As a Michigan sports fan, I feel like I’m stumbling through a surreal fever dream. It’s as if the universe has been transformed into some sort of simulation designed to see how much pleasure one man can tolerate. It wasn’t enough to win two national titles in the two major sports in such short succession. Somehow the championships were won in a manner that exacted maximum rage from rival fanbases. It’s one thing to just win a vanilla championship that fades with time only to be one of many footnotes of a bygone era. It’s another to have your successes cemented in the heads of so many haters, whose anger only serves to reanimate the legacy over and over again. Gore Vidal once said “it’s not enough to win, others must lose” and my petty ass wishes we could turn that into a maize and blue banner to hang in the rafters. Hail hail to Michigan and also to the haters.
John Beilein walked so Dusty May could run.
9 years before Beilein: UofM was 145-135 with 0 tourney appearances
Then came Beilein in 2007:
• 278-150 (most wins at MI)
• 9 NCAA app
• 5 Sweet 16
• 2 Final Fours
• 4 B1G titles
Tonight isn’t possible without John Beilein.
People probably think Michigan fans are spoiled these days. But I promise it’s not as glamorous as it appears. The last year or two, if someone came up to me and said “congrats on the National Championship,” I was able to simply reply “thank you.”
Now I have to ask “which one?”