A pandemic diary: Blue’s gone

August 13, 2020

One Saturday in 1972 I walked out of the dorm where I’d lived for a couple of weeks, joining some new friends and what seemed like the whole town on the way to my first college football game. It was a clear, bright September day, nippy enough for a jacket, but even a three-foot blizzard wouldn’t have stopped us. (That kind of Michigan weather event really doesn’t happen much, at least not in the first week of the season.)

We hiked from the area known as the Hill at the northeastern edge of campus, past the libraries and lecture halls and down the main drag to Michigan Stadium, a couple of miles, but we were young and fired up. It didn’t matter that we had the worst seats in the Big House, high and dead center in the end zone. The Michigan Daily, the student newspaper, set the scene: “For most, the game itself is secondary — if noticed at all. More important are the good vibes picked up, the energy released by 80,000 bodies getting back into the swing of things after an eight-month hiatus.”

For me, it was the party of a lifetime. I still remember the vast crowd, the shouting and laughter and cheers, the perfectly synchronized marching band, cheerleaders doing backflips and cartwheels, all the pageantry. I’d never cared much about sports or school spirit in high school because all I wanted was to graduate and move on, but now I belonged.

With the drinking age being 18, there was plenty of booze in the stands back then. The Daily even ran a pre-game story headlined, “The cost of getting drunk,” and comparing prices. (You could pick up a fifth of Ripple at Campus Corner for 89 cents.) The times being what they were, the “vibes” also included weed: “As pungent mist rises above young people’s heads, the ubiquitous joint is passed as commonly as a cigarette.”

Oh yeah, the football. With three minutes left in the first half, Michigan sophomore Dennis Franklin, who was the school’s first Black quarterback and was making his first start, fired a touchdown pass right in front of us. The rest of the game was, as the paper said, “a bummer,” as neither team could score. Final: Michigan over Northwestern, 7-0. Ugly as a mud fence, but otherwise a great day in what was already an exciting freshman year.

I attended almost every home game for the next four seasons. Except for a long-ago lean period when I didn’t own a TV, I’ve caught at least some of the action every year since. Until now.

The Big Ten had no choice but to cancel everything. Playing a contact sport in a raging pandemic defies common sense. But we wouldn’t be trapped in this catastrophe if some of us had used common sense, like wearing masks and listening to the doctors instead of the flag-waving fruitcakes. We’ll probably lose Halloween next, followed by Thanksgiving. Have fun watching your folks eat the turkey on Zoom.