If you grew up around where I did, or anywhere else in the Midwest, you know what a big deal the annual Michigan-Ohio State football rivalry is. Two proud schools with winning traditions rivaling any in college sports. Michigan is, in fact, the winningest team in NCAA football. They won the very first Rose Bowl ever played, 49-0. The second time they got to the Rose Bowl, decades later, they again won 49-0. In all the games over all the years, no team has matched that point total -- it still stands as the record in the grandest Bowl of them all.A lot has changed over the past century, but one thing that remains the same is the intensity of this rivalry. Only twice before have both teams made it to their regular season finale undefeated. Never before have they faced each other ranked #1 and #2 in the country.
Ohio State is the favorite, and is trying to run the table as the nation's top-ranked team end to end. If they win their quarterback may well win the Heisman Trophy, which is given to the nation's top football player.
Michigan came out of the shadows this year; no one expected them to be as good as they are. Last year they had what for U-M was a miserable record (7-5). But they also have a very good quarterback plus a great running back, two great pass receivers and a speedy guy who is a multiple threat -- returning kicks, catching passes, running on trick plays.
They also have the best defense against the run in the country, barely allowing 20 yards on the ground per game.
Football between these two schools is traditionally a low-scoring, grind-it-out, hard-hitting battle. The team that wins the line of scrimmage should win the game. But modern football includes lots of explosive offensive maneuvers that make the scores of yesteryear (6-3, 7-0, 13-12) extremely unlikely this time around. It's more likely to be something like 27-23...
***
My Dad was a big Michigan fan. And, if any of my female readers have tolerated going this deep into a post that has contained nothing but boring sports clichés so far, I promise to switch gears right here, right now.
The photo up top is of my father on our last day together. It was New Year's Day, 1999. I drove from our hotel on Captiva Island over to my parents' mobile home in North Fort Myers. My mother took this shot before I got there. Dad was so excited, wearing his Michigan hat, with the TV in the background, on which we watched our last football game together.
Michigan won that game, with a dramatic 4th-quarter comeback. We hugged and said good-bye, knowing we planned to see each other again three brief days later. On the morning of the 3rd, I talked to my parents on the phone. My Dad barely said a word. Mom did the talking.
That night he suffered a massive stroke. I got to the hospital and was with him and my mother as he died. Hours after kissing her husband of 56 1/2 years goodbye forever, she was cradling my 2-month- old daughter in her arms.
Dad never got to meet Julia. Julia never got to meet Dad.
Maybe if you don't have kids, or don't like what family you have, or never really experienced anything resembling a happy family tradition, this won't make sense to you. But I'll be thinking of my father this Saturday as I watch the epic battle on television. Julia will be running around my apartment, pursuing her dreams.
When the game is over, I'll have a silent conversation with the one who taught me to love this stuff, who put it in my blood. He was 82 the day he died. He would be 90 if he were still here today. And, even if we were apart, watching the big game a continent away from one another, he's the first person I would have called, excitedly when Michigan does what they surely will due this Saturday.
That's something I will never be able to do again; haven't been able to do for years. Much like when the woman you love hugs you, gets in her car, and drives away, leaving you standing all alone, most good things come to a premature end in this life.
And when they do, they never, ever come back again, do they?
***
See, I'm still working on handling losses. There have been disappointments, sadnesses, unexpected goodbyes. Last week, somone told me something innocently, not knowing it would hurt me, but it reopened an old pain. Probably I'm hyper-sensitive now because I'm going through my divorce and it's winter. Divorce is never fun, and winter rarely is. I probably need a friend to hug me but there's nobody to be found. I suddenly remember my mother, and how her feelings would get hurt when I was young, and how I would always feel her pain slicing through my own heart.
People sometimes try to make you feel better about the inevitable by giving you too much information. They don't know. They can't know. But my disappointments in people have been many, and their ability to hurt me is beyond what any of them know. I just wish some hurts wouldn't return any more. I'm tired and I'm feeling old now.
Of course, the only one I have to blame is myself for all this. I've given my love and even my friendship away so easily for so many years. Take it on the run...That's what they do. With never a look back in the rear-view mirror at the likes of me. Too late I discover they just don't really care.
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