Game Day

I have had a few people tell me that if I were to attend a Big Ten school for five years and never made it to a football game, I would regret it for the rest of my life.

I was pretty sure I wouldn't.

But I also knew that if I did make it to a football game, I was unlikely to regret it either, so while I have never actively sought to attend a football game in my time in Michigan, I've also assumed that the opportunity would arise eventually and I would make it to one game (just one) before my five years were up. And then suddenly it was my fifth year, and while it's possible that opportunity arose sometime in the last four years, I hadn't taken it because there were always going to be other years. Now I had run out of other years.

So this Saturday I finally made it to the Big House. I went with a couple friends, Stephanie and Peter. Michigan was playing Delaware, and by halftime we were up 49-3. I don't know if this made the game a particularly good or a particularly poor choice for my first exposure to live Michigan football, but I did have fun. Nevertheless, since it was cold, and we were in the student section where no one ever sits down (really), and watching Michigan touchdowns fall left and right is only fun for so long, we contemplated leaving after halftime. No one was quite willing to commit to a decision, and I suggested that we stay until the next touchdown.* And even though that next touchdown never came (at least not in the third quarter), we were all glad we stayed. If we hadn't, we would have missed the most amazing wave any of us had ever experienced.

As a child, I considered the wave to be the only real reason to attend a professional baseball game. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of the wave, I am including the Wikipedia description. I doubt you are unfamiliar with the concept of the wave. The Wikipedia description just struck me as funny.

The wave is achieved in a packed stadium when successive groups of spectators briefly stand and raise their arms. Each spectator is required to rise at the same time as those straight in front and behind, and slightly after the person immediately to either the right (for a clockwise wave) or the left (for a counterclockwise wave). Immediately upon stretching to full height, the spectator returns to the usual seated position.

The result is a "wave" of standing spectators that travels through the crowd, even though individual spectators never move away from their seats. In many large arenas the crowd is seated in a contiguous circuit all the way around the sport field, and so the wave is able to travel continuously around the arena; in discontiguous seating arrangements, the wave can instead reflect back and forth through the crowd. When the gap in seating is narrow, the wave can sometimes pass through it. Usually only one wave crest will be present at any given time in an arena. Simultaneous, counter-rotating waves have been produced.

Apparently Michigan is sort of famous for its wave shenanigans. I found that in the Wikipedia article as well. Yesterday we experienced the fast wave and the slow wave (my favorite - the entire stadium was moving in slow motion) and the simultaneous counter-rotating wave described above. In the Wikipedia article I also read about the Silent Wave and the Shsh Wave, but those didn't make it into the stadium this time.

I had been having fun up until then, but those waves basically made the game for me and there was not much point in sticking around past the third quarter. Plus my feet were numb. But 3/4 of a game is way longer than I what stuck out for my first BYU football game, and half the people at the game left as early as we did or earlier. I feel content that I did my part.

Go blue!

* Yes, I really was the one who suggested we stay a little longer.