for Michigan, Tate wrote on Facebook, “I can give a damn what Paulus does. If he wants to ruin his career and come here its fine with me cuz hes about to be my backup.” I didn’t want to have to root for someone who would quickly become universally reviled if he played for Ohio State or Notre Dame.

He was confident in an absolute way; as if he was preordained long ago and knew he only had to wait for his day to come. Well, after Saturday I guess I shouldn't say that he isn't. His day has come. There will be many more that will be his, some pried from the grasp of teams that were better in every way except that they didn’t have him. He is barely six feet tall and built like someone who delivers newspapers on a bicycle. But he is not scared.

It was 34-31 and it looked like this:

It’s a little difficult to completely embrace Tate, considering we have all known guys like him before. Ones that were “totally sick at beer pong, bro” and have probably spent hours calculating the most obnoxious angle to position their backwards baseball caps. But when he got here he vowed to revive Michigan’s downtrodden program and so far he has. He has expertly combined cavalier impulse with restraint and a wizardly understanding of the offense. His mechanics have been constantly refined since his whole journey began and he identified a cover zero like the blind read Braille. But some things are innate, like a five year old prodigy who can complete rubix cube in 18 seconds or play “Come Sail Away” on the piano by ear. And after it’s over, he shrugs his shoulders as he struggles to explain it all to us. I do it because I do it. I never learned how.

If there is anything the pleated-pant, vinyl-record waltz of the Lloyd Carr era taught me, it’s that there are few truly valuable things in this world, but you honor them with a devotion bordering on religious fundamentalism – a good mentor, a good cigar, and someone who gets shit done when he says he’s going to. Tate said he was going to do some things and he has. For now, that’s enough.

Degüello

Made Another Masterpiece While I Was Dreaming

This is where we are. This is the pervasive bliss wrought from a once sacrosanct football team torn down to its knees, scarred, scabbed, audaciously wiping the blood from its lip with a dirty shirtsleeve while it looks you in the eye and asks if that’s all you’ve got. My lawn desperately needs to be mowed and I sit here eating a bag of stale tortilla chips, a jar of Newman’s Own salsa, and some Gordon’s vodka pulled from a dusty cabinet I only recently discovered. I’m not sure where my life is going or how it got here but I know for a day I am content. I’d almost forgotten this feeling and so did you. But I remember it now.

They are consumed by the prospect of proving everyone wrong; the masses are impulsive and scared and entrenched in a lifestyle that drinks old wines, groans when you stand, and sees football as a rite of passage and not a galvanizing triumph in the face of everyone who thought Michigan had lost its soul. I guess I'm included in that last part. But it can be all of that. It has been before. These players are playing in part to protect someone who many never thought too highly of to begin with. They know of no limits, no expectations, just that it takes a while to forget 3-9 and the infinite pain of a season that was over before it began.

This season was supposed to be a bunch of brooding young men with nothing to lose drawing up plays on the fattest lineman's stomach in the huddle, a little disoriented but scorned and eager. Things may not always end well but at least we know we're going in the right direction. Denard's run was that. But for a half they were competent and polished in a way we were willing to wait another year for. They were more than a gimmick, more than just an inspired moment. There is a revival, and I am not afraid to believe in it.

In a year the offense has gone from maddeningly ill-equipped to something organic, often daring and complex. Last year they grasped it as an ideal but performed it as a habit. There are four wide receivers and you’re in shotgun, stomp your foot and halfheartedly fake a draw to the chest of someone faster than you are. I don’t want to be here but it is Michigan so I’ll give it a try. It was like trying to teach a bunch of kindergarteners to ride a unicycle or tap-dance or juggle torches and it did not go well. They stumbled and burned themselves alive.

Even Carlos Brown, the wistful and frequently injured running back who runs conservatively despite his speed seemed more uninhibbited than usual. Tate is inventive and resourceful; he's confident enough to let plays develop, and if something goes wrong he knows how to salvage it. For now his arm is just good enough and he seems too boastful for a team that’s only now realizing it never needs to cower before anyone, but we’ll deal with that later. Michigan is undefeated for the first time since 2006. It was late November and Bo had died and there is a planet out there where other teams exist, I’m sure of it, but it’s hard to tell when you're in orbit by yourself. They were 11-0 and I wasn’t afraid of Ohio State.

And for now, there is a defense. We had been told their tackling was improved but during training camp that means little. It is true because you say it is and because I want it to be so. But on Saturday it was fact. You are Western Michigan and you will be ignored after today, but tomorrow you will know who we are. You will see Michigan on your elbows and your shins and eating your linemen alive in the corner of your eyes. You should throw the ball, really…throw it now, Tim Hiller. Brandon Graham is right there.

Saturday was small and possibly irrelevant but that doesn’t matter. Last year gave us little but Wisconsin, Steven Threet’s commendable march to oblivion and Brandon Minor’s martyrdom. The team we once knew vanished and went to a place somewhere high and far away and left us with nothing but the hope that this will end before it gets any worse. I know that, and I know what this isn’t. I know that this is familiar.

This Tornado Loves You

Donovan Warren: "That's one of the main things we've talked about. We want to bring back the fire to Michigan - make opponents be scared to play us, like they were back in the old days.”

Warren: "People talk, and they don't really know what we went through last year, and some of the things that happened. Everybody in this building knows the things that went on. This is a family here.”

