A few years ago, I was young. It’s true – I was in my twenties and years away from struggling to stay awake at 11 PM, getting hangovers due to preospterously small amounts of alcohol, and stressing about things like mortgages, investments, marriage, and god knows what else. My priorities were simple: having a good time. If it didn’t meet that criteria, I wasn’t interested.

When I was a student at Michigan, I wanted a night game to occur like nobody’s business. Every Saturday night I watched games beamed from Southern locales, bringing me images of unbelievably sloshed hot chicks adorned with facial stickers and Mardi Gras beads shrieking into camera. The booze-fueled crowds seemed cranked to eleven at all times, and friends who had been told stories of the high likliehood of anonymous sex with an attractive coed in the student section in Baton Rouge. Needless to say, I was all in. Night games! Bring ‘em on.

That is to say, I understand the desire for night games at Michigan. I understand the desire for a raucous crowd. I understand the desire to stand all game and scream at the top of your lungs. I was a student at Michigan. At no point did I not think that the games I went to see, were for me – for the students. I knew there were others there, but they weren’t as much a part of the school as I was at the time – they didn’t walk the campus, go to class with the players, and take part in the social life the way I did. I, like most students, it seemed, largely felt a sense of ownership. Whether what I wanted differed from thousands upon thousands of what alums and other adult fans whose financial footprint on the team was much larger (due to elevated ticket prices, personal seat licenses and other contributions, not to mention the sheer number of them) never registered. Fuck them – we wanted the noise of Camp Randall and the drunken debauchery of the SEC. And let’s be honest – the desire for night games is a desire for a longer pre-game drinking period, leading to crazier crowds.

Here’s the thing, though: Nobody stays young. All day booze-fests put you in bed by 3 PM, your wife and kids may not be down to be out until 1 AM for a football game, and the LSU co-ed with the lei and the Mardi-Gras beads looks like she’ll probably give you chlamydia. I can still stand all game, but I’m just 31. But, as someone who suffers from early-onset arthritis (mild, at this point) due to a number of sports injuries, I can understand why some people may not want to do so.

What’s the point? We realize that the word “empathy” has largely been politicized lately, but it certainly applies to the shared enmity between the young whippersnappers and the “DOWN IN FRONT!!” crowd. Younger fans who feel like their senior bretheren should just give up their tickets to someone who will scream, stand, or attend at night are simply short-sighted to the point that they can’t see through their own beer-goggles. If they somehow succeeded in their wish for a Mardis Gras atmosphere at Michigan Stadium, where older fans are shunned and parents keep their children home in fear, where is their future as fans? When they turn thirty, how will they feel when 20-year-old students are demanding they give up their seats due to their refusal to do a beer-bong? Would so many of them currently be fans if their parents had been forced to relinquish their season tickets upon child-birth, or if their parents had shuddered at the idea of bringing their child to a game only to have them oggle the bared rack of a Tri-Delt rather than the football? How will they feel when the smoke-machines and heavy-metal soundtracked intro some clamor for is replaced, in thirty years, by music they find inaccessable noise polution?

I’m not arguing that you can’t stand and yell. But both sides of the debate ought to have some empathy – some understanding of where the other is coming from. Everyone wants to have a good time, but a 21-year-old’s idea of a good time differs from that of a 60-year-old or a 35-year-old parent there with their child. Michigan football is great, and Michigan stadium is a great place to watch a game because, young whippersnappers, you’re going to be able to go and do that as long as you have the desire. When you get upset that older fans are quieter and less willing to stand, don’t get angry. That’s going to be you in time. I know you don’t think so, and I know “you’ll be different”, but you’re wrong. You won’t be. In the meantime, try not to be this guy:

You know, support the team.