Bonus Coverage - Iconic Collge Football Experience: The Big House

BONUS:  A TRIP TO THE BIG HOUSE

For nearly 25 years my son and I have been taking at least one road trip annually to a sporting event.  We began going to Miss. State road football games when he was a boy, but have expanded it to include various sports and a multitude of venues.  Among the iconic places have been games at Fenway Park, Madison Square Garden, Lambeau Field, Soldier Field, the (new) Boston Garden, Camden Yard, and as of this past weekend, the Big House.  

Of course, as an SEC guy I've always had some preconceived notions about the Big +/- 10 (thus called because they don't seem either to be all that clear on how many teams are in actually in their conference in any given season or to care).  This much I've always known:  Michigan Stadium is one huge place, and they regularly fill it up.  My son-in-law is a huge Michigan fan, although not an alumnus, so I've become at least sympathetic to their athletic teams.  But the stadium itself and Big +/- 10 football gameday experience were the real drawing cards.  And you've got to love those helmets (as the Delaware Blue Hens clearly do).  From thence follow the observations of a Mississippi State Bulldog in Bo Schembechler's Court ...

• The University of Michigan is an impressive place.  The campus feels historic and important, as it is.  Michigan was the first great public university in the American "West" and was modeled after the great German research-oriented institutions, a change from the private liberal arts institutions in the NE, which were modeled after the iconic English universities, Oxford and Cambridge.  

• Ann Arbor is a quintessential college town, much like Athens, GA in that the campus butts right up to downtown, where one can find a ton of places to eat, drink, and buy Maize and Blue paraphernalia. Oh, and like most college towns not named Baton Rouge, the natives were friendly and helpful to visitors from a foreign land.

• As you'd expect, the Wolverines and Spartans don't really like each other.  In some typically rude Yankee ways, they were meaner to each other than we Bulldog fans and the Rebelblackbearlandsharkswhointhehellarethey are.  For example, the crowd at the Big House vociferously booed the Michigan State band from the time it marched onto the field for their pregame show well into their performance. However, I saw lots of Spartan fans wandering around Ann Arbor the day of the game, and there were lots of mixed couples (Green and Blue/Maize) and groups of college kids with both Michigan and Mich. State clothing on.  Those occurrences would be very rare on Egg Bowl game days.  Oh, speaking of the Egg Bowl, the Spartans and Wolverines play for the Paul Bunyan Trophy, which seems at least as contrived and wacky as the Battle for the Golden Egg.

• There were a mere 112,432 at the game.  They stand up alot and make a helluva lot of noise.  (Damn, were we glad they don't ring cowbells?!)  Other than a small group of Spartan fans, it looked like every SOB in the stadium had on a Maize or Blue shirt.  It started raining about half way through the 3rd quarter ... and continued throughout the rest of the game, and for a good 30-40 minutes came a deluge of Noahesque proportions.  Very darn few people left ... at least not until it was painfully evident with about 2 mins. left that their hated rivals from E. Lansing had come to the Big House, paraded old Paul Bunyan around, and were taking him right back home with them.

• Parking is, of course, a staggering undertaking.  The university golf course runs from over a mile away to just across the street from Michigan Stadium, and they allow parking and tailgating on it.  We wondered about all of those vehicles parked there and people walking 7 times a year, especially knowing how hard it had rained Sat. night ... but I guess at $40/car for tens of thousands of cars, the revenue is there for course upkeep. There are, of course, several UM pay lots, most of which require permits.  We paid $20 to park in one and walked well over a mile to the stadium.  It takes lots of space to provide parking for 112,432 fans.

• The scale of the tailgating on the golf course makes it appear that a huge blue and gold (ok, maize, dammit!) invading army has taken it over.  There are tents as far as the eye can see.  They drink a bit, and they grill and play games.  There was some cornhole being played, in addition to another novel game.  Walking to the golf course we saw people carrying bags of bowling pins and footballs and squatty wooden platforms.  They set the pins up on the platforms, which are spaced apart like cornhole boards, then 2 people get on each end and throw footballs to try to knock the pins over ... sorta like a combination of cornhole, football toss, and bowling.  And beer.

• The Crisler Center, their basketball arena, is adjacent to Michigan Stadium.  In the parking lot for it there was a big party bus with a band playing and people of all ages dancing and having a beer or 6.  Band was damn good too!  In other words, not only is the stadium big; they party and tailgate big too.

• With no fan-unfriendly upper deck, the Big House may not look so huge empty, but by gawd it does when it's full.  

• Both bands played, and they were huge like the stadium ... and just phenomenal!  Michigan State's band strutted around in a style that was sort of a mixture between the old Soviet army and the Florida A&M Rattler Band.  Great drum line too!  Michigan's band is equally impressive, and to me their fight song, Hail to the Victors, is absolutely the best one in college sports (followed by USC's Fight On).  The Michigan fans know the words and sing them every time it's played ... and damn well for a choir of over 100,000 (many of whom had been overserved at tailgate, understandably since this was only the 4th night game in 90 years of Michigan Stadium history).

• Speaking of history, Michigan has it in spades.  They have team photos of all of their national champions 1901, 1902, 1903, 1904, 1918, 1932, etc.  The latest one, however, was in 1997, and fans of the Blue are getting a mite testy at not having won a championship this millenium.  (On talk radio after the game, the callers were in favor of at least publicly putting Harbaugh on the "hot seat" and making him stop wearing khakis, if not firing him right then.)  They also have photos and markers of all of their great players whose jerseys have been retired.  Notable among them are Gerald Ford and Tom Harmon.  And here was the most amazing historical fact we learned about Michigan Stadium:  In 1927 it seated 82,000 people!  I'm pretty confident that you could've taken every fan of Miss. A&M, Ole Miss, and every other college and juco in MS in 1927 and not filled Michigan Stadium ... even if you'd thrown in a tractor pull, a coon on a log, and a heifer judging.

• As for the quality and style of football ... well, I'd say that if these represent 2 of the best teams in the Big  +/-10, UAT, UGA, and Aubrin have nothing to worry about in the Playoffs.  Very tough defenses, but limited offensive creativity and/or skill.  The other thing that shocked me was that not only was Michigan State, as Jack Cristil would've described it, "dressed in white jerseys with green numerals, white pants, and white headgear," but they also had an amazing number of pasty white arms and legs.  While Michigan looked more like one of today's SEC teams, MSU (North) looked more like an SEC team of the 1960's ... one with very, very large players.

• In conclusion, the only thing that would have made my trip better was if I had worn one of 2 t-shirts:  A maroon Gator Bowl shirt from 2011, when our 'Dogs smote the Philistine in Blue 52-14, or one that my friend who works at Appalachian State wore after their unfathomable 2007 upset at the Big House that read something like  "Now You Damn Well Know Where Boone, NC Is".  But that would've been obnoxious ... like something a UAT or LSU fan would do.

In summary, our trip to the Big House was enjoyable and memorable.  If you're a real college football fan, I heartily recommend the experience.