Richard Retyi: Do you have any hidden talents?
Nick Sheridan: I write left handed. I don’t know if that’s interesting.

Tate Forcier: “At Fan Day, one guy asked me to sign his chest”

Doug Karsch: In your entire football career, how many times have you been chased down from behind?
Denard Robinson: *deep in thought* I don’t recall.

Nick Sheridan: “Denard, he’s his own specimen…I don’t have any of that in me.”

Tony Gibson: “I think they’re excited to go out there and take some live bullets”

Justin Boren: "Michigan football was a family, built on mutual respect and support for each other from Coach Carr on down. We knew it took the entire family, a team effort, and we all worked together. I have great trouble accepting that those family values have eroded in just a few months."

Jason Olesnavage, after dinner at Offensive Coordinator Calvin Magee's house: “Coach McGee forced us to eat some ice cream and brownies for dessert.”

BABY WE'LL BE FINE

He told us he doesn’t usually do this and then he looked down to shuffle some papers and clearly had no idea where this whole thing was headed. I think part of him wanted to crawl into a hole where darkness and silence stretched infinitely in every direction, or climb out of a window and run to a little place somewhere far away and stare at the inside of his hands pondering the human existence and we’re all still waiting, Rich. Can’t you hear the cameras?

Then Rich Rodriguez said some things. None of it was very profound but it didn't really need to be. For this moment he wasn’t trying to impress us. No practiced grin or calculated body language or casual, vaguely endearing down-south aloofness. Those days were over, or at least gone for right now. I’m broken, I’m tired, now listen to what I’m saying and believe that this is the truth. I can’t force you to but this is all I have left.

My mom cries at trailers for Aaron Eckhart movies and those little Dove chocolates wrapped in tinfoil that have things like “love is a heart whispering to the soul” written on them. But I only remember my dad crying twice in my entire life: The time he found out my next-door neighbor had lung cancer and after he told me he and my mom were splitting up. I was five.

I know that men can cry. But when they spend the last of their teenage years trying to tackle 11 other human beings when it’s so cold it hurts even to open your eyes, they ignore it. They’ve forgotten the fact that they're capable of it. It's not that they can't, it's that they won't. Sure it all hurts but step aside, this season’s not going to rescue itself.

Before I watched Rich Rodriguez’s press conference Monday afternoon I knew only that he had cried, or that he came close to it. And I approached it with the same slight skepticism I approach anyone with who’s close to me who cries when they’re defending themselves. Like on some level it was premeditated and we're being manipulated, because he knows he’s dealing with an immensely passionate group of people who are already inclined to believe him anyway.

Instead I was wrong. “When I have two young freshmen....” This was as far as he made it. He put his right hand on his hip and stared down at the ground, then scratched the back of his head and breathed coarsely through his nose. “That come into my office yesterday. Upset. And say coach, what…what…what’d I do, what’d we do. We just said we worked hard.”

For the first time this man was overwhelmed, in complete disarray and possibly unsure of everything but the fact that he loves these players, and that that should be enough. But even when he walks away from that podium his problems do not disappear. He carries them for us on his back like a box of grenades.

He sits at home trying to remember if Western Michigan likes to go for the knockout with a play-action pass on third and short. Four-star cornerback prospect Cullen Christian calls back and you want to ask him how his parents are doing but you can’t remember if it’s his or Dior Mathis’s mother whose name is Alice. Your son’s asking to pick up the Monopoly game where you left off last week but no one can remember how many houses he had on St. James place. The four million dollar lawsuit against you makes the news. And the entire time, you just can’t shake the sight of Je’Ron Stokes and Brandin Hawthorne creeping into your office, ashamed, like a pair of maintenance workers who’d walked into a vast ballroom on the Titanic to tell everyone, “we might have bumped into something.” And it’s breaking your heart.

Football is a gruesome game but it is not only that. It tests how much pain you can endure but not only that. It defines you among other men. Men who don’t cry much and grip a podium with both hands just to keep it from getting that far. Last season Brandon Minor dealt with every physical ailment short of Polio and blindness and was still the best thing Michigan had to offer. My nose has been bleeding since noon and my wrist is held together with tape and pride but if we collide, you will go down first and rise last. That is the way he played. And there has not been a more vehement, unequivocal defender of Rodriguez on this team.

He didn’t pine for an empty Sunday to watch Room Raiders repeats or complain that all this running was too much and he couldn’t take it anymore. He stomped through Ohio State’s linebackers with enough force to rip apart Pangaea even if it didn’t mean much to anyone but me, you, him, and the guy who thought he could stop him. But why? And for what? I think he did it because he needed you to know you could believe in him. That he was going to stick around for a while. That when everyone’s covering their eyes and asking you to tell them when it’s over he’ll be standing in the back of the endzone wondering how else you thought it was going to end. I think some people just aren’t afraid of much.

I’ve spent the better part of two years ambivalent and bitter, relentlessly checking Colts message boards with the desperate hope that Mike Hart will secure the team’s third running back spot. I refused to let go and I don’t entirely know why. Lloyd sits in a booth high above the field and says almost nothing while Mike and Steve and Chad try to find their way in a new world mostly indifferent to Michigan's strife.

There are others now, though. Ones who inherit a disaster while I deify the flawed players who are never coming back. Ones who were here before I noticed them. Ones who play with a broken wrist and flip through a stack of papers to keep from crying.