The Crier

A Culture of Sports Unites Us

The student body is huge, and there is much to divide it. Luckily, we’ll always have the Big House

Meghan Fisher · Sport · Feb 05, 2007

Michigan winters are unforgiving. When I walk to class each day — layered in outerwear yet still wanting to give up and go back to bed — I wonder why I go here.

Every year I declare that I’m moving south as soon as I graduate. I look at people barely recognizable in modified sleeping bags (better known as coats) and wonder why we’ve all stayed here. There must be something that offers warmth amidst midterms and endless ice storms.

And then I think about football season. Brain freeze makes it easy to forget, but when I think about it, I wish for September like I wish for spring break. Oh, to be in the Big House again.

Michigan sports make the University worthwhile. Academics bring us here, but athletics bring us together. The sheer number of people who came together for Bo Schembechler’s vigil this year amazed me. Most hadn’t even attended the University during Bo’s tenure, or, like me, knew little about the legend before his death.

Sports are vital to our collective student identity. Even if you don’t play a sport here, you can still watch them, read about them and talk about them.

Sports at Michigan offer a legacy of shared experiences. Schembechler’s storied wins and inimitable persona make up only part of a very long list. Some memories are inherited and others are our own. Most of us remember the good times: Rushing the field after drubbing Ohio State in 2003, watching the homerun that won the national championship for the softball team in 2005, and cheering this year’s 47-21 trouncing of Charlie Weiss and his Irish.

But we also share the burdens of defeat: Ringing in the new year with the football team’s third consecutive Rose Bowl loss, living down women’s basketball’s 0-16 Big Ten conference record last year. What’s important is that I’ve never had to high-five or grimace alone.

Sports are vital to our collective student identity. Even if you don’t play a sport here, you can still watch them, read about them and talk about them. Our competitiveness doesn’t stop when we leave the classroom; many of us care as much about how we end the football season as the ends of our semesters. The feeling is intrinsic. It doesn’t stop when the final whistle blows.

Sure, there are issues that could be more important in the long run, but that doesn’t make sports less important to us. I heard just as much outcry against the BCS when it stuck us at no. 3 this year as I did when Proposal 2 passed in November. The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative created divisions, but the BCS snubbing gave us common ground.

Our competitiveness doesn’t stop when we leave the classroom; many of us care as much about how we end the football season as the ends of our semesters.

As Michigan students, we cheer as loud as we can on fourth and inches because we know we might make a difference. We hug complete strangers, start the wave and stick around when nobody else will. We’re part of that special gravity that draws thousands to the Big House every game day.

In the four years I’ve been here, I’ve learned a lot. But it hasn’t been exclusive to the classroom. I’ve learned the way a Saturday night can live or die based on the outcome of a football game, the way that hot dogs (and the man who throws them) can become famous overnight. And I’ve learned the way it feels to leave the Big House after the last home game of senior year.

These are some of the unique understandings that make a Michigan student a Michigan wolverine. At a school this big, it’s impossible to know everybody, but Michigan athletics give us a way to know the same things: celebration, disappointment and expectation.

Last summer when I was in Europe, I made friends with a stranger who was wearing a Michigan hat. The hat alone was enough to warrant a “hello.”