Indiana 20, Michigan 15: No FOMO
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I went to a wedding on Saturday. A big, long, 90-minute Catholic wedding followed by a five-hour reception at a venue without TVs. I know the trendy way to react to this in 2024 is to be performative and look up at the sky and aggressively shake your hands and yell “NO FALL WEDDINGS!!!” But in actuality, I had a great Saturday celebrating and conversing with friends.
No, I’m not at the point where I’m wanting to miss Michigan football games. And to be clear, the wedding didn’t spare me from the Michigan football experience altogether. In many ways, it actually made it a little harder to stomach — I’m committed to watching a game twice before writing about it, so all it really meant was I needed to watch a full game whose outcome I already knew twice on Sunday-Monday, and the latter rewatch spilled into 3 a.m. on a work night (sorry this is coming out a day later than usual 🫤).
But it was pretty remarkable to go through Saturday and realize just how little FOMO I was experiencing throughout the day.
(For readers of this who aren’t as hip as this 39-year-old father of 3, that means Fear Of Missing Out [I also know how to dab, fwiw]).
Sure, I had my phone out and followed along throughout the entirety of the ceremony (sorry if you’re reading this, Joe, but to be fair — I’m not Catholic). And when it came reception time and there was no TV by the bar to coax a bartender into flipping to CBS, I found a way to stream it on my battery-drained phone during key moments. But when I allowed myself to think of how I would be handling this if it were a year ago and Michigan was playing in CFP-relevant games, it really drilled home just how steep of a fall Michigan has experienced in less than a 12-month span.
Are you supposed to be mad that Michigan lost to Indiana — a team Michigan had won 27 straight against in non-pandemic seasons? Are you supposed to feel good that Michigan put itself in position to win a game against an undefeated, now-top 5 team on the road? Or are you supposed to feel … nothing?
My biggest fear heading into this season was reaching a point where the season doesn’t really mean much. I’m not necessarily talking about apathy — I still very much care, or I wouldn’t be penning another 5,000-word column about the team. But five losses in 10 games sure have a way of lowering the stakes on both ends of the win-loss spectrum. And a Saturday this coming weekend without a Michigan game that would be cause for depression over the last three years feels like a welcome reprieve this time around.
It’s not all bad news, though. In the short term, this season is really hard to stomach. And it’s weird not really even having the opportunity to experience a major high on Saturdays, with the exception of potentially playing spoiler on Nov. 30th in Columbus.
But in the grand scheme of things, the way the last 12 months have played out might be pretty damn optimal when it comes to the long-term health and support of the Michigan football program.
What do I mean by that?
Well, you kind of saw it with Ohio State this offseason. The one thing that truly got that athletic department, fanbase and donor group to all rally together on was experience what it feels like the truly feel jumped by Michigan. No program in the country, let alone the Big Ten, had been more consistently successful than Ohio State over the past decade-plus. I’m talking 11 straight non-pandemic seasons of at least 11 wins, with that pandemic season also resulting in a National Championship Game appearance. The fear of truly dropping a tier below the Wolverines on the heels of their National Championship is what led Buckeye Nation to raise record amounts of money and put together the most impressive high-dollar roster of the NIL era.
It feels like the same thing could be what’s happening in Ann Arbor right now. Michigan fans finally got a taste of success from 2021-2023 after a way-too-long period in the good-but-not-great-desert. After “really good” seasons that led to Big Ten Championships and the breaking of its College Football Playoff drought in 2021 and 2022, the Wolverines leveled up to great and reached college football’s peak last year, going on a 15-0 run to a National Championship. This was no fluke — road wins over Penn State, rivalry triumphs over Ohio State, epic victories over Alabama at historic venues like the Rose Bowl and then a blowout over Washington to get across the finish line in style.
Michigan fans experienced the euphoria of having it all click at once — only to immediately feel like what it would be like to get it all ripped away in an instant. So now fans, donors and administrators find themselves at a similar crossroads that Ohio State was in some 10 short months ago. Do you want the feeling of looking up at those you were beginning to feel accustomed to seeing below you in the Big Ten standings and CFP rankings? Or do you use this as a wake-up call to rally everyone together and do what you can to ensure 2024 is an anomaly?
All signs are that Michigan is doing all the right things in terms of mobilizing around NIL for portal and recruiting pursuits. But as we’ve learned in Year 1 of the Sherrone Moore Era, what looks good on paper doesn’t always come to fruition. And the next few months are absolutely critical for the next few years (and beyond) of this program.
I want to get back to the point where not seeing a Michigan game live eats me up inside. I want that FOMO feeling bad in my gut. I want this season to be the outlier — not the previous three.
Below the paywall jump is my detailed look at Saturday’s game — an exploration of The Good, The Bad and The WTF from Michigan’s latest loss 👇.
