BLANK

I had planned on writing a preview for Michigan when I came home on Tuesday. I had planned a bombastic ramble about the virtues and greatness of the Wolverines, of how their glories would be unsurpassed this year, how they would sweep through the teams they played, vanquish Ohio State and I would be on that field at The Big House with the players and my fellow students, running and laughing and without a doubt happier than I have been in my entire life.

Now… now I’m just empty. I feel like a shell of my former self. I cannot even bring myself to type the words that are required to explain what happened. I guess I’ll just post a few links later… it’ll be less painful that way. Besides, I didn’t even see the game, I say helpless and watched the scoreboard online, sat and stared in shocked, unbelieving horror at those numbers. Those impossible, unfathomable numbers.

And as I watched, a knot formed in my gut, no not in my gut, of my gut… and I watched as my one last hope of redemption was shot down, as the defense caved again, as they scored a field goal and as that last field goal was blocked despite being on the twenty. I can only imagine the torture I would have went through had I seen the game live… because I would have been there had I not been here, in Massachusetts. And that’s the crux of it all… I can’t help but feel that this is all my fault, that had I been there things would have been different. Honestly, I know that they would have been.

So now I sit here and stare ahead of me, a day later and feeling no different. I’m not even sure if it has entirely hit me, or even how I am supposed to react. Last years loss to Ohio State was brutal, without a doubt the worst in my life… until yesterday. At least that loss to OSU had meaning, had honor in it, yesterday was just a disgrace. How am I supposed to trust Lloyd Carr’s coaching ability? Or the defense’s ability to stop anything? How am I supposed to trust Chad Henne and Super Mario and Mike Hart to be super heroes and save the day anymore? I am not placing any blame, because I didn’t see the game and only heard a little about it, because I am far past the point of blaming anyone… but, it truly feels like Superman just died.

Simply put, I’ve lost my faith. I’ve lost my faith in story book endings, in the notion that things turn out right in the end. I’ve lost my faith in fate. The Michigan fanbase as a whole is one of the most cynical and self-deprecating there is… probably right after Red Sox nation pre-2004 and Michigan State, but I never was one of those people. I had hope and confidence and the belief that all would turn out right in the end. But, how am I supposed to believe that now? How am I supposed to believe that anything will be OK when the one thing I was always so sure of was ripped apart limb by limb in my absence? I feel like Zeus has smote me with a thunderbolt, that God is laughing at me from somewhere I will never be able to see, that the Fates are cackling madly in Hades. How can I trust anything anymore when my life is controlled by circumstances that I cannot even comprehend, much less influence? I go through life hoping that things will turn out all right, that somehow I will find what I am looking for, but it never seems to come. There is no comfort anymore, just vacant, staring eyes and a rock in my stomach.

If you want to know what I’m talking about, just go to ESPN.com or Yahoo Sports or probably the fucking Wall Stree Journal, too… I’m sure it will be plastered everywhere just to spite me.

Meanwhile, the Michigan blogosphere is in shambles, after about a million (probably more around a thousand… but that’s a fucking lot” comments on MGoBlog, they experienced “technical difficulties”, and now there are a lot of kittens on the site. I think Brian might have gone insane with grief.

RBUAS seems to be down, too.

Everyone else is calling for the end of the world, including Kudron of course. I haven’t even been able to bring myself to read any of these posts for very long, though.

The M Zone
Michigan Sports Center
Michigan Against the World
Kudronia

Lastly, I'll leave you with a quote from my friend from Pennsylvania who I made into a Wolverine, and who I would like to apologize to for the pain I have brought her.

"Can you explain to me how this happened? I was home for the weekend, but even at school we don't get BTN. PA is BTNless. So I am really confused as to how we lost to a team that I can't even place on a map."

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