Friday, December 16, 2016

A Fan of this Mess

This piece isn’t about my reaction to the alleged sexual assault (which is awful). This piece isn’t about my reaction to how the University has handled it (which is also awful). And this piece isn’t about my reaction to U of M football players boycotting team activities (I’ve experienced a range of emotions on that).

This is about my reaction to being a fan of this mess.

Information about this situation has come at us in varying ways at random times. It’s been long. It’s been drawn out. And it’s been a little bit of a roller-coaster. There have been moments of “ugh… again?” And there have been moments of “oh thank goodness it’s over.”

As I’ve considered the possible scenarios of what might come next, there are very real moments where the thought runs through my mind: “Can I keep doing this? Is this football team something that I want to continue to hitch my wagon to?”

Look, I have other hobbies. I have other interests. But the thing that has been most startling to me through this entire situation, and really through this entire season, is just how much of my life I have tied up in this football program.

From a sports standpoint, I don’t follow any other team or sport nearly as closely as this one. Don’t get me wrong, I watch Vikings games, I watch TWolves games, I watch Gopher basketball and hockey, and I dabble in Twins baseball. But I experience those teams when it’s convenient.

Gopher football isn’t a convenience for me. I never miss a Gopher football game, and if I do, it’s a major situation.

I’ve skipped the weddings of two of my wife’s friends to attend Gopher home games, and I’m currently in negotiations with a third couple who is threatening to have a wedding next fall. September 23rd would be best. I would also begrudgingly accept October 7th. Outside of those dates, all bets are off.

Once in awhile somebody will ask me why I cheer for the Gophers. Why do I care? It's hard to explain to people that in the same way you don't get to choose your family, I didn't choose this team.

You're born. You grow up. Your family is there. They are just there. They are a part of your life since before you even knew what your life was. They are there. They are part of it. That's Gopher football for me. 

I’ve got family that is tied up in this football team and the team comes up in conversation at every gathering. One of my biggest wishes is for my uncle to see us play in a Rose Bowl in his lifetime. I think I'd be more happy for him than for me.

The friends that I speak to most often are people that I experience Gopher games with. 

My mood shifts depending on what is going on with this team.

I legitimately cannot conceive of a life where this football team isn’t a massive part of how I go about it.

And then comes the guilt.

How can I care about a football team so much? 

How can I put this much energy into something that is actually so meaningless?

Why am I completely open about the fact that I will cry my eyes out if the Gophers ever beat the Badgers again?

I heard economist Stephen Dubner say that he actually thinks it’s a GOOD thing that people get so caught up and emotionally invested in sports because as a society it may very well be keeping us from acting out in other ways that would be more problematic.

So that made me feel a little bit better for awhile.

But that was before this week happened. And now I’m questioning myself again.

Suddenly last week's angst of talking about whether or not our current football coach should still be our current football coach is akin to the memory of a warm, fuzzy blanket. 

The reason I can’t think of my life without this team is because it’s not just about the team for me. I have trouble thinking of my life without this team because I have trouble thinking of a life without the people I interact with about and because of this team.

Gopher football is the thing we talk about. It’s the thing we have most in common. It’s the thing that we rally around and the thing that we commiserate over. It’s the thing that we get together for.

And in many cases, it’s the only reason we know each other.

Last night my wife and I had dinner and drinks with people who, quite literally, I would have no idea even existed if it weren’t for Gopher football.

During that dinner there was a brief discussion of what you would do with all of the time, energy and money if you weren’t spending it on Gopher football. In hindsight, that discussion ended abruptly. I’m not sure we had it in us to really consider that something like that could happen.

If something super drastic happens, and for some reason we are forced to have a life without Gopher football, I feel pretty confident that I’ll continue to be friends with these people. And of course, my family is always my family. They aren’t going anywhere.

I just don’t know what the hell we’ll talk about. 

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Week 4: Arbitrary B1G Power Poll

Week 4 y'all! I feel refreshed after that bye week. Conference play kicked off this week. Arbitrary power poll below, blah blah blah, you know the drill.

