Just a little rain on the parade

Rain is on my mind. Not like Harvey rain. This ain't Michigan State's impending debacle. (Tangent: I've seen people on the Web blaming Houston's zoning regulations, or lack thereof, for the flooding. These people apparently haven't registered the concept of 50 inches of rain falling in a few days. 50 inches! 50! I don't care if your zoning regulations say: "Only one building, wetlands, and a dirt road per 10 acres." 50(!) inches of rain is going to flood ANYWHERE. /tangent) But some small rain on Michigan's latest gridiron campaign, beginning tomorrow, is clouding my thoughts.

I've been having a tough time getting excited for this season. My fandom has been slipping away for the last decade, mostly because I can't justify the existence of the NCAA any longer. Even if I was aware of the issue when the Fab 5 were complaining about it in 1992, the fact that an increasing number of billions of dollars is being made on major college sports and none of it is going to the athletes is something that just hangs over me when I watch the game. Nowhere else in society do you have adults be expected to put their skills to use and be explicitly forbidden from being compensated for them. At a minimum, you call that exploitation. At a maximum, there are much darker parallels to be drawn, especially given that the majority of those athletes are African-American. The fact that the only professional outlets for those skills in the US collude with the NCAA to deny those athletes access to those paying jobs for three years (in the case of football, 1 in basketball) past the age when most of them have legal standing as adults just makes the crime, and the associated hypocrisy, even worse.

You can add to that the issue of concussions. American football is a violent game, full stop. It's why so much protective gear is worn. Even sports that are considered contenders for the title holder of violence, like rugby, don't require so much gear because the game isn't predicated on extremely powerful collisions. Those collisions lead to concussions and I find that when I'm watching a game these days, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about what those kids are doing to themselves in the name of getting permission to be paid for what they're already really good at.

These feelings are in stark contrast to those of Michigan's current coach, who feels that football embodies everything that's good about life. In truth, no one else that I recall can so accurately be said to "live football." Every day, during almost every waking moment (he does have a family), one could make a fair argument that Jim Harbaugh is thinking about football and how to be better at it than he was the day before. My slow alienation from the game has reached its pinnacle right around the time that most around me, energized by the dynamo of his personality and the success that Harbaugh has maintained throughout his career, are more enthusiastic than ever about what Michigan could accomplish on the field. But I try to blot out the stain that is the NCAA and the scourge that is the threat of CTE and think in similarly positive terms and realize that I just don't share the faith anymore.

Brian did his usual excellent review (I can't call anything that exceeds 50K words a "summary") of the team and his expectations for the season and came down at the 9-3/10-2 mark. You know how many of those I've seen in my life? 12. Two more at 9-4, a 9-2-1, a 10-1-1, 5 10-3s (including the last two years), and 3 11-2s. There were a couple 10-1s, an 11-1, and a 10-0-1 in my lifetime but I was too young to know what was going on. I've seen a lot of apparently successful seasons for Michigan that, in many ways, don't really add up to a whole lot. I mean, yeah, a lot of Rutgers fans would kill to have the program that Michigan has, but their first problem is that they're Rutgers fans, so I don't really care about that. I just imagine sitting in front of a game, mildly irritated that these kids are sacrificing their health and bodies to make millions of dollars for someone else, and think about the impending 10-3 season and... I just get bored.

Do I really want to see Michigan slaughter Rutgers again? Do I really want to see the ritual sacrifice of Cincinnati or the slugfest with Wisconsin or the inevitable loss to Ohio State again? Do I really want to be implicitly supporting a system that denies these kids the opportunity to make a living off of their natural talent and developed skills, unlike 99% of the rest of humanity? Make no mistake. These guys are professional athletes. The only thing not professional about it is that they're not getting paid. Having recently been looking for jobs in a sphere where my only experience is of a volunteer or self-employed nature, I can tell you what most employers think about the "professional" standing of someone who's never received a paycheck. These kids are basically modern corporate America's favorite class: unpaid interns, who are supposed to be eternally grateful to the monolith that tells them that their time and effort aren't worth a dime without the guidance that the monolith provides. Insert Kubrick's giant black slab conveying the thought of tool use (violent tool use, incidentally) and it's kind of hard to deny the imagery.

I still enjoy the game, to a certain degree. I was watching Indiana and Ohio State play last night with an appreciation for what was happening on the field (and utter amazement at the modernity of about half of Mike Debord's offense; I'll never forgive 1999.) And despite a similar appreciation for Harbaugh's gung-ho personality and the dynamism that he brings to some parts of the offense, I find myself unable to join the Harbaughdyssey because I don't see the breakthrough that so many friends and others I respect insist is taking place. I don't see Michigan contending for national prominence on a regular basis because I don't see Michigan getting past OSU to win the division or go to the conference title game, which means 10-2/9-3 and some irrelevant bowl in Florida on an annual basis. Incidentally, the last irrelevant bowl game that Michigan participated in cost TE Jake Butt millions of dollars as his draft stock plummeted when he injured his knee during said game. "Come to Michigan! Do lasting damage to your body for free, because it's the only way to (hopefully) get paid for what you can do with that body!"

I look at that last paragraph and I feel mildly ashamed that I'm even contextualizing my apathy toward the record that Michigan might achieve, given the other concerns that I can't shake. I mean, certainly my interest in the game is grounded in what Michigan can achieve in it. I'm a fan. I have been since I was six years old. I could go on being just like all the other fans who love the game and all the kids who play it for that same, simple love. But I wonder. I wonder if that new coach who's supposedly the greatest thing to ever grace the sideline of Michigan Stadium (I've lived through six now; admittedly a ridiculously low number compared to many programs) is really enough to make me think that being a fan for one more 10-3 season is worth supporting the economic injustice or watching people risk the rest of their lives on a game that was probably a bad idea taken to extremes in the first place. I remain a fan, but I struggle with the idea of continuing to be a fan. Do I step out of the rain or keep walking to where I'm going?