Column: Michigan Football Brings Us Together

Editor’s note: On the eve of the first night game in the 132-year history of University of Michigan football – to be played Saturday against Notre Dame – columnist John U. Bacon reflects on the game’s history and continuing hold on college campuses.

George Will recently wrote that when archeologists excavate American ruins centuries from now, they may be mystified by the Big House in Ann Arbor. “How did this huge football emporium come to be connected to an institution of higher education? Or was the connection the other way?”

It’s a fair question, one I’ve pondered myself many times. When I try to explain to foreigners why an esteemed university owns the largest stadium in the country, their expressions tell me it’s – well, a truly a foreign concept.

Ken Burns said our national parks are “America’s best idea.” If so, then our state universities must be a close second. They’re why we have more college graduates per capita than any nation in the world. And also why we have college towns rising out of cornfields – another uniquely American phenomenon. But when you put thousands of young men in one place, all that testosterone has to go somewhere. That’s why football grew not in the cities like baseball or in the YMCAs like basketball, but on college campuses.

The students loved it as much as the presidents hated it – and almost as much as they hated the binge drinking that was turning Ann Arbor into a “place of revelry and intoxication,” as one president complained, back in 1871.

University officials hoped football would give the students something else to do. And that’s why there’s no drinking on campuses today. Can you imagine what college would be like if football hadn’t ended drinking on campus? I shudder at the thought.

But football did have one very important role. For the university’s first 150 years, state taxpayers picked up 90% of the tab. For the farmer in Fenton or the factory worker in Flint, one of the best reasons to support the state school was the Big House – the university’s front porch, the one place on campus where everybody feels welcome.

In most countries, universities were intended to serve a small sliver of intellectual elites. In America, they’re for everybody – and football is one big reason why. Notre Dame coach Frank Leahy once said, “A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall.” And Alabama’s Bear Bryant quipped, “It’s kind of hard to rally around a math class.”

Joining 100,000 like-minded strangers solves a modern problem, too. Both the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa noted the great disease of Western civilization is loneliness. Yes, it’s possible to be lonely in a crowd – but not at Michigan Stadium.

Studies show our endorphins spike when we’re marching in formation, singing in unison, or cheering together in a stadium. Where else can you be certain 100,000 people are feeling exactly what you’re feeling, exactly when you’re feeling it? This is why such places are more important now than ever.

Think about it. Michigan does not play one game this season that’s not televised. You can sit back in your easy chair right at home and watch the whole thing for free. Likewise, every song in the world can be purchased for a few bucks, and every movie is on DVD. Yet we still pack Michigan Theater for movies, Hill Auditorium for concerts, and Michigan Stadium for football games – just like people did almost a century ago. If Humphrey Bogart, Enrico Caruso, or Fielding H. Yost visited those places today, they would think almost nothing had changed.

We need to be together. We need to share something with strangers. And to fill that need, you could do worse than Michigan football. I’ve spent the past three years following the players at close range, and I can tell you that, with few exceptions, they are hard-working, honest guys who care deeply for their school and their teammates. For many fans, when a Wolverine running back breaks through the line into the end zone, then simply hands the ball to the ref, Michigan-style, and celebrates with his teammates, he represents our cherished Midwestern values at their very best.

One fan, who lost his dad at a young age, wrote to Michigan’s athletic director that, “Michigan football is my father.”

A foreign concept, perhaps. But not to us.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of the upcoming “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football,” due out Oct. 25. You can pre-order the book from Nicola’s Books in Ann Arbor or on Amazon.com.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like John U. Bacon. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!