1) Iowa (Last Week: 1): Remember when you were in elementary school and you’d get in trouble for throwing a spit-ball or setting a bathroom on fire? For my 5th grade teacher this meant you had to sit on a stool in front of the class for the entire day. No dunce cap. No beatings. Just sit there on a stool up front and let everyone look at your stupid ass all day long. This is the same treatment you’re getting, Iowa. Losing to NDSU is one thing, but struggling the very next week with BUTTgers? To top it all off, because you couldn’t adequately take care of your business, now the Iowa/MN game in two weeks is an 11am kickoff. Dicks. To the head of the class for you, Hawkeyes.

2) ASSgers (LW: 10): So I says to the guy, the guy I'm dancing with, “What kind of a bar is this anyway?!?!”

3) Indiana (LW: 12): Here’s the thing with dirt track racing, according to my friend that actually races dirt track Modifieds: It’s not necessarily the fastest car that wins, it’s the car that has the best traction. Every once in a while a car that doesn’t usually win much will suddenly be in a series of races, or maybe in a particularly big race, and suddenly their car will be unbelievable. When this happens the speculation always comes out that maybe that guy “soaked his tires.” Now I don’t know enough about it, but apparently you can literally soak tires in something that will make them more tacky on a dirt track. Anyway, I think Indiana was soaking their tires for a couple of weeks, but now their back to being shitty again.

4) Purdue (LW: 3): What color is that, honestly? It’s not gold. It’s not really yellow either. What’s that supposed to be? Sort of a cross between piss yella’ and puke green, ain’t it?

5) PSU (LW: 5): At 5:30 in the morning on a Saturday when you're still drunk from the night before there's a certain novelty to being awake. But at 6:45 when you're an hour from home and you're driving and you're still drunk from the night before, somehow the novelty wears off. Especially when you realize that normal, non-elderly, people are actually waking up around that time.

6) MSU (LW: not ranked): You had one job.

7) Northwestern (LW: 2): I once knew a guy who won enough money to build a deck on his house by winning an online Blackjack tournament. This was in like 2001 when we barely realized that online gambling even existed. And we’re talking like three grand this guy won. He wasn’t trying to win the money to build the deck. He just won the money and then decided his wife might like it if they used it to build a deck. I would assume he’s still a much better human being than I am.

8) Minnesota (LW: 4): You know that thing you do? Yeah, that thing. That thing where you just suddenly completely change? Yeah, that’s a little tough on the ticker for some of us. I mean, don’t get me wrong, having an offense that kind, like, actually do some stuff is cool. I enjoy that part. But the part where you were supposed to have a strong defense and then… well, yeah. Shit. This is about the beer sales again isn’t it?

9) Nebraska (LW: 9): There are two things that my wife hates that I would put into the category of “Stuff Lots of Other People Like or At Least Are Indifferent To.” One is Led Zeppelin and the other is Corvettes. She says Corvettes are like assholes, everybody has one. Which is funny because between us we have two assholes, but we have zero Corvettes.

10) Wisconsin (LW: 14): DIAF.

11) Michigan (LW: 8): I’ve lost interest for this week.

12-14): OSU, Maryland, Illinois. /fart noise

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

On the Preference of Death Over the Red: A Gopherist Manifesto

StillGotHope.com has acquired several pages of a manifesto written by an unknown author.
Opinions are not our own.  Here's the first installment:


INTRODUCTION

Struggles under full communism will be genuine. What will we do with our days? Will I one day be a warrior-poet and another a carbon-engineer? And the unlimited plenty - how will I channel my inner competitiveness? I was reading earlier about the use of money as a tool of the bourgeoisie and how they use money, power, wealth, and scarcity as wedges to drive us, the proletariat, apart. Separate from each other, we fight. We struggle. We make our talents thin and our hearts stone. We identify with the politics of division that keep us apart. It is the struggle of all true socialists to break down these barriers and join as one multi-national working people.

Also, it is my opinion that Wisconsin must be destroyed.

