SportsGirl

It has not been a good weekend. The mere fact that this was a four-day weekend means by virtue it should be great. And add to that the fact that college football kicked off this weekend, you’d think I’d be the happiest person on the planet. Which I was, for all of 2 hours on Saturday. And then it started to crumble…

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a huge University of Michigan fan. It’s the one team that I’ve rooted for for over 20 years. My dad had a deal for all of us kids that when we turned 8 he’d take us to our first U of M football game. The game we went to was against the Miami Hurricanes. I still remember the final score–Michigan 30, Miami 31–and I remember walking off the field next to Miami players, glowering updwards at the men who had caused my Wolverines to lose. So needless to say I’ve always been passionate about this school. And for the last few years, we’ve sort of struggled to remind the college football general public that we are an elite team. I haven’t liked our quarterback since Tom Brady left and it seems like we’ve had the pieces in place a few times in a row but we can never quite make it come together. This was never more evident than last season. For those who don’t follow the Wolverines, we were having an undefeated season coming into the game with Ohio State, the arch rival. There was lots of discussion in the sports world about who should be ranked #1, OSU or U of M. Of course we know which way my vote swung. OSU was #1 because they had entered the season that way and hadn’t lost. And that gets into my feelings on pre-season rankings which we’ll cover at a later date. Anyways, Michigan lost, which is bad enough to lose again to Ohio State. But to top it off, that pretty much killed our chances of playing for the National Championship, even though I maintain that we should have had another shot, but that too is another topic for another day. We lost our bowl game and pretty much lost the right to be in the discussion for next year’s “who’s the best” discussion.

Fast forward to this weekend, and my hopes are high. We came into the season ranked 5th, which honestly felt a little too high. We’re opening our schedule with a game against Appalachian State, a name you probably don’t think about too often. At least until now that is. Michigan got to participate in a bit of history, except we were on the WRONG END! We lost, 32-34, to Appalachian State, the first time in history that an AP-ranked Div. 1-A team lost to a Div. 2-A team (which technically A State is in a sub-category of  Div. 1-A but whatever). First time ever. Lovely. And to make matters worse, this “David over Goliath” win was re-played and re-hashed on every network (including the NFL Network) all day long.

Now, that would be bad enough to pretty much ruin the whole season for me. And the season just began! But it just so happens that my alma mater UNT Mean Green played the Oklahoma Sooners this weekend. And got stomped. I had a glimmer of hope for UNT because they managed to land Todd Dodge, one of the winningest Texas high school football coaches ever. I knew we wouldn’t win against the Sooners, but I didn’t think it would be a massacre the way it ended.

So that was my weekend. Add to it that the Patriots placed Richard Seymour on the physically unable to play list and the league suspended Rodney Harrison for violating the banned substance policy and we’ve got what looks to be a depressing season already. Can we rewind please? At least let me prepare for my impending misery. What’s next? Bill Belichek has a heart attack on the sideline? I mean, come on! Let’s just pray that this was the only full-moon weekend of the football season and that maybe my teams can scrape together some modicum of dignity as the season progresses.