While the seductive song of Northwestern fandom – an exceedingly likeable coach, true student-athletes, no sanctions, and reasonable expectations generally met – proved soothing and calming during the penultimate week prior to the college season, we have, once again, turned our minds, and hearts, back to cheering for our Michigan Wolverines.
While our hiatus couldn’t have been timed better – we had much more fun giggling at Fitz having two brawling players run a lap holding hands and rejoicing in Senior LB Quentin Davie’s nomination to the Butkus Award watchlist while Michigan fandom melted down over the OSU game – some things just kept pulling us back to Michigan. It wasn’t whether the band was going to have microphones, the latest salvo from the Free Press, or even realignment controversy (again, thank god we were NW fans for that shit). It’s not even the storyline of “the most important Michigan season in recent memory”, and how it may chart the course of Michigan football. A century of traditions continued, forgotten, or ignored isn’t what brought us back to the fold, nor was it a concern for what’s going to come, and “what Bo would think” about that. Many seem beholden to everything that has happened before, and many seem to already be debating about whether we should go back to that at the end of the year, with the name of prodigal son Jim Harbaugh on the lips of even some of the Rich Rodriguez believers.
Comrades, it’s none of that. We’re excited to watch this team, in 2010. We’re not excited because of what it may presage in the future, and we’re not excited because they may help expunge some of the nastiness of the past few year. We’re excited because this is Michigan football, and we’re only going to get to see this team play 13 times this year, and watching Michigan football is more fun than the alternative.
JT Floyd, in the minds of many, wasn’t supposed to play this year. He was behind Boubacar Cissoko, Donovan Warren, Troy Woolfolk, and Justin Turner – all of whom were supposed to have eligibility left. Instead, he’s our #1 cornerback. A confident young man, who, in all rights, should be an underclassman being lead by two senior CB’s has stepped up and taken the role of vocal leader for the secondary. Floyd has been waved off as “too slow”, with nearly every alternative being placed above him. Well, as others have crashed and burned, or just left, Floyd is the one who stayed as others fled, and worked as others didn’t. We’re excited to see him play.
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