Chapter 1: #FEELINGSBALL

And so we turn to the National Football League, an organization dedicated to “merit”, where disagreements are settled on the gridiron under the sleety mist of fall. Our country has taken it as our pastime, the violence of the game reflecting perfectly the violence of our lies. But under full communism, is there a place for football? Is there a place for the insanity of competition for the sake of competition? Our society would no doubt be a better place if instead of beating each other for entertainment, we instead worked cooperatively to create new wonders in front of an audience of our peers. Imagine, if you will, a group of comrades working together to engineer castles and towers in our stadiums, rather than working against each other to destroy our very minds, bodies, and indeed, souls on the football field. The National Football League truly is in the business of “feelingsball”, as they say. Envy. Hatred. Violence. These are the feelings of the NFL. They must be destroyed so that we can flourish as a people, as must Wisconsin.


Unknown Gopherist Manifesto is a recurring(?) piece on Stillgothope.com. 

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Week 2: Arbitrary B1G Power Poll

Well SURPRISE SURPRISE! I made it a second week! 

1) Iowa (Last Week: 8): Seriously already so sick of you. Congrats on beating up two kids on the short bus. You're a real bully. I think the thing I’m most thankful for is that most of your fanbase still hasn’t heard of the internet so I don’t have to hear from your dumpy asses as often as the Bagder fans.

2) Northwestern (LW: 2) : What in the actual hell was that? I'm not sure what's more embarrassing: losing to an IN-STATE FCS school, or having said FCS school dwarf you in attendance. Fan bases are supposed to be excited after 10 win seasons. Must have been a wine-tasting Saturday. Seriously, pull your shit together.

3) Purdue (LW: 9): I actually feel bad for you. It occurred to me that your entire existence probably feels like the Tim Brewster era. I can’t even make a joke about that. It’s awful. 

4) Minnesota (LW: 6): I forgot my flask so I had to drink your $8 beers again, but it was such a nice day that nobody came to the game so the lines were short. Our fan base is the f**king worst.

5) PSU (LW: 12): I cannot even believe how good of a fit Pat Narduzzi is for your program. A hard-nosed, defensive minded coach. Just the perfect personality for your program. And add to that the fact that he's never covered up for a child molester? 2018 is going to be so awesome. 

6) Maryland (LW: 14): Boring

7) Ohio State (LW: 4): Boringer

8) Michigan (LW: 5): Putting up 50 points on Florida is quite an accomplishment. I mean, that’s a solid opponent from a decent conf… what’s that? Oh. CENTRAL Florida. You mean, the Central Florida Knights who went 0-12 last season? THAT Central Florida? Boringest.

9) Nebraska (LW: 11): Maybe you could try to wake up in the first half against Oregon this week?

10) Rutgers (LW: 3): Hi. Remember that time you were down 14-0 to Howard? (Also, I LEGITIMATELY forgot to write about you until I couldn't figure out why I only had 13 teams listed. You're like the Big Ten's version of flossing.)

11) Illinois (LW: 10): Fedora’d

12) Indiana (LW: 13): This has seriously gotten so boring. I can’t even write about Indiana. I can’t wait for the conference schedule to start. I think next year I’m just going to start doing this once the B1G games start. Next year. Yeah, that’ll happen. I’m already taking next week off.

--) Michigan State (LW: 7): If you're not even going to bother to play a game you're getting moved down 6 spots but I won't even give you the satisfaction of a number. Still, you're not getting last place because Wisconsin still exists.

14) Wisconsin (LW: 1): Beating Akron is pretty exciting right? That win over LSU is looking less impressive by the day. I don’t know anybody who is sold on you… except you. Also, I’m putting you 14th because I just learned about someone called TSpeth5 on Off Tackle Empire. He’s like a perfect microcosm of every one of your smug fans and I now hate everything and everyone because of him.

You can find me on Twitter @jdmill

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Week 1: Arbitrary B1G Power Poll

I'm going to try to do this every week but I'll probably forget next week. Week 3 the Gophers have a bye, so don't expect anything that week either. Boredom may set in halfway through writing it following Week 4 so expect maybe half of a power poll that week. By week 5 I expect to be gargling asphalt and you're on your own after that.

So by "every week," I mean every week that is this week. This was a lot easier when there were only 11 teams.

