Michigan football fans should have been watching one of the great spectacles of the college game playing out on Saturday — boats large and small cruising into Union Bay outside Husky Stadium.
Or if they were lucky enough and had friends in the area, they might have gone “sailgating” themselves, prior to watching the Wolverines and Washington Huskies do battle.
Of course, that’s in the dream world. That’s the pre-COVID world, one in which the worst virus involved Ryan Day’s offense infecting Michigan’s defense in late November.
Now, Husky Stadium sits empty. So does Michigan Stadium. Those used to sailgating OR tailgating are either sunk or in the ditch.
That’s not lost on Jim Harbaugh. He wakes up in the morning, looks at the calendar, and shakes his head. He sees stray leaves falling to the ground and can’t believe it.
Everything around him screams football … except reality. Reality screams nobody knows when the game he loves will return. That’s tough to take, even for someone who routinely urges his players to insert “steel in their spines.”
“It definitely hits you,” Harbaugh said on Saturday, amid marchers demonstrating on behalf of a season. “We should have been playing a game today.”
They didn’t, either because the Big Ten represents the most intelligent, wise, scrupulous and virtuous major athletic conference in the nation, or because of a disastrous miscalculation amid white hot political rancor. It just depends on whom you’re asking.
Michigan football sideline reporter and Detroit sports talk radio host Doug Karsch noted recently, on a U-M beat writers round table in The Wolverine magazine: “If other conferences play, and it has a tragic impact on the lives of student-athletes, the Big Ten might look like the gold standard of college athletics. If the other conferences play and have absolutely no problems — and there’s just no predicting it — then it could be a setback.”
Tom Crawford, a U-M alum who has covered Michigan football for decades, stood solidly against a season going forward in the weeks leading up to September. When it arrived, he began experiencing second thoughts.
Harbaugh and his crew demonstrated how safe the football program could be, boasting of nearly 1,000 consecutive negative tests for Coronavirus under Schembechler Hall’s stringent protocols. Others have repeatedly underscored the lack of serious health complications and hospitalizations for 18- to 22-year-old men at the apex of physical conditioning.
Even for a COVID-cautious individual like Crawford, that's had an impact.
“It really hit me this weekend,” Crawford said.
“I’m pulling a 180 right now. That 180 is, I think football in the Big Ten should start Oct. 10, as opposed to Thanksgiving weekend or this winter-spring thing … the Big Ten now is looking like an absolute train wreck, in my opinion.
“We’re just twisting in the wind, stuck in the mud. This is headed for a public relations disaster. If the SEC and the other two Power Fives play and the Big Ten doesn’t, that could set this conference back to a Mountain West caliber for the next five or six years. I really believe that.”
Multiple sources have cited University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel as one of the main opponents of going forward with the season. Some have gone so far to say that even if the Big Ten moves to play — whether in October, November, January or later — Schlissel could keep the Wolverines on the sidelines.
There’s mounting internal pressure on Schlissel. Don’t think for a second politics doesn’t play a role, in an autumn in which that factor seems to touch everything and everyone.
Meanwhile, the guessing game continues. Every hopeful whisper about an impending vote of Big Ten presidents to retract or amend the kibosh they put on fall football gets followed up by a “not so fast,” calling that talk wishful thinking.
Players and coaches remain in limbo. They’ve gone above and beyond in prepping for a season that might not arrive. One U-M assistant coach recently lowered his mask momentarily to make a comment and received the same reaction as a wayward shopper going against the arrows in a local grocery store.
They’re doing everything to compete. They might get sacked before the first snap.
“I want to put pressure on the people who make decisions to let them know we want to play,” noted Dr. Chris Hutchinson, father of junior defensive end Aidan Hutchinson. “I’d rather not play in the spring — I’d take it though and suppose it’s better than nothing.
“Fall is better, and in between would be the winter schedule. We have to do something — these kids need to play. They can only practice in helmets four days a week for so much.
"Just for the sake of the kids and their progression as athletes, we want to see some football. We know it will be as safe as they can possibly make it. Jim has done a great job and I have nothing but the utmost confidence in his ability to keep it safe.”
Yet for now, the powers that be don’t want to sail into uncharted waters — or even Union Bay.
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Postscript: Two hours after posting this, we received more inside information that sounds ominous for those hoping for fall football. Our source noted: "There is very little support for Thanksgiving, let alone January. Spring games will line up with the Pac-12 and we will likely have a Rose Bowl."
Also, this source anticipates three-to-five more transfers or pro declarations.
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