1)    Wisconsin: Best win of week 1 and it’s not even close. Anybody who tells you they saw an LSU letdown coming is lying. Revisionist history. LSU isn’t going to be as good as a lot of people thought, and maybe Wisconsin isn’t a team that’s going to set the world on fire, but for one week, they made the B1G proud. Also, I still hate them, so don’t at me.
2)    Northwestern: I mean… a one point loss to a MAC team isn’t the worst thing you can possibly do. But considering you are the only B1G team to lose a game in Week 1 except for Rutgers, and your fan base has been claiming you’d challenge for a division championship this year… this isn’t a good look. Having said that, it couldn’t have happened to a more self-aggrandizing bunch. You’re number two because I’m still giggling.
3)    Rutgers: Says here you managed a field goal in the first half to go into halftime down 34-3. Now Washington is ranked in the Top 10. Do you see what you've done? I’m guessing it has something to do with the fact that you had to fly across the country and the time change and whatnot. Right? Oh, I’m sorry, what’s that? You scored the last 10 points of the game? Here, you’ve won the Tim Brewster Dumbest Sports “Well Actually” Award.
4)    Ohio State: I always enjoy that thing where we’re supposed to be overly impressed by a 50+ point win by a great Power 5 team over a G5 team. Just like nobody should be patted on the back for sticking around to raise their kids (because that’s your damn job), nobody should be patting OSU on the back for beating Bowling Green by 67 points (again, that’s your damn job.) But you get number 4 because I said so.
5)    Michigan: See “4) Ohio State.” You beat Hawaii. That and a nickel will get you a gumball. A gumball that your creepy coach will probably just hand off to some starry-eyed recruit which you’ll defend by saying he’s going above and beyond. Reminder: the phrase “strangers with candy” is not a term of endearment.
6)    Minnesota: Knock that shit off. Seriously. What the hell? Could we just win a game that we are supposed to win by a margin that doesn’t make me want to fall over in the fetal position sucking my thumb? At this point the only thing I can come up with is that you’re keeping these home games close to keep the beer sales respectable. Well, JOKE’S ON YOU… I’m bringing a flask to the next game. FACE!
7)    Michigan State: You’re box score reminds me of a “Friends” episode. (Pat yourself on the back if you get that joke.) You struggled with freaking Furman. Listen, I know a few people who went to Furman and they don’t even like to admit it. Their greatest athletic achievement, prior to giving you fits, was having equal numbers of men’s and women’s sports.
8)    Iowa: I’ll admit it, you looked good, and I was going to give you a Top 5, but this business with Kurt Ferentz and his contract extension is amazing. I mean, this is the Joe Mauer contract extension of college football. If Iowa gets out of Kurt, going forward, what the Twins have gotten out of Joe Mauer, I look forward to his transition to Defensive Backs coach. 
9)    Purdue: Nice win. It means nothing. Hazell has never lost a home opener and we know what kind of omen that has been. And by the way, you guys talk about how great of an engineering school you have. I recently met an engineer in Indiana and when I asked him if he went to Purdue he laughed at me. Heartily. It was embarrassing. Turns out Purdue isn’t even the best engineering school IN THE STATE OF INDIANA. Something called Rose-Hulman kicks your ass. I wonder if they play football.
10)   Illinois: Weeeeelllll. Look. At. You! A 49-point win in Lovie Smith’s first game back in college. Pretty slick Illinois. Great for you to get off to a good start. Feelin’ good about yourselves I bet. But seriously, I can’t even fathom how bad Murray State must be.
11)   Nebraska: All I’m going to say is that lining up without a Punter in tribute to Sam Foltz was a damn fine gesture. Good on ya.
12)   Penn State: The inaugural game of the 3rd Annual It-Seems-Like-This-James-Franklin-PSU-Team-Should-Be-Better campaign started a little slow, but you came around. There’s no shame in only being up by a FG to a MAC team at halftime, especially how you finished. Now, continuing to hang onto Joe Paterno’s legacy? That’s shameful.
13)   Indiana: Your defense was directly responsible for almost half of your 33 points. You were losing to FIU at the beginning of the 4th quarter.  Things seem to be going according to plan?

14)   Maryland: There’s literally nothing worthwhile to say about your win. You crushed probably the worst team that the B1G got to play in week 1. Howard won a single game in 2015 and the team they beat (Savannah State) was a 1-win team as well.